General Semantics birthed NLP and influenced Gestalt Theory, and is a really cool way to hurt your brain. IGS's 56th Alfred Korzibsky Memorial Dinner and Lecture, I believe Tony Robbins is serving dalmation, who wants to go?

The structure of our language encourages us to talk as if (and think as if) qualities exist in things. This obscures the role of the observer. For example, we say things like: "The rose is red" or "this apple is sweet" or "Mary is lazy" or "That man is handsome."

Words like "red," "sweet," "lazy" and "handsome" refer to evaluations, not what is actually there. All of these statements would be more accurate if followed by "to me."

The word "is" in these sentences projects our reactions on the world out there.

This confusion of evaluations with descriptions can be seen in extreme form in mental hospitals. Many of the people there confuse what is going on inside their nervous systems with what is going on outside. They "see" things that other people do not see; they "hear" voices that other people do not hear. Some hallucinations can be produced by simply stimulating a certain part of the brain.

X.

The structure of our language allows us to say that a map "equals" the territory, when it may not.

Some people react to words as if they were things instead of symbols that stand for or point to things. For example: in an opinion poll, people rated two mythical companies. The American Improvement Company proved very popular, while the International Molybdenum Cartel was rated very low. The respondents reacted to words since neither company was real.

We see things only as they are interpreted by our nervous system. What we look at is outside our nervous systems. What we see is really our nervous system's response to the outside stimuli.

We should not talk about the world "out there." Instead, we should talk about the world as it appears to you or the world as it appears to me.

We see with our experience as well as with our eyes.

Things do not have meaning; our nervous systems manufacture meanings from the raw material fed to our sense organs.

The stumuli received from nautre and not picutres and sounds of reality, but are the evidence from which we build our models and impressions of reality.

The universe, as we know it, is a joint product of the observer and the observed. When we observe, we leave out things; we can't possibly observe everything. When we take in our surroundings, we select from them in accordance with our past experience and our purposes.

When we react to events or words, we think, feel, move and undergo biochemical changes. Man is an organism that works as a whole.

VIII.

The structure of our language influences not only the way we communicate with others, but also the way we communicate with ourselves.

The language we use not only puts words in our mouths, it puts ideas in our heads.

Each language is a vast pattern system that is different from all others. Each language chops up and reassembles experiences, relationships and the like in a unique way.

Language patterns, combined with other cultural patterns, direct perceptions and thinking into certain habitual channels.

Many of the structural characteristics of language that lead us astray are obvious when we stop to think about them. Too often, we do not think about them.

We make many errors though language, such as assuming similar things to be identical, the essence of things never changes, parts may be considered without relation to the whole, etc.

There is a tremendous difference between thinking in verbal terms and contemplating inwardly silent, on nonverbal levels, and then searching for the proper structure of language to fit the thoughts.

We must study the world first, then find language that fits it instead of habitually ascribing to the world the primitive structure of our language.

Experience cannot be transmitted as experience; it must first be translated into something else. It is this something else that is transmitted. When it is received it is translated back into something that resembles experience.

Words are not the objects they represent.

You can talk of two worlds: The world that we see, hear, touch or otherwise experience, which is the existential world; the world or words, the verbal world, contains verbal crystallizations of our experience and models built of the words we read and hear.

The verbal world may be considered a map of the existential world. That is ... words are a map of our senses. They represent objects but are not those objects themselves just as a dotted line is not actually a highway under construction but represents one on a map.

A good map has a structure similar to the territory; it is a good predictor.

It is difficult to make verbal maps that do not, to some degree, distort the territory.

It is not so much the distortions in a verbal map that cause trouble as it is us being unaware of those distortions.

Dealing successfully with the world about us depends in a large part upon having adequate maps of th territories we encounter.

VI.

Data about the world come to us through our sense. Our senses are amazingly sensitive, yet severely limited.

Much of what is going on we cannot sense at all (X-rays, radio waves, ultra high frequency sounds, etc.)

Our sense are also adversely affected or fooled by such things as color blindness, blind spots, optical illusions, the effects of fatigue, changes in sensitivity as organs adapt to conditions.

The eye can handle something like 5 million bits per second, but the brain can only comprehend about 500 bits per second. Therefore, the nervous system must select, discriminate.

Individuals vary considerably in the way they sense things. There is a danger in assuming what someone else hears, sees, touches, etc.

We more readily perceive the objects and relationships for which we have names.

I.

Man differs from other animals in that he can create and he can communicate across time with symbols.

Language is often ranked as man's most remarkable creation. His ability to symbolize opens him to a variety of ways to create.

With language, man can "freeze" an experience or products of his creativity and then "un-freeze" them later.

II.

Three areas of studying the nature and use of language:

Syntactics: The study of the relationship between words and other words, symbols and other symbols. Examples: logic, mathematics, grammar, dictionary definitions.

Semantics: The study of relationships between words and what they stand for. Examples: descriptions, operatonal definitions.

Pragmatics: The study of relationships of words and the users of words. Examples: evaluation, propaganda, usage, idiom.

III.

General Semantics focuses mainly on the relationship between language and human behavior.

General Semantics is not the study of words or the study of meaning. It is rather concerned with the assumptions made in underlying symbol systems and the personal and cultural effects of their use.

IV.

Communication may be regarded as a game in which the speaker and listener (writer and reader) battle against the forces of confusion. We must expect to be misunderstood. We must expect to misunderstand. We can try to minimize misunderstanding; we can't eliminate it.

As a former fellow, Coro gave me the tools and courage to explore the depths of my own possibilities, which has given me the ability to truly see and interact with the world around me at a deeper and more profound level. If you know anyone who would benefit from this type of training please leave a comment with your e-mail address so that I can reach you.

The U.S. with it’s abundance of free schooling and large number of universities prides itself on having a learned and literate populace; however, the recent firestorm of unsubstantiated innuendos and accusations against Barack and Michelle Obama validate the hypotheses developed by mathematician/linguist Alfred Korzybski half a century ago. Namely that “our perceptions/conceptions (called Reality Tunnels by Dr. Timothy Leary) are also shaped by the structure of the language we use.”

Korzybski’s opus on the study of semantically inaccurate word usage is entitled “Science and Sanity”. The proponents of Korzybski and later Richard Bandler (advocate of neuro-linguistic programming) define the aforementioned linguistics work as ‘General Semantics’. As such, advocates and proponents of General Semantics, state great displeasure with Western language (English) mis-use. Korzybski’s followers state the chief culprit of the “Obama is a muslim” hysteria gripping America would be the verb “is” and cognates like “was” and “be”. Essentially these cognates suggest “constant assumption of identity”.

Notice the difference in the following absolute statements: “The photon is a wave. Barack Obama is a Muslim. Hillary Clinton is a racist.” In Korzybski’s system of general semantics these absolutes might be re-stated as: “The photon behaved like a wave when measured with this particular scientific apparatus.” The unsubstantiated, dogmatic, Obama is a Muslim might read: “Many people have assumed Barack Obama is a Muslim because his father was a Muslim and his middle name is common amongst Muslims in Saudi Arabia.” The over-simplified “Hillary is a racist” would become “Hillary came off as being a racist to some because of comments made during the election concerning Obama and white voters.”

Korzybski said that Isness is an illness.

The writing and speaking of English without “is” and other cognates (was, be, will be, etc. “appears as E-Prime. However, E-Prime can prove clunky and stylistically unfeasible.

Worse still, I wonder how much “human anger and violence and wars” have resulted from poor semantics. Imagine if a nationwide ban on “IS” and other guilty cognates had been applied on this year’s presidential campaign?

General Semantics, it would appear, is a discipline better suited to esoteric philosophy and mathematics than to a system for communicating with a populace speaking in sentences liberally interspersed with "like". "Like Dude, it's hard to, like, imagine they could, like, understand, like, the whole, like, concept of, uhhh like, time-binding uh, totally, like whatever." General Semantics' creator and early adherents; Alfred Korzybski, S.I. Hayakawa and others, in their attempts to give us the tools and the understanding of language and how it affects us emotionally have instead generated a nightmare of misuse of their information and theories. What has occurred is akin to giving six year old boys guns and live ammunition with which to play "cops and robbers". Sooner or later it will come to a bad end. Our whole concept of reality is being turned upside down as politicians and social activists use the theory of Non-Aristotelian logic to twist language and the meanings of words. They do it to alter the way we understand and feel about the world around us. Politicians and activists of all stripes have taken the theories and perverted them to advance their various agendas. They have replaced common sense, which General Semantics holds to be irrelevant, with what amounts to total nonsense. We end up with triangulation, moral relevance, and a denial of soul and Spirit. The theory maintains "the map is not the territory". That idea has been inverted and is used in the rhetoric directed at the uninitiated and poorly educated proletarian public precisely because they perceive things in just that manner—the word is the reality. Thus by renaming "welfare programs" and calling them "entitlement programs" what was originally conceived as a charitable effort ceases to be community largesse and becomes a "human right"—whatever territory for which that phrase is a map. It is all a sign of the beginning of the end of the life and culture we have known and loved. (cf. Isaiah 5:20–21)

Minds and emotions are continually manipulated for the purpose of obtaining tacit agreement to concepts barely understood. I have spoken often of what I call the "hamburger hoax"; showing a beautifully staged photo of a hamburger and then presenting something which in no way resembles the photo on the menu board. Somehow we find that acceptable. Too many are then distracted from the resulting fallacious images and ideas by gulping down the placating pap that comes through the TV in the form of sports events, reality shows, and the likes of "American Gladiator" and "Wipeout". If the perpetrators cannot find a way to repurpose the words or their meanings, they simply undertake to remove them completely from our lexicon. We all stand by as religious symbols and ideals are removed from the public view by the secularists who prattle on about the separation of church and state while pretending their beliefs and ideals are not a religion. How long will it be before the emerging socialist government we are allowing to overtake our country decides on a "final solution" for Christians, as did an earlier socialist regime obsessed with negative feelings for the Jews? Will they then build a Colosseum and unleash the lions for the public amusement on NPR's "This American Life" and title the program "Our Roman Heritage"?

Common questions which in my view evoke passive answers that would seem disassociated with reality.

To quote the 'to be' verb directly from answers.com (with my basic concerns highlighted in red):

be (bē)

v., First and third person singular past indicative was (wŭz, wŏz; wəz when unstressed), second person singular and plural and first and third person plural past indicative were (wûr), past subjunctive were, past participle been (bĭn), present participle be·ing (bē'ĭng), first person singular present indicative am (ăm), second person singular and plural and first and third person plural present indicative are (är), third person singular present indicative is (ĭz), present subjunctive be.

v. intr.

1. To exist in actuality; have life or reality: I think, therefore I am.
   1. To occupy a specified position: The food is on the table.
   2. To remain in a certain state or situation undisturbed, untouched, or unmolested: Let the children be.
2. To take place; occur: The test was yesterday.
3. To go or come: Have you ever been to Italy? Have you been home recently?
4. Used as a copula in such senses as:
   1. To equal in identity: “To be a Christian was to be a Roman” (James Bryce).
   2. To have a specified significance: A is excellent, C is passing. Let n be the unknown quantity.
   3. To belong to a specified class or group: The human being is a primate.
   4. To have or show a specified quality or characteristic: She is witty. All humans are mortal.
   5. To seem to consist or be made of: The yard is all snow. He is all bluff and no bite.
5. To belong; befall: Peace be unto you. Woe is me

v. aux.

1. Used with the past participle of a transitive verb to form the passive voice: The mayoral election is held annually.
2. Used with the present participle of a verb to express a continuing action: We are working to improve housing conditions.
3. Used with the infinitive of a verb to express intention, obligation, or future action: She was to call before she left. You are to make the necessary changes.
4. Archaic. Used with the past participle of certain intransitive verbs to form the perfect tense: “Where be those roses gone which sweetened so our eyes?” (Philip Sidney).

Let us now review my concerns...

1. "To remain in a certain state" enforces the notion to me of absolutism and seems to dismiss a concept raised in General Semantics known as Time-Binding. In essence, me-today does not equate to me-yesterday unless I remained in a constant state of (passive) being having never (actively) DONE anything even remotely progressive in my existence.
2. "To take place; occur" enforces to me the notion that while something may have already occurred i.e. in the past, due to the passive usage of 'to be' we may harper on it as absolute and not relative to "now". For example, the way something was doesn't equate to what something can become "now" or "later" regardless of what it was "then"!
3. "To equal in identity" enforces to me the notion of immediate controversy between any identity other than your own with perhaps a mental-blocking (passive) thought like "I want to be like you for you are my idol!" rather then the (active) thought that "I want to do the things you do or have done to mimic your behaviour, success etc. as my own".
4. "To have a specified significance" enforces to me the pseudo-importance of a pseudo-question such as Who are you? which would always seem to concern itself with the past, the present and the future concurrently.
5. "To belong to a specified class or group" enforces the notion to me of one person being right say by popular opinion thus making all other opinions wrong and controversial or to quote from the film The Highlander, "there can be only one" just before a fellow immortal has his head chopped off.
6. "To have or show a specified quality or characteristic" enforces the notion to me of "definiteness-of-character" which in my experience seems like a great trap for people who get obsessed by what others say about them and develop emotional problems as a result including mental blocks towards change.

In conclusion, the 'to be' verb would seem to me to distort the mind as a passive verb. On the other hand, English Prime enforces active verb usage. In effect, so that we may leave a passive state of being and enter an active state of DOING.

It would seem to me that conditioned states of being begin in childhood perhaps due to a ubiquitous pseudo-question that children usually get asked - What do you want to be when you grow up?

Thus in my view where be encourages a narrow-focused existence and DO encourages a wider-scoped existence without the pressures of being anything specific.