The 3rd Meeting of the Australian General Semantics Society, Melbourne Chapter

Over the weekend of February 13, 2010 and February 14th, Mr. Laurie Cox, President Emeritus of the AGS and Dr. Earl Livings and myself gathered at Earl's house to conduct several GS inquiries and discussions in an informal and relaxed setting. I was particularly surprised and humbled that Laurie had traveled all the way from Sydney just to talk with us! After a quick catch up, we launched into the mini "symposium"; a (very!) brief summary follows below.

Saturday, February 13 2010
Australian Internet Censorship and the GS response
Our first topic of conversation was the debate surrounding the mandatory censorship of Australian web traffic at the ISP level. After explaining it to Laurie in detail, we asked the questions: "What does it hope to achieve?" We surmised that the program was to halt the spread of child pornography and to protect children from it. As GSers, we concluded that the "time-binding" mechanism that is the internet could not be effectively policed with any degree of certainty using a traditional "old world" paradigm or "space-binding" approach.

Sanity, Unsanity and Insanity
The next hour or so was spent on finding an operational definition of Sanity, Unsanity and Insanity. It was almost instantly agreed upon that Insanity was a complete and marked identification of a higher order with lower orders or even the event level. Earl and Laurie posited that Sanity was the simple fact of having the Korzybskian "consciousness of abstraction" as formulated in Science and Sanity.

Pinning down Unsanity was much more difficult however. Laurie drew his own version of a Structural Differential to demonstrate the abstraction process and tried to throw up some examples of non-sane behaviors such as perception on the object level as the object level itself, misidentification, identifying with other person's feelings as one's own and reinforcing second-order feeling (which will be talked about later.) I drew on the teachings of Albert Ellis, Ph.D. and his Rational Emotive Therapy, defining one element of Sanity as "unconditional self-acceptance", and the use of rational thinking and the ABC model.

Laurie noticed the similarity to IGS member William Haney's "ROPE" model (Reality-Object-Perception-Evaluation). We reached a consensus that Unsanity was a mixing of maps and orders of abstraction and that Sanity, by contrast was acknowledgment that we, as humans, make inaccurate maps at times and can take steps to correct them as best as possible and to accept this without condition.

Modes of Male and Female Communication
After reflecting and critiquing our discussion, we moved onto the topic of Male and Female communication. We regarded honest and true-to-fact communication as a responsibility of GS students to "act" according to Korzybski's principle of time-binding.

Drawing on extensional examples such as the research done by Ken Wilber and Erich Fromm in their transpersonal philosophies and approaches we also talked about communication as whole - not just words, but body language and tone of voice. We also marked differences in outlook of males and females, such as inclusive (female) vs. exclusive (male) language and the difficulty or reluctance due to gender conditioning on the part of some males, to recognize the ability to state one's own feelings and needs at given times and to ask oneself, realistically, what those needs and feelings are.

We also wrote down the biological differences between men and women and how that forms behavior. Males are fueled by testosterone which strives for "achievement" and "agency." Females, by contrast are driven by oxytocin which is freed through physical touch and interpersonal communication.

We emphasized that a GS approach would seek complementarity instead of competition between the sexes, that female-driven "communion" and male-driven "agency" can be bridged by awareness and the recognition of the needs of the other and vice-versa while still maintaining our own.

We closed for the evening after a four hour session and resolved to meet the following day with Mr. Robert James to discuss the upcoming National Conference. Unfortunately I was unavailable to meet him due to a conflict of schedules and we instead met again at Earl's house for further studies.

Sunday, February 14 2010
Intensional and Extensional Language
Returning to Earl's house Laurie and I discussed the differences between extensional and intensional language, using Korzybski's definition of the overdefined (intension) and underdefined (extension) and the probability of both. We also used Kodish's example as well as Hayakawa's and Weinberg's interpretation.

First and Second-Order Feeling
Earl had come across a copy of Harry Weinberg's "Levels of Knowing and Existence" as Laurie commented on using self-reflexiveness to take a positive view after scraping his knee in a fall. He, as Weinberg wrote, "liked" his "liking" of an eventual recovery, i.e., his second-order feeling could effectively change his first-order (non-verbal) feeling. This was part of the circularity of human knowledge as demonstrated in the Structural Differential. Once the second-order thoughts effect the object-level first order, they eventually "become" part of that first-order.

We also discussed "synchronicity" by aligning maps with others and looking at a broader map to give context to more complex or troubling situations.

We also surmised that this awareness was an example of the reverse order of the consciousness of abstraction and that putting assumptions first can be damaging. Furthermore, we explored what questions we can ask to arrive at these inquiries, and that some questions are unanswerable, i.e., are either ambiguous or meaningless. Ambiguous questions are unable to be answered by experiment and meaningless questions are similarly so unless they are modified to become merely unanswered; that an extensional, falsifiable and scientific methodology can be made to address the parameters of the question.

At this point, Earl conducted an experiment to demonstrate the Structural Differential. I was writing and he yelled out "STOP!", to which I did. We then drew this as a diagram, with Earl's want for me to stop (second-order), the command itself (first-order) and its transposition on the event level (the utterance as heard by me.) Then we drew the object level (my hearing of it) and my reaction (stopping writing.) We found this to be confusing as a diagram, so I suggested adding a dimension of time to represent multiple onlookers of similar events.

The Representation of Media
Using this revised Structural Differential, it was time to dissect the growing "relevancy of irrelevancy" as described by Neil Postman in current television media. I drew a figure of two SDs - one representing the conception and inherent biases in media (evaluation), the report (object level) and the report as an event being interpreted by an audience in a similar fashion, with both feeding into one another - does the public as an audience wish for softer news, or is it passive in merely accepting what is given to them? We used real world examples such as the Tony Blair inquiry into the Iraq War.

It seemed to us that Mr. Blair disregarded extensional evidence (no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq) over an intensional belief (help the American war effort) and misrepresentation (Saddam helped Al-Qaeda etc.)

We asked how one could prevent this from happening again. We could endeavor to achieve correct symbolism-to-fact; to test and hypothesize and act "sanely."

GS in a non-GS Practicing World
Moving along, we discussed the differences between GSers and non-GSers. For instance, we arrived upon the "Right Man" as Robert Anton Wilson called him, an abstraction (of his own admission) that holds rigid, inflexible beliefs, is intensionally minded and holds only a two-valued orientation (good or bad with no middle ground.)

The General Semanticist by contrast is extensionally minded, multi-valued in his orientation and acknowledges the processes of constant change.

Managing Stress - a GS influenced approach?
Earl and Laurie watched the news last night and came across an item about managing stress. The report stated that we all experience stress, and some stress called "eustress" could actually be positive. However, negative stress could be combatted by asking ourselves questions:

1) Is this important? If the answer is yes, then;
2) Is it reasonable for me to be angry? If yes, then;
3) Can I modify this situation?

It seemed reminiscent of GS and RET principles, and related to the cortico-thalamic pause to gather one's thoughts in moments of heightened confusion and to become conscious of abstraction and reaction once again.

Over 7 or so hours was spent over two days and it was some of the most beneficial, inspiring and insightful hours I have ever spent in GS study. My sincere thanks goes out to Mr. Laurie Cox and Dr. Earl Livings for hosting me and traveling to discuss GS with us!

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Note: If you are a member of the AGS or IGS and read my blog, I encourage you to comment or contact me for online discussions. Over this weekend I was told my blog has a small "following" among some members and I'd very much like to talk with some of you!

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