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“Toward the end of his life, the Buddha took his disciples to a quiet pond for instruction. As they had done so many times before, the Buddha’s followers sat in a small circle around him, and waited for the teaching.

But this time the Buddha had no words. He reached into the muck and pulled up a lotus flower. And he held it silently before them, its roots dripping mud and water.

The disciples were greatly confused. Buddha quietly displayed the lotus to each of them. In turn, the disciples did their best to expound upon the meaning of the flower: what it symbollized, and how it fit into the body of Buddha’s teaching.

When at last the Buddha came to his follower Mahakasyapa, the disciple suddenly understood. He smiled and began to laugh. Buddha handed the lotus to Mahakasyapa and began to speak.

“What can be said I have said to you,” smiled the Buddha, “and what cannot be said, I have given to Mahakashyapa.”

Mahakashyapa became Buddha’s successor from that day forward.” (http://www.uweb.ucsb.edu/~cgherb/lotus.html)

I would like for you to perform a quick experiment. Don’t worry, it will only take a minute or so, and will cause no long lasting effects. I would like for you to clear your mind of all thoughts, and prepare to concentrate for the next 60 seconds. For the next 60 seconds I would like you to concentrate on not thinking about your mother. Clear all thoughts of your mother out of your head, and really focus on not thinking about her for the next 60 seconds.

Ready? Go…..

So, how did you get on. Did you manage to avoid thinking about your mother for 60 seconds? Most likely you did not manage to achieve this, because the very instruction to not think about your mother required you to think about her. You couldn’t remind yourself to not think about her during the 60 seconds, because doing so would entail thinking about her.

Here we have an example of the form of an instruction preventing the exercise of that instruction. A similar problem exists in General Semantics when it comes to training in silence on the objective / unspeakable level.

“The term ‘un-speakable’ expresses exactly that which we have up to now practically entirely disregarded; namely, that an object or feeling, say, our toothache, is not verbal, is not words. Whatever we may say will not be the objective level, which remains fundamentally un-speakable. Thus, we can sit on the object called ‘a chair’, but we cannot sit on the noise we made or the name we applied to that object. It is of utmost importance for the present non-Aristotelian system not to confuse the verbal level with the objective level, the more so that all our immediate and direct ‘mental’ and ‘emotional’ reactions, and all s.r [semantic reactions], states, and reflexes, belong to the un-speakable objective levels, as these are not words. This fact is of great but unrealized importance for the training of appropriate s.r.” (Science and Sanity, 5th edition, p.34)

How did Korzybksi explain the unspeakable, objective level of abstraction to his seminar students? If he used words, then he would have departed from the silent, objective level, thereby defeating the purpose of the lesson. He could have held up a flower and waited silently for his pupils to learn. Instead, he used what I consider a much more effective method - training with the Structural Differential.

“The technique of training is simple. We live on the ‘objective’ or lower order of abstraction levels, where we must see, feel, touch, perform., but never speak. In training, we must use our hands,. It is very useful, after the Structural Differential has been repeatedly explained, stressing, in particular, the rejection of the ‘is’ of identity, not to interrupt the other fellow. Let him speak, but wave the hand, indicating the verbal levels; then point the finger to the objective level, and, with the other hand, close your own lips, to show that on the objective level one can only be silent. When performed repeatedly, this pantomime has a most beneficial, semantic, pacifying effect upon the ‘over-emotionalized’ identification-conditions.” (Science and Sanity, p. 421 - 422)

If the Buddha had possessed an artifact such as the Structural Differential, then as the various disciples burst into speech to “expound upon the meaning of the flower”, he could have placed his fingers to his lips and pointed to the objective level. This would have emphasized “what cannot be said”, and may have made the point of the sermon clear to more than simply Mahakashyapa…

I ate a delicious sandwich at lunch. It had thick cut ham, organic cheddar cheese, and carmelised onion relish. While making the sandwich, I did everything in a specific order. First I buttered the bread, then I cut the ham and put it on top of the bottom slice of bread. Then I cut a couple of slices of cheese and placed them on top of the ham, before finally spreading a generous amount of onion relish on top of the cheese, and putting the top bit of bread in place.

The structure of the sandwich contributed greatly to my enjoyment of it. I can represent the structure of the sandwich in a rather crude way, by ordering words vertically to correspond to the order of the food. Thus my sandwich had the following structure:

slice of bread
butter
onion relish
cheese
ham
butter
slice of bread

I can imagine that I would have enjoyed it much less if instead it had had the following structure:

onion relish
butter
slice of bread
cheese
slice of bread
ham
butter

I would certainly have made even more of a mess eating sandwich(2) than I did with the original sandwich(1)! I would have found it much more difficult to pick up for a start!

In Science and Sanity, Korzybski points out that a map must have a structure similar to the territory it describes in order to have usefulness:

“A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.” (p.58, Science and Sanity)

Structure therefore plays an important role in General Semantics, as structure exists at all levels of abstraction, and similarity of structure represents the only content of knowledge. Einstein’s theory of relativity has usefulness because the structure of the theory seems to correspond to the structure of the universe it describes. In other words, Einstein’s map has a similar structure to the territory. Physicists can make predictions using that particular map, and have those predictions confirmed by their observations of the territory (broadly speaking).

So structure plays an important role in General Semantics, sandwich making, and life in general. Anywhere you look you will find structure. Graphite and diamond differ only in structure - both consist of carbon atoms structured differently. Try giving your girlfriend a graphite necklace and you will soon have an understanding of the importance of structure in everyday life!

The last blog entry I wrote did not have much structure, and as a result does not convey much in the way of meaningful information. I ended up posting it because I had invested so much time writing it that I could not bear to throw it away. However I realize now that I should have spent more time planning it up front before I started to write it.

I write computer software for a living. I would not dream of starting to write a computer program without spending some designing the system, outlining the structure etc. I have now decided to give the same care and attention to my blog entries. Up until now the immediacy of blogging has blinded me to the fact that I still need to plan what I want to say. At university I did not just sit down at a computer and start typing out an essay. I spent time researching it, planning it out, and defining the structure. From now on I intend to do the same with the entries on this blog.

[WARNING: this blog entry may seriously damage your health! If you can work out what I was trying to say, then please leave a comment telling me, because I don’t really know myself! But I have spent so much time trying to say something that I can’t quite bring myself to hit the ‘delete’ button. Now I understand why writers need editors…]

It has taken me a very long time and a lot of restructuring to get this blog entry into its ‘final’ form. It started as a entry in my journal that I wrote about this time last year (roughly). I came across it in one of my periodic re-readings of my old journals, and thought it might make an interesting blog. However, after I typed it out I realized that what made sense to me as the original writer with access to the chains of reasoning and abstractions that led up to the entry, would probably not make sense to anyone else. In other words, I realized I had some work to do to restructure the entry in order to make it more ‘user friendly’.

The key moment in clarifying my abstractions came when I realized that I could not rely on the elemental term, ‘reality’. I realized that what I had written did not have much focus because it relied upon a rather fuzzy term. Korzybski describes as ‘elemental’ a term which splits verbally that which we cannot split in actuality. The classic example of this which I tend to rely on involves the modern notion of space-time as opposed to the elemental terms ’space’ and ‘time’. You can never find ’space’ without ‘time’, or vice versa. Using the term ’space-time’ avoids the problem by re-joining the 2 elemental terms. ‘Reality’ has the ’same’ characteristic. It implies some kind of independently existing entity. Modern science (and General Semantics) tells us that what we call ‘reality’ in actual fact comes about as a result of the interaction between the ‘observer’ and the ‘observed’. See my entry on the Structural Differential for a related discussion.

In the original article, I wanted to say something about how we re-enforce our naiive view that we ‘perceive’ an ‘objective reality’ through the facts of the structure of our nervous systems. I drew the diagram shown below which aimed to represent the consensus ‘reality’ that we humans share:

However I struggled to make my intuitions clear. Below I have copied the main body of the original entry in order to compare what I originally wrote with the new, clarified version, arrived at through the rejection of the elemental term, ‘reality’:

‘E’ and ‘O’ exist on qualitatively different levels. When energy from the dynamic process ‘E’ interacts with the various membranes that mark the boudaries between us and the world, a complex sequence of electro-chemical events occur. These events cause the propagation of signals to the brain, which interprets and evaluates accordingly. Thus the structure of the medium through which we ‘perceive’ and interact with ‘E’ (i.e. the structure of the nervous system) determines the way we ‘perceive’ and evaluate ‘E’.

The nervous systems of individual human(1), human(2) etc. have much more in common that they differ. Roughly speaking, we can say that individual humans view the world through the ’same’ medium, and hence live in the ’same’ ‘reality’ (very very broadly speaking). Or, to put it another way, human reality-tunnels share a common ground.

The diagram below attempts to illustrate this common ground, shared between 3 humans, H1, H2, and H3. [see above]

…

The differences in the reality-tunnels come not at the low levels of abstraction, the levels of basic awareness (by this I mean sight, sound, smell etc), but at the higher levels of abstraction. We might refer to these as cultural differences. Thus, if we compare human(1) from the ‘Bible belt’ in the USA, with human(2) from downtown Baghdad, then their reality-tunnels will (again, very broadly speaking) match up at the lower levels of abstraction, the building blocks of awareness. They both will see, hear, smell etc. in the ’same’ way. At higher levels of abstraction, when we consider their ‘beliefs’ etc., then their nervous systems will exhibit more of a difference.

If we drew similar Venn diagrams for other species, then we would find much less intra-species variation because of the non-existence of higher order abstractions in, for example, dogs. And if we drew a Venn diagram to illustrate inter-species variations, we would see different degrees of similarity and difference. Human consensus reality probably shares more with canine and feline consensus reality than it does with snakes, for example.

We tend to regard our non-verbal abstractions (’O') as ‘reality’ because of the way we communicate with other humans. Since we share the ’same’ structure of nervous system, we tend to interact with the world in a way that re-enforces that point of view. We build a human world as a result of our human nervous systems, and this re-enforces the view we have that the ‘reality’ we ‘perceive’ ‘is’ the ‘reality’.

Imagine we went to a planet inhabited by ‘beings’ who have a fundamentally different nervous system from our own. Say they ’saw’ like bats - using ultrasound etc. Their ‘reality’, the artifacts of their ‘reality’ would likely make no sense to us. They could have a vibrant, advanced society that we could not interact with, because of the very different nature of the non-verbal level of abstraction:

In the diagram above, 1 and 2 represent characteristics of the event ‘E’ that only humans could interact with - inhabitants of our imaginary planet lack the nervous receptors to abstract them. Similarly, our alien friends could interact with 3 and 4, but we humans could not. The non-verbal abstractions of humans (’Oh’) and the aliens (’Ox’) would therefore differ so radically that one could not ever become aware of the same abstractions as the other. Hence, humans could not access the artifacts of the alien society, and vice versa.

The Argument Re-Stated
Humans and dogs have more similar lower order abstractions than humans and snakes. We share similar (though non-identical) ’sense organs’, and thus abstract from our environment in similar ways. Snakes have very different ’sense organs’ and so generate very different lower order abstractions.

If we compare 2 humans, Smith(1) and Smith(2) we will find that they have very similar lower order abstractions, sharing much more in common than humans and snakes. Humans differ more in terms of higher order abstractions (what we might label ‘culture’ etc.) than in lower order abstractions.

What we label ‘reality’ in fact consists of our lower order abstractions. Since individual humans do not differ too much (relatively speaking) in terms of lower order abstractions, the consensus ‘reality’ forms based on these lower order abstractions, and this consensus re-enforces our view that we somehow gaze out upon an ‘objective reality’.

In other words, we all share the ’same’ lower order abstractions. We see the ’same’ bus driving down the street. We hear the ’same’ music playing on the radio. We smell the ’same’ bread at the bakery. And because we share these experiences, we convince ourselves that we we all look out at the ’same’ ‘reality’.

In fact, we have similarly structured nervous systems, resulting in similar lower order abstractions. We do not ‘perceive’ an ‘objective’ ‘reality’. We each experience the abstractions of our own nervous systems which, at a basic level, have much in common.

Ok, I need to stop writing now. I don’t really know what point I want to make any more! I’ve muddled together a lot of different things I have read in a lot of different books (in particular, Quantum Psychology by Robert Anton Wilson), and come up with some kind of semantic stew. Does it taste any good? I don’t know. It probably needs some more salt…

I have in mind a number of articles to write which will refer to the Structural Differential (SD). In this article I will provide a brief introduction to the SD in order to provide the necessary background.

Pictured below you should see my rather amateurish rendering of the SD. Korzybski created it in order to provide an extensional method of training for General Semantics (GS). In other words, it provides a way of training in GS non-verbally. See my entry on Learning for more on the importance of learning non-verbally.

The name ‘Structural Differential’ comes from the fact that the diagram represents the structural difference between how humans interact with their environment, compared to animals.

Starting at the top, we have the event, ‘E’. This represents the scientific event, or, ‘what-is-going-on’ at the sub-microscopic level. We cannot access this level directly. We only know about it through science. The circles represent ‘characteristics’ of the event e.g. we talk about quarks, atoms, protons, electrons etc.

We have next the object level, ‘O’. This represents our non-verbal abstractions. Energy etc. from the environment impacts upon the various receptors at the periphery of our nervous systems - ears, eyes, nose, mouth etc. The receptors transform the energy from the environment into internal, electro-chemical, nervous impulses. These impulses travel along nervous pathways to the brain. ‘O’ represents a level of bare awareness. In other words, it represents a level of abstraction where we can see, hear, touch, smell, taste, etc., but where we have not yet gotten to the point of verbalizing. Hence, we refer to this as a non-verbal level of abstraction.

In GS we refer to this process of moving from E –> O as ‘abstracting’. The world we see, hear, touch, taste, smell etc. comes about as a result of our nervous system abstracting out from ‘what-is-going-on’. The process of abstracting involves leaving things out, represented on the SD by the dangling lines from ‘E’.

Finally we move to the verbal levels of abstraction, ‘L1′, ‘L2′ etc. At this point we have moved on from the level of ‘bare awareness’, and have attached labels to our non-verbal experience. Here, finally, we can burst into speech. Again, when we move from ‘O’ –> ‘L1′ –> ‘L2′ etc., we call this ‘abstracting’.

To get a feel for this (literally), pinch the skin on your arm and notice that whatever you experience on the non-verbal level (O) is not whatever you may say about it. The non-verbal experience ‘O’ comes first, followed by any verbalization a definite amount of time later.

On the diagram above we can see 2 discs, 1 labelled ‘Oa’, and the other labelled ‘Oh’. These represent the object level of the animal and the human respectively. Here we get into the detail of the structural difference between animals and humans. Put briefly, it boils down to the fact that:

1) The animal does not have consciousness of abstracting. In other words, the animal does not realize that the world with which it interacts on the non-verbal, object level, comes about as a result of the complex interaction between the its nervous system as-a-whole, and the event, ‘E’. Animals do not have science, and hence have no notion of an ‘event level’. Humans do.

2) The animal stops abstracting at some point, humans can abstract indefinitely. What does this mean? Well, humans can make a statement S1, then make a statement about S1, say S2. We can then make a statement about S2 etc etc. In other words, we never reach a point where we cannot move to a higher level of abstraction.

I do not want to say much more about the SD here, though I could keep writing about it for hours. If you want to read more about it, you could start with the following links:

http://learn-gs.org/learningctr/ak-sdnote.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_differential
http://miltondawes.com/md_sd.html
http://thisisnotthat.com/gs/abs_mod.html

Hopefully, the entries that I plan to write in the future will demonstrate the usefulness of the SD when it comes to evaluation. And if they don’t, well, the fault lies with me, rather than the SD!

Over the last 7 or 8 years I have used a variety of devices to help ’sort out my head’. It started with telling myself to ‘just do it’. I used to have a terrible habit of over-analysing situations to the extent that I never did anything. A software developer might refer to this as ‘paralysis by analysis’. I overcame this by teaching myself to recognize when I had gone into a state of PBA, and applying the magic formula - ‘just do it’. Stop worrying about it, stop trying to forsee every possible outcome, stop trying to plan for every eventuality. Just do it.

I also used to tell myself that ‘everything happens for a reason’. I found this an incredibly powerful technique for re-framing negative evaluations in positive terms. Actually, at the time, I did not use it in such an abstract sense. I used to actually believe that everything happened for a reason. I would now regard this belief as slightly delusional. I can find an apparent ‘reason’ for anything, with only my ingenuity as a limiting factor. But whatever ‘reason’ I find exists only as a higher order abstraction in my own nervous system, and is not what actually happened.

I no longer really use ‘just do it’, or ‘everything happens for a reason’. I have some new and updated mnemonics which I use on a day to day basis.

Be here-now: I adapted the ‘mantra’ of the hippie movement for my own ends. In Science and Sanity, Korzybski mentions that many problems of evaluation and ‘un-sanity’ come about as a result of space-time disorientation. In other words (as I understand it), many of the ‘mental’ problems individuals experience come about from them evaluating in relation to a different point in the space-time continuum other than here-now. Have you ever found yourself reliving a previous embarrassing event, experiencing the ’same’ strong negative ‘feelings’? As I understand it, that provides an example of space-time disorientation. Rather than evaluating your current environment at your current location in space-time, you evaluate based on your memory of another point in space-time. I do that a lot! And the best way I found to counteract it involves reminding myself to ‘be here-now’ i.e. base my evaluations on my current space-time location. This has immense practical value, especially when crossing a busy road!

Note the hyphen in ‘here-now’. This parallels the hyphen in space-time, and emphasizes the concept of space-time, rather than ’space’ and ‘time’, which can never exist on their own.

This is not that: this mnemonic nicely complements ‘be here-now’. Whenever I catch myself evaluating a memory of another space-time event, I tell myself ‘this is not that’. ‘Whatever you were just thinking about, is not what is going on right now.’

This is not that (which I abbreviate to TINT) works as a multi-ordinal term, on different levels of abstraction. Thus, I can remind myself that the label ‘chair’ is not the ___________ I sit on. I sit on an object, something on the unspeakable, objective level, a first order abstraction, to which I apply the label, ‘chair’. The label is not the object. The word is not the thing. The map is not the territory. TINT captures and reminds me of each of these phrases and, more importantly, the associated semantic reactions.

One time I sent a text message to my girlfriend, and didn’t hear anything back. Now, we normally text each other all the time during the day, so to not receive a response fairly quickly represents an out of the ordinary occurrence. I started to worry. I generated a lot of ‘what if’ statements in my head. ‘What if she’s mad with me?’ ‘What if she had an accident on the way home from work?’ ‘What if she wants to split up with me??!’

Generally when the double question mark and exclamation points start to make it into my thoughts, I know to turn to my mnemonics. First I will say to myself, ‘be here-now’. This reminds me to evaluate my immediate surroundings. Then I will go on to say ‘this is not that’. Whatever ‘what ifs’ you can come up with come purely out of your own imagination and have very little connection with what is going on (WIGO). So stop wasting time coming up with these different scenarios, and just wait until you have something hard and fast to base your evaluations on. Applying the mnemonics in this way helped me to calm down and stop worrying.

In the example above, I eventually received a text message from my girlfriend explaining that she had had an insanely busy day at work, and hadn’t had a chance to check her phone until then. By reminding myself to ‘be here-now’, and that ‘this is not that’, I saved myself a lot of unnecessary fretting.

I have started playing a new game with my language use. I have decided to try to eliminate as far as possible elemental terms from my formulations. By doing so, I want to develop a form of expression that more closely corresponds to my experience. In other words, I want to create a better map of the territory.

Korzybski describes an elemental term as one which splits verbally what one cannot split in fact. In other words, an elemental term implies the existence of some ‘object’, which existence one can never find an example of in real life. As an example, consider the terms ’space’ and ‘time’ in relation to modern physics. Nowhere can one find an example of ’space’ without ‘time’, or ‘time’ without ’space’. In order to locate an ‘object’ one must specify 3 spatial co-ordinates, and one time co-ordinate. When you arrange to meet someone for a drink, then you agree the space-time co-ordinates of your meeting. General Relativity speaks in the language of space-time, rather than ’space’ and ‘time’.

In General Semantics we use the extensional device of inverted commas to indicate elemental terms. This serves as a warning mechanism to highlight the use of an elemental term. Examples of elemental terms include ‘mind’, ’space’, ‘time’, ‘ego’, ‘matter’, ’cause’, ‘effect’ etc etc.

As an example of this, I have started to replace the term ‘thinking’ with abstracting. ‘Thinking’ implies an activity of a ‘mind’ without a body, and hence cannot exist in ‘reality’. The term abstracting does not have such a problem, because abstracting occurs throughout the nervous system - it applies at different levels of abstraction (if you will excuse the semi-recursive definition). Korzybski calls such terms multi-ordinal, since they apply to different orders of abstraction. For example, when we consider the interaction of the nervous system-as-a-whole with the environment-as-a-whole then ‘abstracting’ refers to the process of converting the energy (electromagnetic etc) from the environment into the energy of the nervous system (electro-chemical etc). At higher levels of abstraction, ‘abstracting’ refers to generalizing ‘concepts’ etc. Therefore using the term abstracting takes into account the organism-as-a-whole, and hence avoids elementalism.

If I use elemental terms then I use a map that does not correspond to the territory. If a map does not correspond to the territory, then I cannot navigate accurately using it i.e. I cannot evaluate our experiences accurately. Therefore, I will try to eliminate elemental terms from my maps.

In the Introduction to the Second Edition of Science and Sanity, Korzybski introduces the notion of an over/under-defined term (in the text, ‘over/under’ appears like a fraction, with the word ‘over’ directly over the word ‘under’, with a line separating them). He says that:

“…most terms are ‘over/under defined’. They are over-defined (over-limited) by intension, or verbal definition, because of our belief in the definition; and are hopelessly under-defined by extension or facts, when generalizations become merely hypothetical.” (p. lxv, Science and Sanity)

If someone asks me what I do for a living, and I answer that I work as a ‘computer programmer’, then that individual will insert her own ‘meaning’ about what a ‘computer programmer’ does. In other words, that individual will have her own understanding of what a ‘computer programmer’ does, which may differ radically from what I actually do (extensionally) on a day to day basis. Thus we can regard ‘computer programmer’ as an example of an over/under-defined term. Over-defined intensionally because of this belief in the definition by the individual. And under-defined extensionally due to the lack of experience of what a particular individual ‘computer programmer’ (e.g. me) does.

I regard ‘meditation’ as an over/under-defined term. Over the last 7 years or so, I have practised ‘meditation’ on and off. Re-formulated in extensional language, over the course of the last 7 years or so, I have performed certain activities on a regular basis to which I have subsequently applied the label ‘meditation’. Despite the fact that the activities have changed radically many times in this period, I have continued to use the same label ‘meditation’ to describe what I do. This indicates that ‘meditation’ has this over/under-defined characteristic.

If I say to someone that I ‘meditate’, then the individual to whom I address the remark will inevitably insert his own understanding of the term. This will almost certainly not correspond to the activity that I actually undertake on a daily basis. Therefore I must regard ‘meditation’ as a formulation over-defined in terms of verbal definition, and under-defined in terms of my actual behaviour.

For these reasons I have modified my map of the territory - I have changed the label which I apply to my behaviour. I try not to abstract in terms of ‘meditation’ now. Instead I say that I ‘practise non-verbal awareness’. Of course, I can also regard this as an over/under-defined term. As Korzybski says in the passage quoted above, “most terms are ‘over/under-defined’” [my emphasis]. However saying that I ‘practise non-verbal awareness’ gets closer to describing my actual activity. It operates at a lower level of abstraction. By changing my terminology I hope to create a map that more accurately represents the territory, and hence aid my process of evaluation.

But still I must give extensional examples of my activity, instead of relying on the verbal definition of the formulation ‘practising non-verbal awareness’. Having an awareness of over/under-defined terms has therefore helped me to adopt a more extensional attitude. It has helped me to realize that I need to give specific examples of behaviour to back up the verbal formulations. Similarly, it has helped me to look beyond the verbal formulations of others and ask for specific examples of what they ‘mean’ i.e. I ask them to provide extensional examples to back up their formulations, so that I can check that my understanding matches theirs.

For me, then, ‘practising non-verbal awareness’ entails (amongst other things):
- remaining aware of the sensation of the air at the tip of my nose when I breathe
- remaining aware of the various sounds that go on around me (without verbalizing about them)
- remaining aware of the various sensations in my body (without verbalizing about them)
- etc etc.

This provides more information than simply saying that ‘I meditate’. Of course, I can never capture fully verbally what I actually do. The map is not the territory, and when I create a map (put into words) of the territory (the actual activities that I do when I practise non-verbal awareness), then I necessarily leave things out. The map can never cover all of the territory, so I shouldn’t waste time trying to create a ‘perfect map’ - such a thing cannot exist. Instead, I simply focus on making my maps more accurate, thereby making it easier for me to navigate my way through life…

I got a hit on this blog the other day from a search engine, where the searcher had entered the phrase “What is E-prime?”. It inspired me to write this post.

Simply stated, we can define E-prime as ‘English without the verb ‘to be'’. D. David Borland Jr. describes the origins of E-Prime in To Be or Not: An E-Prime Anthology:

When I sat down at the Institute in Lime Rock, Connecticut, in the spring of 1949 to rewrite a paper without using the verb ‘to be’, I had no idea what that activity would lead to . Well, the famous headache passed after a week, and eventually I decided to write all my ‘important’ papers on general semantics topics in this same way. I did not say anything about this discipline to others for years, believing that to do so would stimulate unwanted criticism. I felt that serious students of general semantics should follow the basic Korzybskian directive and studiously avoid using the verb ‘to be’ in the ways known as Identity and Predication. So if one simply (simply?) avoided all uses of the verb, one just applied rigourously some key tenets of general semantics, right?

By the middle 1960s my friend and colleague Charles H. Chandler had convinced me that others might find it interesting to learn about this technique, which by then I had exercised in several papers. To have a handy label for the procedure of doing without the verb ‘to be,’ I coined the term ‘E-Prime.’ (p.xvii, To Be or Not: An E-Prime Anthology

About a year ago I decided to try to write in E-Prime wherever I could. I started with my journal. At first I found it difficult, and had to really consider carefully what I wanted to say. I found that the use of the verb ‘to be’ came very very naturally, and it proved incredibly difficult to eliminate. But slowly I learnt to restructure my sentences, and even my thoughts.

This began to have some benefits. One morning, whilst nursing a slight hangover, and worrying that I may have offended some of my friends with my drunken antics the previous night, I noticed the thought playing on repeat over and over in my head - “You are an idiot, you are an idiot etc”. I paused for a second and decided to re-word the thought in E-Prime. It became “Last night I acted like an idiot”. This re-wording had a dramatic effect on me, as it led directly to another thought - “Who says I acted like an idiot?”. Sure, I had that thought, but did my friends think that also?

As I ruminated on this for a while, I realized that some people may have thought I had acted like an idiot, and others may not. But whether or not they thought I had acted like an idiot, did not mean they thought I was an idiot. By rephrasing the original thought in E-Prime, removing the verb ‘to be’, I experienced a dramatic improvement in my mood, and a new appreciation for the potential benefits of systematically removing that verb from my language.

Since then I have tried more and more to avoid using the verb ‘to be’. I use a lot of email at work, and I try to write them in E-Prime as much as possible. This has the effect of making the emails quite precise and to the point. I find it difficult to waffle in E-Prime. I also try as much as possible to use E-Prime when writing instant messages in work. This poses a particular challenge, in that the nature of instant messaging involves instant responses, with not much time for thought. Quite often this means the odd use of the verb ‘to be’ slips in here or there, at which point I offer a silent curse to the gods of instant messaging, and resolve to avoid using it in the next response!

Attempting to use E-Prime in instant messages has proved useful training, however, for using E-Prime in speech. This represents the final frontier in terms of communication with others. When I can speak in E-Prime, I will go to bed at night with a very self-satisfied grin on my face.

Then I will just need to learn to think in E-Prime! But once I can speak without the verb ‘to be’ I figure I will already think most of my thoughts that way.

So to the person who found this blog by way of the question ‘What is E-Prime?’, I would say this - if you want to try finding something out using a search engine, then try phrasing the question in E-Prime. ‘Define E-Prime‘ should do the trick!

:o)

A plant is free when it is not prevented from living and growing according to the natural laws of plant life; an animal is free when it is not prevented from living according to the natural laws of animal life; human beings are free when and only when they are not prevented from living in accord with the natural laws of human life…Human freedom consists in exercising the time-binding energies of man in accordance with the natural laws of such natural energies.” (Manhood of Humanity, p.154)

According to Korzybski’s theory of time-binding as I understand it (January 2006), anything which prevents man from exercising his time-binding capacity takes away his human freedom. Whenever I read this it brought to mind Richard Stallman and the GPL. It occurred to me that this definition of human freedom conincided with the definition put forward by RMS. Does the GPL therefore have special meaning when considered in parallel with time-binding?

In order to investigate this further I will quote from the Free Software Definition:

“Free software'’ is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free'’ as in “free speech,'’ not as in “free beer.'’

Free software is a matter of the users’ freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it refers to four kinds of freedom, for the users of the software:

* The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
* The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
* The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
* The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this. (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html)

Of the above-mentioned freedoms, freedom 1, 2, and 3 seem necessary for time-binding to occur. If you do not have the freedom to study how a program works, to learn from it etc., then you have had your time-binding freedom curtailed. If you do not have the freedom to redistribute copies, then you cannot pass on your learnt knowledge to other people, and hence you have had your time-binding freedom curtailed. And (most importantly?) if you do not have the right to improve upon the program, then you have had your time-binding freedom curtailed.

The GPL (GNU General Public Licence) allows a software developer to guarantee the 4 software freedoms outlined above for a piece of software he has developed. I would argue therefore that the GPL enshrines human freedom, the freedom to do that which makes us human, to do that which sets us apart from the other classes of life on earth (plants and animals) i.e. the freedom to bind-time. It seems to me that the GPL and the Free Software movement in general use a restricted version of the general principle of the freedom to bind-time. Restricted, that is, to the domain of computer software. Therefore the definition of man as a time-binder, and the subsequent conclusion about human freedom, adds heavyweight support to the arguments of the Free Software Foundation. For they can point out to their opponents that they simply wish to guarantee our freedom to be human. With the GPL we have an example of a software licence that takes into accout the fundamental definition of man as a time-binder.

The GPL truly belongs to the Manhood of Humanity.

Check out the cover of Heat magazine for this week:

It seems to me that Heat (and other magazines of its ilk) will one week have a cover about the ’shame’ of fat ‘celebrities’, and then the next week will have an equally disparaging feature about skinny ‘celebrities’. I have often wondered what effect this could have on impressionable people. In particular, I have wondered if it creates a kind of double-bind. Now they have added this whole new category of ‘feature’ - celebrities whose weight has changed (shock horror fnord)!

What would an overly-impressionable teenage girl think when one week her gossip gospel bitches about ‘fat celebrities’, and then the next bitches about ’skinny celebrities’. And then she picks up this weeks edition which bitches about ‘fat celebrities who became skinny’ or ’skinny celebrities who became fat’! How on earth can she reconcile that?

It reminds me of an experience I had in my first year philosophy class at university. I would leave one lecture one week agreeing with position A. At the next weeks lecture I would leave agreeing with position B, only to realize later that position B directly contradicted position A. Coming from a background of studying physics for A-level at school, a background where you were told the ‘correct’ answer, I found this very difficult to come to terms with.

I imagine some Heat readers have similar issues with their gossip rag of choice…