It came to me the other day: the lure of general semantics.\u00a0 The attraction.\u00a0 Why did it make such an impression on me back in college?\u00a0 Why did it amaze me, its observations?\u00a0 What did it offer me that I was wanting?\u00a0 What exactly was this stuff?<\/p>\n
It started to become clearer to me that what general semantics provided me was “the truth.”\u00a0 It clarified for me what beliefs were false and why, and pointed to other beliefs that were true and why.\u00a0 It taught me about how we process, how we abstract,\u00a0how we don’t<\/em> mention those aspects as we\u00a0talk about\u00a0the world, and why we should<\/em>.\u00a0 I had an underlying search for truth in college, and probably still do,\u00a0and when I discovered general semantics, it gave me an edge, because with general semantics, I felt I was learning truth<\/em>.<\/p>\n But it was also very practical.\u00a0 In learning the truth, I was learning about what was false, so when I was discussing something with someone, arguing, debating, or just writing a paper, I could confidently make true statements rather than false statements, and thereby circumvent\u00a0another’s ability to undermine my perspective.\u00a0 General semantics taught me ways to tweak what I said in order to move from making a false statement to making a true statement.\u00a0 Just a small change in language could do this, and general semantics taught me these things.<\/p>\n But it wasn’t just a language tweak: By forcing myself to change my language, I was forcing myself to take on different thinking<\/em>.\u00a0 With general semantics, I started to think in true terms rather than false terms.<\/p>\n Maybe that’s why so many people have remarked to me that I “think different.”\u00a0 Perhaps I speak in a more truthful way than most people.\u00a0 I avoid exaggeration.\u00a0 I qualify my statements with to-me-ness.\u00a0 I press people for facts when they state opinions.\u00a0 I point out the difference between inference and fact.\u00a0 Etc.\u00a0 I’m not perfect in my practice, but I damn do it a lot.\u00a0 General semantics is very much a part of my behavior now, and while I still have the ability to have facts off, as least I’m\u00a0less<\/em> wrong more often.<\/p>\n I’m betting I’ll have more to say on this in the future.\u00a0 But if you are searching for the truth right now, general semantics may be the next field you want to study.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It came to me the other day: the lure of general semantics.\u00a0 The attraction.\u00a0 Why did it make such an impression on me back in college?\u00a0 Why did it amaze me, its observations?\u00a0 What did it offer me that I was wanting?\u00a0 What exactly was this stuff? It started to become clearer to me that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[70],"class_list":["post-654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-semantics","tag-truth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=654"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":663,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654\/revisions\/663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}