Renovation of the Soul

If there's nothing to be learned in life then in my opinion, you aren't living life. This past week has been full of anger, tumult, hate, love and renewal. Just today I was caught between bliss and indignation, the latter caused by a failure to stop and take repose. In moments of intense pressure, the head takes flight and the heart gears for war.

Rationality has no meaning and in some cases, the sounds coming out of one's mouth would sound almost foreign to you and others in calmer moments. A industry colleague of mine, after unjustly calling him "unprofessional" (I later apologized and thanked him for his good work and kind words) advised me to "kick back."

Kick back! If only I could kick back, I thought. I have work - paid, unpaid and academic to finish. I have all these attachments that signify anything other than kicking back. But why? Was this true? Had I forgotten my GS training? Were my meditations and self-reflections all for naught?

These items of paper with instructions printed on them are not the cause of my stress and worry. Ultimately, I am the culprit. If I am dissatisfied with an aspect of my life, then I can only really blame myself. So I took his advice. I poured myself a double whiskey and sipped a while. My feelings told me that I was putting myself under the "pump" rather than anyone else. My thoughts were not in alignment with reality - 3,000w of 4,000w done with 2 full days to complete the remainder? Hardly a challenge for me. It has been done before and can be done again. My internal map was very much out of alignment with the blank, "objective" territory.

Reading my colleague Sandi's blog, she has learned a lot in 26 years. She makes some good points, others I disagree with. But there is one point that remains pertinent:

Disappointment and hurt is everywhere in life. Happiness and wonder is also everywhere in life. Choose what you decide to focus on.

Just like a modern day Marcus Aurelius, we sometimes have to sometimes stop and remind ourselves: "The universe is change, life is what our thoughts make it."

Slick with Untruth

Facebook, some contend is an affront to our intelligence. But what happens when the collective intelligence of Facebook isn't much to speak of in the first place? I stumbled upon this Facebook group: “30 days without Shapes: so that rainforests can last the future” started by Ms. Amy Smith. It claimed:

You probably don’t know this but Arnotts have snuck palm oil into their shapes and have called it vegetable oil. Palm oil is a major cause of deforestation at the moment which is threatening the existance of countless species. I’m hoping if enough people join in we can change what a company puts into their products one product at a time. So please don’t buy or eat shapes for a month and tell everyone you know… because nothing tastes so good that it is worth distroying a whole eco-system for. And remember it worked for Cadbury chocloate and kitkat.

(All typographical errors have been left intact.) Being a journalist I expected proof to be shown that any of these contentions had even a modicum of truth to them. So, I began to investigate.

I probed the main thrust of the claim: that Arnotts have “snuck” palm oil into their products. So I called Arnotts, Choice Magazine, The Borneo Orangutan Survival (Australia) Group and the Rainforest Information Center (Palm Oil Action Group) to find out. Arnotts, Choice and The Palm Oil Action Group all responded to my queries.

The short answer?: No, they weren't.

Arnott's supplied me with a fact sheet that informed me that the company is making efforts to ensure their palm oil is being sourced sustainably. They work with its palm oil supplier, Cargill who is an active member of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil. Arnotts will have switched to sustainable palm oil completely by 2015 (Prior to August 2010, it was not) and will have decreased their total palm oil usage by 25%, switching to alternative products. Arnotts also say they use 0.05% of all palm oil produced globally, annually. So where was the deception if this was freely available information?

Choice Magazine has not investigated such a claim which lead me to believe that Ms. Smith had not done her homework, at the very least. On Saturday, I got a call from the very chatty and knowledgeable Charlotte "Charlie" Richardson, coordinator of the Palm Oil Action Group.

Arnotts have admitted to using palm oil in their foods yet do not label it as such explicitly, rather as "vegetable oil." So were they lying? No - there is no reason why they "they shouldn’t list palm oil" apart from internally driven policy. So we should be upset at Cargill? Wrong again: They have switched to 60% certified sustainable crops and that "more was to follow." Ms. Richardson says there’s “room to improve” but it was "not realistic to call for a total moratorium."

Surprisingly, when I pressed Ms. Richardson if people should stop eating Shapes to punish Arnott's for their past sins, she replied:

"I don’t think they should be punished for anything; they should be rewarded for heading in the right direction."

So apart from the economic devastation it would cause to over two million people over Asia, Latin America and Africa if palm oil production was suddenly halted, Arnott's, providing it was sourcing its palm oil unsustainably and contributing to environmental damage was only a very very minor player in the overall scheme of things. Even so, the boycott is redundant; they already have achieved what they campaigned for a month before they started.

So was Ms. Smith committing a crime of omission or passion? Either way, she has mislead over 13,000 people (at the time of writing) and libeled Arnotts Biscuits as taking part in something they are in no way involved with in the process.

In sum, the raison d'etre of her group is based on a lie.

I implore Ms. Smith to dismantle her group, apologize to all of those she has lied to and retract her call for a boycott of Arnott's Shapes biscuits. For all the potential damage she has already caused, it's the least she can do.

UPDATE: Amy Smith has updated the event to reflect the new facts that I and others have presented. She now intends to raise awareness of the unsustainable palm oil industry.

Clarity and Passion

Either August will kill me or I will kill it.

In addition to my actual studies, I'll also be:

• leading the Melbourne NMMNG support group
• Contributing two talks to the Australian General Semantics Society National Conference in collaboration with AGS members with valuable assistance from Media Ecology Association founder and Fordham University Professor of Media and Communication Dr. Lance Strate
• Attending the United Nations DPI/NGO Annual Conference on Global Health representing the Institute of General Semantics
• Writing my sarcastic as hell columns on the insipid and tasteless AU federal election for Onya Magazine
• Gearing up Melon Race for production, writing and shooting.

I'll probably need a drink at some point. Its also come to my attention that a candidate for the Secular Party of Australia is running in my electorate against incumbent Simon Crean who holds Hotham with a 13% margin. Since I don't want to vote for or even preference the ALP, Liberals or Greens or (shudder) Family First in the Lower House it makes sense to vote informal to avoid my vote going to a party I disapprove of. Then there's the dilemma of voting for the Secular Party to grant it some measure of public campaign funding for the next election and their ambiguous policy on "banning religious attire at schools" (Yarmulkes? Hijab? Crucifixes? what?) which seems to contradict their call for maximizing civil liberty. Though I have decided to preference Stephen Conroy dead last in the Senate Group Voting Ticket (below-the-line) I'm still undecided as which party to preference first. I am of course leaning toward the "Triumvirate of Libertarians" - the LDP, the Australian Sex Party or the aforementioned Secular Party. It seems politics, like everything else in life, one size rarely fits all.

Far Away and Here Again

Last weekend, I went away to Paradise Beach on the Gippsland coast of Victoria, Australia. I stayed by myself in a friend's holiday house and worked on several things and did some reading. I re-read parts of Korzybski's Science and Sanity and touched upon a part on "Unsanity vs. Sanity" that I am sure many people would find beneficial - I intend to expand upon this finding and deliver it as a talk at the first Australian General Semantics Society National Conference.

Towards a theory of "conservative characteristics." (an abstract)

Conservative characteristics are the tendency of "neurotics" (as described by Korzybski) to confuse the orders of abstraction and revert to Aristotelian "allness" as an infantile, learned behavior.¹

In childhood, we make underdeveloped, either-or evaluations. Mother, teddy or television is either positive or negative. We seek to reinforce and seek pleasure and minimize disappointment, anger and frustration. These maladaptive behaviors may persist into adulthood.

According to social anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, humans underwent a process of socialization from their initial self-awareness thousands of years ago to their current state of societal development. Children up until around the age of 14 undergo their own individuation and socialization process. From the ages of 7-14, the child is thought to be in its "narcissistic", "egocentric" stage and through this stage, patterns of evaluation are seen to occur. Real world events and their evaluation could in fact take the form of if/then statements. For example:

"IF I keep quiet and tell no one that I am feeling hurt, THEN I may escape scrutiny and further pain."

This map or method of evaluation may form as the fundamental reasoning process behind most behaviors in the future. In RET or Rogerian therapy this may be called "toxic shame" or irrational thinking. If this becomes a repeated response with no attempt to adjust the behavior, this could be considered a conservative characteristic.

Methods for overcoming conservative characteristics:

1. The consciousness of abstraction.
Using the structural differential or the ABC model in RET. Read more on the ABC model here.

Preparation for a transition to evaluation of probabilities, not absolutes. Asking "If I do this, the outcome will be this" instead moving toward a Hypothesize-Test-Revise model of behavior.

2. Non-attachment to outcome.
Realization the test is more important than the result. Without the real-world test, NO results or data can be gained for later revision. The outcome has no bearing on the efficacy or worth of the tester.

3. Unconditional self-acceptance.
From this, new experiences may be formed. The beliefs of inherent "badness" or "worthlessness" can be safely abandoned and each situation may be seen as a "tabula rasa" for perceiving and evaluating anew. Realizing that situation₁ is not situation₂.

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References:
Korzybski, A., Science and Sanity (5th Ed.), Institute of General Semantics: Dallas, 1994. p. 495.

Uncertainty and its Virtue

"[B]elief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence." - Robert Anton Wilson

"If you go into any party or place where people conversationally interact with one another, you will find that half the energy is spent in trying to convince the other that you have the right idea." - Ernst von Glasersfeld

In the social sciences, something that I am well acquainted in as I hold my BA in Political Science and study toward an MA in Media and Communication, it becomes apparent that the ideas that construct the landscape of debate are hypotheses with no extensional, definitive answer. Politics is no more a science than literature, which is no more a science than religion - it is purely the domain of human agency. No scientific test can answer "Will this legislation improve society?" since it is by and large an unanswerable question. Even as our entire existence relies upon chance, uncertainty and probability we as humans never fail in our capacity to believe in perfect exactitude within our own thinking.

Rigid, inflexible thinking has produced much of the horrors of the human age. Dogmatic, two-valued (i.e., right vs. wrong, good vs. bad) thinking has invariably produced the Crusades, the Holocaust and other unimaginable terrors. Atheists invariably turn their ire toward religion as causing these ills and many more. Religionists believe that Atheists will lead us toward a lawless, immoral society due to their non-belief or disputation of a God.

"Is there a God" is, at this present time, an unanswerable question, much like the question of "What does the dark side of the moon look like" until the invention of lunar spaceflight. There is no test, no measuring device, no real way of knowing definitively either way. In my estimation, there is a high probability of the non-existence of a God, but this is my own rationally-derived guess based on my own ideas, my own studies and etc. I can no more prove that God exists than saying that Heavy Metal is the greatest music ever created.

I can agree with the assertion that religion and the Bible is not the word of (a) God; it did not appear spontaneously - it was written by humans for consumption by other humans. The Catholic Church is administered by humans and was created for the benefit (and detriment) of humans.

Despite the empirical evidence that religion is the sole domain of humans without aid from divine intervention, it does not absolutely disprove an existence of a God, it merely confirms that humans conceive a creator in these certain images (Jesus, Buddha, Allah etc.) which has been widely accepted (or foisted upon them) by others. The Christian model of God differs from the Jewish model and the Islamic model and in the absence of any evidence to the contrary or to the affirmative, all models are equally valid.

Leaving the debate as to whether religion "poisons all things" or subjugates certain peoples, it does force people into Aristotelian, two-valued thinking if they so choose to believe all premises offered by their chosen religion. Humans in their own agency have the choice to follow a religion - irrespective of the consequences of its renunciation or not - just as much as they have a choice in which football team to favor.

Telling someone they are wrong in matters they themselves cannot prove does not confirm their rightness. Karl Popper, the philosopher accused Theism of being "worse than an open admission of failure, for it created the impression that an ultimate explanation had been reached." Now (some strands of) Atheism offer the same ultimate explanation, mostly through the works of Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution.

The current scientific paradigm that prevails today is that this evolutionary process is the explanation for humanity's current form. However, a scientist would also concede the point that Darwin's theory could one day be invalidated by a superior conjecture and hypothesis as our technology grows. So even Darwin's theory has a very high probability of being true-to-fact and true-to-observation, but cannot be deemed 100% correct.

Of course, the virtue of being content in verisimilitude is that it relieves a lot of mental pressure on being totally "right" all the time. One can sit back and explore his own universe and marvel at its complexity. Then again, you could tell me I'm full of shit - and that's fair enough too!

Humanity to Man

In one respect man is the nearest thing to me, so far as I must do good to men and endure them. But so far as some men make themselves obstacles to my proper acts, man becomes to me one of the things which are indifferent, no less than the sun or wind or a wild beast. Now it is true that these may impede my action, but they are no impediments to my affects and disposition, which have the power of acting conditionally and changing: for the mind converts and changes every hindrance to its activity into an aid; and so that which is a hindrance is made a furtherance to an act; and that which is an obstacle on the road helps us on this road.

- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 5.20

Over the past few days, I've seen the minds of others turn to anguish and despair due to the actions of significant others. In their estimation, the action of the other - dumping them, hurting them, acting out against them - signifies an attack on their character, that they are no longer worthy of others' acceptance or love. On the contrary, their lovability and capacity to accept such love has not diminished in any way or form; they more or less are as they were prior to these events transpiring.

So why the inevitable turn to self-loathing and victimization when these relationships fail, even if it is of no to little fault of their own? Where is the rule that dictates this rigorous mental self-flagellation must occur? It may stem from a false-to-fact belief that their significant other is the only arbiter of romantic love and care for them and that this love must be given at all times otherwise the world is cruel, spiteful and out to get them.

In reality, save for the few who have only had one relationship prior (and have little experience of breaking up, conflict, etc.) the granting of love and care is ultimately a choice that is entered into mutually with varying degrees of intensity across both (or even multiple) parties. Rationally, if the choice is not beneficial to either or both parties, then another choice can be made as to repair or discontinue the relationship. It is also a choice to further the relationship by exchanging gifts, taking holidays together, moving in and marrying etc. This choice may be "obvious" and seen not even as a choice at all despite the perceived undesirable yet still viable alternatives (staying in one's own house, for example) that are available to either party.

Like any human with human rationality and agency, the choices we make are our own responsibility. It would be unfair to blame another for the choices that we make, even if they are reached by consensus in a romantic (or even platonic) relationship. Just because you were chosen by another as significant does not mean they afford you special dispensation when this significance is later withdrawn for whatever reason. One must always take care of himself within or without a relationship - how could one have functioned prior to the relationship forming with this belief? It was never and never will be the responsibility of someone else to take care of a rational, functional, adult human being. It would be rational to remember that your significant other was once an indifferent; it is not inconceivable to think that one day they may return to that role once again.

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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The 2nd Meeting of the AGS, Melbourne Chapter

It was chilly in Melbourne, Australia as the 2nd Meeting of the AGS, Melbourne Chapter commenced last Thursday. It was brought to my attention that AGS President Robert James took a liking to my coining of the name "Melbourne Chapter" for our group which expanded to include my friend Shai, a PhD student in neurological disease - specifically Creutzfeldt–Jakob Disease at the University of Melbourne.

In attendance was also Mr. Laurie Cox and Mr. Earl Irvings, the 2nd "certified" member of AGS, Melbourne Chapter. Although a multitude of subjects were covered in volume, I shall attempt a brief summary.

Laurie led the discussion, describing GS as an "epistemology" - Shai provided his own definition, calling it a "theory of 'our' knowledge." We also tried to pin down a working definition of "fact", using GS texts such as Irving J. Lee's Language Habits in Human Affairs and the insiders' look at the legal system by Chester Porter, QC in his Gentle Art of Persuasion.

Laurie professed with great vigor that "talking is not enough, GS must be practiced and applied" to gain any usefulness from the techniques and theories. That said, GS as a discipline attempts to stop "identification" by confusing "reality" and "perception" as it passes our non-verbal observation. We must be conscious that whenever we see/hear/sense, we are not sensing the entire event on each level; we, as humans are simply unable. GS, as Laurie says, can be seen as a "basis for any form of knowledge."

Laurie then presented a short essay to familarize Earl, Shai and I with his understandings of GS, starting with the Map-Territory relation as Korzybski termed it. Seeing as we cannot establish "absolute" facts, we must be reminded that "facts" always carry a degree of probability and uncertainty. Visually, he drew his own interpretation of the Structural Differential, saying that words "leave out a lot of what one has taken from an event" and that inferences may be overgeneralizations or false knowledge. He also says that we should silently remember to include the "etc." when making descriptions, to acknowledge that we do not catch "all" characteristics when conveying information to others. We then talked about the consciousness of abstraction, being aware that our words are not things, that our perceptions (or constructions) are not reality
and that thing(1) is not thing(2) and new experiences are colored by past, unconscious biases.

Laurie insisted that GS may solve problems in such a way that we may properly evaluate situations and events to prevent unsanity or "neurosis" - that defining things/events closely on a "descriptive level" - as close to the actual event as possible - could more likely yield a solution. For example, in a relationship, a boyfriend and girlfriend may fight due to having one map of the situation different to the other. GS encourages to describe these mental "maps" as accurately as possible to synthesize the two or to "agree to disagree." Robert also advocated the use of a GS diary to jot down instances where GS was being applied consciously and to make observations from a new, GS perspective.

We closed the meeting with a discussion for a possible National AGS Conference/Seminar in Melbourne early in 2010. We set a framework for topics, the opening one day of three to the general public, possible speakers and getting the Institute of General Semantics and other international affiliates to contribute their ideas. I also resolved with Earl to hold monthly meetings when time permits and to open an AGS forum for all members to use. A highly intriguing night for all!

Tom Valcanis, BA (Melb)

Finally. Thank. Fucking. God.

That means I won't get to keep my shiny "tav@unimelb.edu.au" email address, but you can take that mailbox...and reassign it.

In actual news: Got my ticket to LAX finally. Holla at all my American (seppo) peeps on the 13th of July!

I also got my hell of awesome Facebook vanity name. Guess what it is?

Actual News

Well, the one event that's still on my lips after almost a week of it having occurred was winning $250 at my local pub trivia night. If you want to play a little Jeopardy, here's the answers: Althorpe Park, Najaf and Glandular Fever. Which lead me to my next not-so-debilitating dilemma - what to spend it on? Obviously it was going straight to the US and A fund, but a nice something to celebrate the chance of the win (as opposed to the "skill") was in order. Thanks to Shai, he alerted me that Readings, a local bookstore has hard-cover copies of my beloved Science and Sanity for sale at reasonable prices, unlike the tear-inducing exchange rate. (61AUc = $1USD, natch.) I have to go to work tomorrow. Isn't playing the work-for-money game just so damned fun?

Although, I do have to give credit to my tutor for shouting our class two rounds of tequila shots. That was awesome. Especially showing up half-pissed to the Buzz Birthday dinner. That was also cool. I guess last Thursday was just an all-round party for me...

Somnorexia

Somnorexia is defined by the good folks at TIME Magazine as "the voluntary deprivation of sleep" to work, talk to people online in other countries (in my case, the coolest bitch ichiban - everyone else can GTFO) or play shitty games. However, as my mask of sanity recedes into the night and the morning beckons me to toil, my mind plays tricks on me; from the moment I rise to about lunchtime I repeat words in my head with semi-regularity and start to remember times long forgotten. I sometimes even start to miss people. What's with that? I mean, for a guy that merely feels fear and the absence thereof, you really gotta start to wonder. That's about as deep as I go. No, really.

Also: you start to feel heaps less cooler when your own mother has to remind you that you have one more week of uni holidays.

Fuck the System

I passed both my fucking subjects this semester. Even got an H3 in one of them. I can't believe it. The system doesn't work. Thank fucking Christ for that.

This is a complete and utter slap in the face to those who bust a gut and study hard at uni. I'm actually proud of myself for some twisted reason. This is the biggest win I've had in ages. Please, dear readers, allow me some bragging rights just this once.

"Receiving education at 2 elite institutions + 2 lazy to care = high achievement by default? Priceless"

General Semantics: Defining Defintion

Here is Part 2 of my amazing and insightful series on General Semantics.

Intensional and Extensional Definition

The other day I went to visit my good friend Catchy. We sat around his dorm room, trading discoveries and philosophies when I further explained General Semantics to him and a hapless girl who probably thinks I'm slightly insane since I couldn't adequately articulate myself.

I used Count Korzybski's example of the pencil to illustrate my case. We call a pencil a pencil because it has qualities that we, over time and through the consensus of others, have agreed to define as a pencil. What is a pencil? It's a long, slender wooden tool with a graphite stem running through the middle which is used to write with. And what is a long, slender tool that is used for writing? A pencil. This is an example of an intensional definition.

An intensional definition is describing a word with other words, leaving out an objective or "concrete" referent. To quote Hayakawa, it is like describing something while closing your eyes. Now, if we took the object in space-time, the pencil in question and gave a list of every pencil that ever existed and does exist in the entire world and compared it against that list, would be an extensional definition. Its like pointing at an object without abstracting it with words.

Now, what relevance has this to anything? A common question with a simple enough answer. The extensional orientation - a way of thinking extensionally - allows us to be as much as in touch with reality as possible, before we abstract and leave out facts, lower-level abstractions and non-verbal experiences. To rely on out-dated maps without exploring the territory that it no longer accurately describes would be folly - wouldn't you agree?

References:
Science and Sanity An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics, Alfred Korzybski, Institute of General Semantics, 1950, 4th edition
Language in Thought and Action: Fourth Edition, Samuel I. Hayakawa , Harcourt, 1972.
"Goethe's Extensional Orientation" in ETC.; A Review of General Semantics by David F. Maas, July 1, 2004.

Next week: The multi-ordinal orientation

General Semantics: Introductory

Here's the first in a series of what I hope will be weekly explorations of General Semantics, to both satisfy my own readings on the subject and hopefully to pique the interests of others into this fascinating and life-changing area of intellectual discipline.

General Semantics: An Introduction
General Semantics was first formulated into a logical, empirical system by Count Alfred Korzybski in 1921 with the publication of his treatise The Manhood of Humanity. This tract contended that humans are the only species capable of time-binding; that humanity is currently the only species on Planet Earth that increases its knowledge over time and posesses methods of passing this knowledge to future generations. His masterwork that built the structure of General Semantics, his non-Aristotlean system that coined the phrase "the map is not the territory" was published in 1933, entitled Science and Sanity. General Semantics has served as the basis for nearly all contemporary psycho-logical therapies and personal development programs such as Rational Emotive/Cognitive Behavior Therapy, Gestalt Therapy and Neuro-Linguistic Programming. (The ties that bind GS and REBT are well pronounced - the New York General Semantics Society regularly meets at the Albert Ellis Institute!)

"Whatever something is, it is not!"
Korzybski's basic premise was thus - that the word uttered is not the object spoken about; the symbol is not the thing symbolized; and most importantly, the map (our thoughts, words and inferences) is not the territory (reality) it stands for. Maps almost always tend to leave out information and are only used as guides to the actual territory. Search for your current location on Google Maps to really test it for yourself!

For example, the word "chair" cannot be sat on - we may sit on the object we affix the word "chair" to, but the sound we make for it is not the object described. This is denying the "is" of identity. If we say "the chair is red", we presuppose that the redness is inherent in the chair, when it only appears to be red at that current location and time. It is not red on the inside nor has it always been red and it would be irrational to assume it always will be.
Since atoms are constantly moving at a microscopic level, our speech leaves out changes from second to second, minute to minute. So we cannot definitively and accurately describe the "whole" chair at any location in space-time. The previous sentence presupposes there is an elemental chair to which I am referring, which of course there isn't! I have simply used your referential index of all the previous "chairs" you have encountered to illustrate a point.

The non-elemental chair can also be abstracted further, leaving out even more details. A chair can be described with sounds as a piece of furniture, which can be abstracted further as an object, or even into the purely abstract "goods." Succinctly put - the thing is not the concept.

The system is designed to deny the essence of an object - that a purely empirical and extensional orientation towards events and objects must be achieved for us to recognize the limitations of perceptions or our "maps" of reality.

Next week: Intensional and extensional definitions and the extensional orientation

References:
Science and Sanity An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics, Alfred Korzybski, Institute of General Semantics,
1950, 4th edition
Language in Thought and Action: Fourth Edition, Samuel I. Hayakawa , Harcourt, 1972.

You're Joking

Mixing and matching my subjects at uni again in an effort to minimize any potential damage, I also filled out a "points count" request form. It was completed today. They informed me I had 50 - not 75 - points remaining to complete. I could've finished it in one semester instead of spreading it out over two.

God damn, son of a bitch.

A Tolerable Distance

Do, just don't think too much about it. Hmm, sounds reasonable. Thanks Rae.

Interviewing Soilwork tomorrow. This is like a dream come true. I should ask to do things more often. I should be so surprised at the outcome.

Hopefully, just hopefully, Saturday will be the last 21st Birthday I will ever attend, ever. I'm looking forward to it, no doubt. Sam and Carey are very dear friends of mine. But If I have to sit through another one...there will be hell to pay.

With any situation, there are pros and cons. I'm just trying to evaluate whether a Bachelors Degree in Political Science is worth finishing at this juncture. I want to finish, but I have very little motivation, especially when my extra-curricular activities are immediately more rewarding. We'll see.

What passes for commercial music these days shouldn't.

Double Mint

Just saw my yet-to-be-proofed front page article. Fantastic! I should really find out what assignments I have due round about now...

Shai is too smart for me. I'm always left pondering things he's said about an hour after he's said them. Such a cool, soothing voice. Very sage like guy. Never a dull moment. And he smokes roll-your-own cigarettes without filters. Rockin'.

[11/0 of 100 - 18 Days Remaining] (Expect this to skyrocket by Thursday!)