A Holey Meditation

"If some one can prove me wrong and show me my mistake in either thought or action, I shall gladly change. I seek the truth, which never harmed anyone: the harm is to persist in one's self-deception or ignorance."

-- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (Book 6.21)

I had a thought that came to me in a dream the other day that concerned the perception of others and how one lives a life. Imagine you put everything you did in life - work, friends, family, hobbies, etc. etc. into a space 100m by 50m square and erected a 10" fence around it. In the middle of that fence is a hole, approximately 1 or 2cm in diameter. About 90% of the people who meet you will see your life through that restricted peephole, the information they glean from it effects their feelings and judgment toward you; the measure of your character according to them is essentially only a very rough and incomplete estimation.

So if what they see is incomplete, how can one take umbrage to their opinions of you? They do not speak of you personally since they only take in less than 1% of who you are, all of which is tainted by their biases and preconceptions - the clothes you wear, the music you listen to. We may all have shared experiences but they are all unique to us and us alone. So how can we possibly take the infantile ad hominem attacks personally when they cannot describe us all? Our names are convenient identifiers but they can easily be changed. As social animals we rely on others to explore our own humanity - compassion, friendship, anger and love. Some of us strive for truth - insofar that we do not falsify intentionally - but we must also remember that there are only degrees of certainty; probabilities and details we inevitably leave out. We have the capacity to reason with logic and the scientific method and properly explore the world around us and constantly ask questions.

 

That said, we must also be cognizant of our limitations - our weaknesses, our faults and our shortcomings - as they also make us who we are. Human.

This Human Equation

Holidays from both study and work leave me with spare neurons to devote to idle reflection. I decided to read extensively on media ecology and economics over my semester break in preparation for my Masters' thesis as well as work on my General Semantics studies.

Chatting to an acquaintance of mine (whom I hope to get to know better!) we settled that, amongst a great many other things, one aspect of commonality we shared was we "didn't understand humans properly" despite our chosen professions of reporting on what they do and why.

Therefore, I will embark on an ongoing project entitled the Human Equation project, the title inspired in part by Arjen Lucassen's Ayreon record of the same name and the motto of the American Psychological Association; "man is the sum of his parts." It is my contention that our society has willfully disconnected us from one another; we work longer and spend more money and time alone, purposefully separate ourselves and hole ourselves off from the world using a myriad of digital distractions. These will comprise three initial experiments.


1. The Ellis Experiment
As regular readers may know, Albert Ellis, Ph.D was the father of Rational Emotive Therapy, a widely successful cognitive behavioral therapy. By applying rational, empirical thinking to every day situations he found that people could live happier, calmer and neurosis free.

One of his earlier experiments involved talking to members of the opposite sex since he had an exaggerated fear of speaking in public during his adolescence. At age 19, he forced himself to himself to talk to 100 women in the Bronx Botanical Gardens over a period of a month. Although "he didn't get a date, he reported that he desensitized himself to his fear of rejection by women." I, along with several others will attempt this experiment on a smaller scale to reconnect with people in a meaningful way.

2. The Postman Experiment
Media ecologist Neil Postman was both in awe of and skeptical of technology - especially media technology. While many of us take it for granted he contended that media was a Faustian bargain. It both giveth and it taketh away. It takes our sense of community, ties to the real and tangible and forces us to spend time away from others. In his book Technopoly, he sets an assignment for his students - they must forsake their use of all media technologies for 48 hours. If they broke their media "fast" they were forced to start again from scratch. Set in the mid-90s before the advent of cheap and easily accessible hand-held devices with access to the internet, it will seem that media is unavoidable by design in 2010. Therefore me and my fellow experimenters will attempt 24 hours and record our experiences.

3. The Rushkoff Experiment
I think this one will prove the most challenging. This will be an attempt to re-create tangible value amongst the community by exchanging goods and services in real terms with other people. Instead of buying from corporations, I will try to buy locally and trade with neighbors and others using a modified principle of "comparative advantage" - what I can do well in exchange for something else another can do well that I cannot. In his Life, Inc. he argues that corporations have abstracted wealth from local institutions and people and clustered it towards a center, far removed from everyday life. If we can use the abundance in front of us instead of from somewhere inaccessible, we can add value to ourselves locally instead of an elite few.

These experiments have a two-fold purpose - for myself to further my personal development and re-connect with people in a true-to-fact and purposeful way and to "debunk" the givens of modern society. That we must be disconnected and that "bowling alone" is not the right way but merely the path we have chosen in the environment we find currently find ourselves in. If the map is not the territory, it is time to redraw the map and hopefully through our own action and effort, carve out our territory for the better.

A Silent Defeat

I have talked about Korzybski's Manhood of Humanity in great detail in a post here, contemplating if we have indeed entered such a phase. I refuted such an idea, instead postulating we are stuck in the adolescence - an unstable transition that sees us valuing erroneously, remaining fearful of the future and striving toward ideals that are equally transitory. Reading Life, Inc. by media theorist, documentarian and writer (in addition to practising general semantics) Douglas Rushkoff a rousing and chilling condemnation of the corporatism that pervades our entire waking life, I wondered if it would be more appropriately titled the Adolescence of Humanity instead. If we worshiped gods and insanity as children, we now supplicate to corporations, brands and unsanity as adolescents.

Corporate culture does not merely exploit that we as humans routinely mistake the map for the territory, it insists that the map is identical to the territory and manipulates us into believing no other possibility exists. Corporations and brands exist merely as higher-level abstractions and as such requires our blind faith, not reason, to validate their outlandish claims. The intentional confusion of logical levels (PC vs. Mac instead of classifying both as "computers") separates us into categories and demographics that equally require our belief and complete and total submission to that belief to keep us spending our money on their brand - the goods and services they produce are largely irrelevant. Only a cult-like devotion to a product would elicit emotionally charged responses towards any claims of inferiority - "Flash isn't necessary for the web experience" is like saying an index finger isn't necessary to make a hand functional, but iPhone and iPad zealots parrot the line nonetheless.

Corporations and special interests wish us to be blissfully aware of the dual-function of language as behavior and language forming behavior. Buying a coffee from an abstracted "coffee house" stand in a local shopping mall, there was an item that could be purchased called a "babycino" - a thimbleful of frothed milk given to children. It pacified the children into thinking they were adult and sophisticated using the sound "cino" in the name as well as giving the illusion of care and provision for the children as parents (it's for baby - why would one deny a baby the pleasure of a beverage?) making both parent and child feeling content and even attached to the product. The drink becomes irrelevant but the kinesthetic experience remains. I asked the barista why it had such a name. He said, quizzically, "because it's for babies." He missed the point. It's for the corporation that owns the coffee house and no-one else.

The Particle Waves Goodbye

"Man kann nicht nicht kommunizieren."

- Dr. Paul Watzlawick

The above quote when translated means One cannot not communicate. I was thinking today as I almost drifted towards sleep and was startled by a thought involving one of my childhood friends who is now moving away to start his career elsewhere. What piqued my interest especially was thinking of his communication as behavior and vice-versa - the dual function that language wields - as a means of communication and as a behavior. Of course language is not limited to our verbal modality, it extends to visual and kinesthetic behaviors; body language and touch and the like.

Recently, though a partial transformation of attitude - whether self-created or assisted - he has changed the nature of the communication "ritual" as Dr. Eric Berne would call it. The metacommunicative "ritual" was structured on a friendly game of masculine competitiveness - a verbal game of oneupmanship through put downs or "bagging" in the parlance of our times. Recently, this friend has refused to "take the bait" i.e., reciprocated the insults in a manner befitting the well established ritual. This non-communication as a behavior has in fact communicated to me that this friend perhaps has become annoyed with me or no longer wishes to continue the relationship. This behavior validates the axiom of "looking at what [one] does instead of what [one] says." According to some scholars, the choice of words comprise only 7-10% of total communication with the remainder divided equally between voice tonality and body language.

To outsiders, our communication seems scornful and vindictive when in fact the parameters for our friendship has been established in such a fashion that provides us with the maximum amount of pleasure; while we disparage the fidelity of our mothers, we are actually enjoying these little games as an adjunct of the total relationship. The dual function abounds everywhere and reveals itself differently to the partners in the cycle of communication and outside observers. If we remind ourselves of the wave/particle duality of light we can apply it just as easily to human interaction. What we do is what we say and what we say is something we do. Both are inseparable but distinct; both and neither, all at the same time.

A Key to Fit None and All

A lot of what is written and said primarily concerns itself with what people believe in. God, socialism, progress, the almighty dollar. These are all abstractions that many people will gladly throw their lives away chasing and performing deeds in the name of. If we consider the human brain a void which gradually accumulates knowledge with to fill it, we can figure that belief and conviction are like a solid fuel and true-to-fact, verifiable knowledge is liquid, the hypothesis is like a gas.

Unimaginative people cling prefer to the familiar and the repeatable. Flicking a switch will produce light - if darkness persists, we panic. In my home town of Melbourne, Australia the public transportation system is dismal. Trains are routinely delayed. If the trains ran on time, I would figure an uneasiness would grow in commuters due a disruption to their routine of feeling upset at an abstraction. Perhaps divorce rates would soar if the trains ran on time as passengers would have more time at home to complain about their partner instead of to the partner about the tardiness of the train. However, that is not entirely relevant to this post.

If we use our model of belief as solid, we can see that solid objects are immovable and static - they retain the same shape unless they are moved by an external force. If belief occupies the mind of a devout believer, outcomes are more or less repeated. Beliefs about oneself breeds the self-fulfilling prophecy, as Watzlawick posits:

'A self-fulfilling prophecy is an assumption or prediction that, purely as a result of having been made, cause the expected or predicted event to occur and thus confirms its own "accuracy."'

Imagine you think your friends no longer wish to be friendly towards you, the starting point (A). As a result you start to resent them and refuse to take their phone calls and start to spread rumors about them at point (B). Your friends taking affront to your malicious overtures, they stop making phone calls and inviting you to social events (C), which confirms the belief (A). If at Point A a less solid but gaseous hypothesis was given rise at (A) and was allowed to heat up with the fire of action, your friends may confess they have been busy with their own projects or work at (B). With curiosity satiated, the gas condenses as an aqueous true-to-fact knowledge at point (C). The liquid can swirl around one's head, never resting firm and always subject to change as its environment changes. Things look less light they "ought to" and more as they "are" and preferable to one's own person.

The solid brain and the liquid brain are almost diametrically opposed to one another, but one can thaw his thinking by realizing that things will never return to "normal" since "normal" does not exist. In constant flux, our bodies and the world around us changes from second to second. It took me, after six or so years of struggling with depression, that "normal" or the routine, comfortable state of being - that of misery, repressed desire and frustration - was all I knew as the correct way. It was never the correct way, but merely a way out of one of multi- or infinitely valued states of existence. The belief projected on to something is the ultimate fallacy that stops us from living fulfilled and happy lives. It all stems from Korzybski's fundamental principle - "whatever you say something is, it is not!" If you ever catch yourself blindly believing, ask your self - how do I know that? The realization will soon enough "click" inside your rapidly thawing head.

Wreck Ignition

In my daily self-reflection, I was thinking about some points raised with my therapist Geoff. We hit upon past relationships and how I felt about them now, after so much time had passed by. He suggested that if I still had residual feelings, I should write them down or initiate a conversation with the partner. I told him, in all honesty, I have little desire to do so. What is done cannot be undone - I doubt it would make any difference to my emotional well-being (especially when I have chronicled relevant parts in my blog on occasion).

Thinking back, I thought all of my partners were unequivocally "amazing" and beyond reproach - I would refrain to enforce boundaries with them even to my own detriment. As I rose from the bed today, I hit a salient point - the mistake I and others make is seeing their partners as "special" rather than unique.

This is not to say my current or former partners weren't interesting or pleasant or etc. - I loved them, I cared about them and strived to treat them with the respect and devotion that I expected within a romantic relationship. But keeping the irrational thought that their partners were somehow imbued with an almost sense of the divine - that they were so fantastical that another one like them surely does not exist anywhere else in this world - will only lead to heartache and counter-productive behaviors such as pining for the good old days when you and your partner were together and waiting for them to magically return to you.

Of course, affairs of the heart are seldom ruled by the head, but the aftermath certainly can be a rational, cognitive process. Its a case of differentiating from "a" girl (or boy) and "the" girl. We can evaluate them as a complex matrix of both good and bad attributes, viewholders, etc. and accept them all as part of what makes them unique - but not special (in the aforementioned sense), of course.

Swedish vocalist Krister Linder in his song "Mixed Blood" sings thusly:

"Don't get me wrong, I'm not depressed / but my melancholy is existential / no remedy or antidote / Don't bother with a cure or rescue"

Some people cannot grapple with the thoughts of the "givens" of existence - that life is chaotic and nothing has inherent meaning apart from the ones we ascribe to events and people. Even a married couple of many years must concede that their encounter was dependent on chance and at one point, they were oblivious to the existence of one another. If a relationship goes sour, one can take comfort in the fact that it was yet another FGE (fucking growth experience) and perhaps even learn from their mistakes.

During an acid trip, I once wrote down that the "universe was created so me and Elyse (my former partner) could meet that one time and carry on together into perpetuity" - while that cannot be proven or tested, it's an irrational belief that cannot be held up by any real fact. I am the only person I have to please - it was not my responsibility to solve her (or anyone's) problems or take care of her as if she were dependent on my benevolence and love. As human beings we all have the ability to choose and mold our own destinies; be it with work, hobbies, interests or even intimate partnerships.

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.

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

Learn Why, Unlearn How

Yesterday I received The Situation is Hopeless, but not Serious by former Palo Alto Mental Research Institute scholar Dr. Paul Watzlawick. A pioneer in radical constructivism and communications theory as well as valued contributions to General Semantics, his amusing guide on how to create a constant state of unhappiness I found to be both eye opening and highly useful for guiding my own personal development.

The fundamental principle that many psychotherapies such as RET, Gestalt therapy and even Rogerian therapy base their treatments on is that people learn how to feel unhappy and repeat these thoughts and behaviors throughout their lives - sometimes never learning from them - creating their own unhappiness by doing more of the same.

Dr. Watzlawick's book tells the reader in no uncertain terms to repeat his exercises to be unhappy. Some games such as "self-fulfilling prophecies" or "why would anybody love me?" seem absurd, but are useful for therapy acting as a "symptom prescription" to break an ingrained cycle of unhappiness in a patient.

In the closing pages, he references Dostoyevsky's The Possessed with this line:

"Everything is good...everything. Man is unhappy because he doesn't know he's unhappy. It's only that. That's all. That's all! If one finds out, one will become happy at once, that minute."

While happiness may be a spontaneous condition, it can be hampered by thinking that restricts such feelings from occurring. Watzlawick's wisdom is something everyone can take heed of.

Something Better To Do

On Facebook, there are many fan pages dedicated to a variety of subjects and, well, bullshit. Some of them range from pages celebrating rock stars, actors and authors - others are merely novelties and bullshit like "I called Princess Peach a slut when playing Mario Kart" or "Water tastes good when there's nothing else to drink." Some fan pages have even less of a reason to exist than the aforementioned - and these are the pages such as "Women should be in the kitchen" and the countless variations on that theme.

Leaving the humor aspect aside, I find them offensive. Not because I believe them to be degrading to women (which they obviously are on one level) because I find them degrading to men.

In the 2nd decade of the 21st century, the tools for making oneself independent are abundant, especially in the western world. In my profession, I can report from wherever, whenever and however I choose. To posit that me as a man should be mothered from cradle to grave is ludicrous and highly disturbing. Having a servile, submissive wife endlessly cooking food and cleaning up after us would not do us, as men, any favors. We would be reduced to boys, dependent on a woman for all our needs. While spite-filled frustrated men may believe having such a doting lackey that he can stick his penis into would be a dream come true, I would think it was an absolute nightmare.

By eliminating the requirement to fulfill our own needs, it would breed inaction and laziness. Ambition would falter and our masculine power and agency would be eroded. By subordinating our basic needs to a woman, we put ourselves in a position of dependence. While on a superficial level it would seem that the man dominates the woman in this situation, on a deeper, psychological and emotional level, the man gives up his masculinity in the process. If a man wants to truly exercise his masculine power he would see the complimentary nature of the sexes in a healthy way instead of a maladaptive child-parent dynamic. Its like men saying to women "I am helpless, please take care of me as if I were a baby."

I'll make my own fucking sandwich, thank you very much.

Its Not Anything

"Your 'reality' (what to you is the real world) is playing either of two functions: it is either the concernful environment of your needs and is known by sharp, interesting figures against empty grounds, or it is a screen for your projections. If the latter, you will attempt to make the projections conform with observation — you will always be seeking proofs, making mountains out of molehills, or otherwise distorting your perspective." - Dr. Fritz Perls

Using a social "inquiry" website called Formspring.me, I've come to know friends, acquaintances as well as myself better through the asking and answering of questions about myself and others. What has struck me with some of the responses is the revelation of biases about the world that many of us hold. In the quote above, Dr. Perls, the father of Gestalt therapy insists that the world is one of indifferent abundance (an event level observation, as Korzybski would call it) or it is muddled by inferences, assumptions and unverifiable perceptions (a reversal of order.)

One such assumption that many hold is that "life has not given me anything" or that "life is no good for me." It would be irrational to assume that life must give you anything or that life must be good or bad. If life was to unfold around you without your interaction with it, we would still be stuck in caves, venturing out only as often as we needed to nourish ourselves with food and water. Once we travel through childhood and adolescence, we begin to individuate and carve our own path through life. We must depend on ourselves for fulfillment; intellectual, physical and spiritual (whatever that may entail.) If we sit idly and wait for life to approach us, we should soon realize nothing will come.

Yet people sit. They wait. They croak and wither under the pain of disappointment as life passes them by. Their regrets overwhelm them and they are lowered into the ground with frowns plastered on their faces.

Life is chaotic, but we can enjoy it. Reality is a place that holds whatever we project on to it. By observing it in its natural state and describing what we can sense rather than telling ourselves what we believe to be there, we can navigate it with less fear and apprehension and lend our causation into the grand ecology of what the world has to offer.

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.

What do you know?

"How do we know what we know?" was a question posed by psychologist and Palo Alto Mental Research Institute member Paul Watzlawick (working with such prestigious alumnus as Gregory Bateson, Virginia Satir and Jay Haley) in a book he edited with a similar title.

So, how do we separate inferences and biases from our map-making or ideation of the world?

Consider an artist meeting a group of people. One works as an electrician, another as an accountant, the third a graphic designer. Introducing himself as well as his occupation, the abstraction process begins almost instantly. The electrician and the accountant, unfamiliar with art figure he is a painter of portraits. The designer, however, cannot accept his abstraction so easily and make a reversal of order and thus probes further. Suddenly, it is revealed that the artist sculpts figures from stone. What we seldom achieve is the self-awareness to ask ourselves how we arrive at our conclusions. Is it intensional assumption or extensional reasoning by way of evidence and testing?

If the accountant and electrician had not gone further in their inquiry they would only have partial knowledge of the artist's extensional occupation - they would have the word the artist used to describe himself and no other real, concrete knowledge. Their maps would be incomplete, shaded by unconscious biases and internal referential indexes based on what they had encountered previously, not in the present moment. Of course, artist₁ is not artist₂, yet it seems awfully convenient to coddle together all artists into an indeterminate class to save on time and mental energy.

I ask the question; does a culture that demands instant gratification inevitably demand the dissolution of knowledge into the manageable and familiar, possibly restricting the range and probity of thought and inquiry?

If expediency breeds increased probability for error, as has been demonstrated in so many cases, could the same lust for rapidity erode maps, distorting them to such a degree that it impairs sane and rational judgment? We are all guilty of this and oftentimes it leads us into despair and ruin. I would implore all people to use their nature's gift of self-reflection and self-awareness to avoid such semantic and symbolic traps and to use their nervous systems and the nervous systems of others for the greatest outcome. How? By routinely asking questions and (almost) never staying satisfied with the first answer you get.

In the words of Robert Anton Wilson: "Doubt. Doubt that you have doubted enough. Doubt your doubts." Never take anything on its face value; the world is infinitely complex and in constant flux; those that attempt to answer simply and definitely we should be especially skeptical of.

A Guide to Grabbing Cash while Impoverishing Science

After flipping through a magazine to pass the time, I noticed an article on the worldwide phenomenon of "self-healing" - "The Power of Now", the name of a self help book authored by "spiritualist" Eckhart Tolle. While I have no claim to refute or confirm his methods validity or usefulness since I have no basis for a scientific, rational study, I do however take offense to his writings as since they are almost direct reproductions of Gestalt Therapy, a method of psychotherapy and individuation formulated by Dr. Fritz Perls in the early 1970s.

After some even very preliminary readings, it seems that Mr. Tolle has merely taken most of the Dr. Perls' Gestalt therapeutic teachings, cloaking them in Christian mysticism so as to appeal to a new "spiritualist" market.

For example, an extract from Mr. Tolle's book reads:

In your everyday life, you can practise [this exercise] by taking any routine activity that normally is only a means to an end and giving it your fullest attention. For example, every time you walk up anti, down the stairs in your house or place of work; pay close attention to every step, every movement, even your breathing. Be totally present. The moment you realise you are not present, you are present. Or when you wash your hands, pay attention to all the sense perceptions: the sound and feel of the water, the movement of your hands, the scent of the soap. Or when you get into the car, after you close the door, pause for a few seconds and observe the flow of your breath.

Similarities can easily be found with Dr. Perls' work, bolded sections that correspond to Mr. Tolle's writings:

(1) Maintain the sense of actuality—the sense that your awareness exists now and here. (2) Try to realize that you are living the experience; acting it, observing it, suffering it, resisting it. (3 ) Attend to and follow up all experiences, the "internal" as well as the "external," the abstract as well as the concrete, those that tend toward the past as well as those that tend toward the future, those that you "wish," those that you "ought," those that simply "are," those that you deliberately produce and those that seem to occur spontaneously. (4) With regard to every experience without exception, verbalize: "Now I am aware that ..."

...walk, talk, or sit down; be aware of the proprioceptive details without in any way interfering with them.

Also, the resemblance becomes starkly apparent in the following tracts:

Tolle:

If you keep your attention in the body as much as possible, you will stay in the Now. [...] When you are unoccupied for a few minutes and especially last thing at night and first thing in the morning, "flood" your body with consciousness. Lie flat on your back. Close your eyes. Choose different parts of your body to focus your attention on briefly at first: hands, feet, arms, legs, abdomen, chest, head ... Feel the life energy inside those parts as intensely as you can. Stay with each part for about 15 seconds. Then let your attention run through the body like a wave a few times, from feet to head and back again.

Perls:

As you sit or lie comfortably, aware of different body-sensations and motions (breathing, clutching, contracting the stomach, etc.), see if you can notice any combinations or structures—things that seem to go together and form a pattern-among the various tensions, aches, and sensations. Notice that frequently you stop breathing and hold your breath. Do any tensions in the arms or fingers or contractions of the stomach and genitals seem to go with this? Or is there a relationship between holding your breath and straining your ears? Or between holding your breath and certain skin sensations? What combinations can you discover?

While Dr. Perls uses the language of science and Mr. Tolle uses non-sensical abstracts such as "life energy", it seems that "The Power of Now" is a religious rehash of field tested, empirical science.

Mr. Tolle even ransacks one of the many psychotheraputic techniques from Dr. Albert Ellis, father of Cognitive Behavior Therapy to comprise one of his many "life-lessons." While Mr. Tolle can refute the claims and brush them off as coincidence (although I doubt that he could do so successfully) its disheartening that so many people would flock towards his spiritualist re-interpretation of already established therapies grounded in science - and let Mr. Tolle get away with it.

A Momentous Occasion

It's the Olympics opening ceremony! Probably. I'm still laughing at the fact that Western journalists thought that China would relax their totalitarian regime just for them. Whoever said Western culture had a cult of individuality...

This post is pretty barren content-wise, since the only compulsion to make it was to have one on the 8.8.08. And why not!

Another interesting point:

"Eric Berne, the great euhemerus of Transactional Analysis and originator
of social game theory, observed that most people would not be able to tolerate continuous intimacy."

This is my excuse for a parsimony of affection, forever. Rock on, droogies!

Cramped Style

I got the new Opeth, Kataklysm, In Flames and Children of Bodom albums in the mail yesterday. Three of them jewelcase retail releases, one promo. Free, except for shipping and the inevitable reviews I'll have to write by the 28th. Great - but I've sort of run out of room in which to put them.

I've been writing metal reviews and interviews since high-school. My heady, wide-eyed and overeager reviews won't be posted here for your viewing (dis)pleasure, because they're so shoddy I doubt you'd be reading a review - it would be more like a heavy metal hagiography. I've collected most of them, save for a few that I sold on eBay for tidy and criminally overpriced sums. (They were horrible sounding records. Truly terrible.) I own a bed with a bookshelf in the bedhead. It used house a mixture of books and CDs. Then the books were overrun and had to be relegated to another bookshelf. Now it's full of CDs. Inside the bookshelf and on top, with overflow residing on my bedside table (with duplicates and "unworthy" discs, for example: the original CD release of British Steel by Judas Priest sits there - the re-master takes pride of place in the "real" CD collection.) I have about 300 CDs, promos included. Promos I can't really sell, because they aren't groundbreaking/awesome/decent enough for anyone to give a shit about.

This really does give me comfort, because it's probably the most daunting obstacle I believe I face in the world today. It's tangible. The problem can be seen, not abstracted. Everything else is pretty much imaginary.

A year ago, I'd break a sweat because one of my friends could have possibly sort of given me a blank stare instead of a wistful silence. A friend told me "your psychology helps a lot" after giving her an impromptu session (because I'm a wanker like that) the other night. I'd like to think its helped me too, but I can't tell if it has or not. I spose that's a fairly good thing.

Catch and I are working on a new project. He's always wanted to become a stand-up comedian, and I'm helping him write some material. I think i've got some fucking killer jokes and anecdotes from encountering people and what they do. A fundamental element of comedy is making light of other's misery, and another is conflict. Combine the two and you just cannot fail. It's impossible.

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.

Is this how it's supposed to be?

The map is not the territory.

It was so fucking simple. Everything is so fucking simple.

Leading You Astray

Take this sentence - "talk to your dog as if it were cheese." It came to me in a dream. You probably have experienced such things yourself. It appears as an essentially meaningless phrase. If you have no dog it becomes invalid. If you have never spoken to cheese before, it becomes invalid. Your mind cannot reconcile what is not there, or what has not been experienced. It can only give approximations, inferences, verisimilitudes, etc. Although we do this all the time. This is an example of a map without a territory. A lot of people I've talked to navigate territories with invalid maps. A conversation between an acquaintance of mine who had misread a verbal map I had given her long ago was re-read back to me, which I quickly realized did not reflect the territory.

This act and this act alone, cemented firmly in my understanding after months of searching and learning, the nature of the subjective experience and the consciousness of abstraction. I feel as if I am making remarkable epiphanies every day.


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