1.Non-axioms of general semantics - chapter headings from the novel "the players of the non-A" by Alfred Elton Van-Vogt
Aristotle's knowledge of the science of his time was probably the most accurate available at the time..
His successors, for two thousand years, probably implied that they were valid for all times..
In not so distant years, new methods of measurement destroyed many of these \"truths\", but they continue to form the basis of many people's opinions and beliefs..
The bi-valent logic according to which these people reason has consequently been given the name of Aristotelian -symbol : A -and the polyvalent logic of modern science is called non-Aristotelian -Abbreviation : non-A, Symbol : Ã.
A child's mind, lacking a developed cortex, is virtually incapable of discrimination..
Inevitably, children make many mistakes in their assessment of the world..
Many of these false judgments of fact are integrated by the nervous system on the \"non-conscious\" level and can persist into adulthood..
As a result, an adult male or female may react in an infantile way..
In the interest of reason, DATE.
Do not say : \"Scholars believe.
\"Say : \"The scholars believed in 1948.
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\"or \"Jean Dupont (1948) is socialist.
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\"All things, including Jean Dupont's political opinions, are subject to change, and can therefore only be mentioned if they are determined in time..
In the interest of reason, REPERTORIEZ.
Do not say : \"Two little girls.
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unless you mean : \"Marie and Jeanne, two little girls, distinct from each other and from all the other inhabitants of the world..
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\"In the interest of reason, be careful to IDENTIFY.
No event, no thing, no human being is absolutely identical from one moment to the next..
Identifying leads us to see the world as if it never changed, whereas it is in constant motion..
To avoid identification, remember that only words remain more or less 'immutable'..
They create the illusion of permanence.
Even if that big rock there seems unalterable, in reality, like everything else, it's constantly changing, but our imperfect senses are incapable of realizing it..
We cannot see or feel the permanent movement at the atomic level that causes minute but real changes in all matter..
In the interests of reason, use the AND THAT formula.
When you say : \"Marie is a good girl ! \"don't lose sight of the fact that Mary is something other than \"good\"..
Marie is \"good\", kind, charming, and cotera, which means she possesses other characteristics as well..
It's also worth remembering that modern psychiatry (1956) does not consider the quietly \"good\" individual to have a very healthy personality..
In the interests of sanity, be sure to LABEL.
Words like : Fascist, Communist, Republican, Catholic, Jew, all refer to human beings, who can never be completely labelled..
In the interest of reason, learn to appreciate an event in terms of its overall repercussions..
This includes visceral and nervous changes; emotional reactions, thoughts about the event, the commentary formulated, the action repressed, the resulting action, etc..
In the interest of reason, let's not forget inter-reaction.
A judgment can conceive reality,
but it can conceive a judgment conceiving a judgment conceiving reality..
In the interests of reason, remember that : the map is not the territory, the word is not the thing it expresses.
Every time we confuse the map with the territory, a \"semantic disorder\" takes root in our organism..
This condition persists until the limitations of the card are recognized..
In the interests of reason, remember this : first the event occurs, the initial stimulus; secondly, the nervous shock caused by the event through the senses; third, the emotional reaction based on the individual's past experience, fourth, the verbal reaction.
Most people identify the third and fourth stages and are unaware of the existence of the second and third..
In the interests of reason, each individual must eliminate the \"blockages\" in his or her nervous system..
A blockage is a semantic disturbance that prevents appropriate reactions from taking place..
Blockages can frequently be eliminated by the appropriate use of the \"delayed\" cortico-thalamic reaction, by self-analysis or hetero-analysis..
Knowing non-A training techniques is not enough..
They must be assimilated until they become automatic, i.e. non-conscious..
the \"discursive\" period must give way to the \"active\" period.
The aim must be to achieve total flexibility of mental processes, beyond the verbal level, with regard to any event..
The aim of general semantics is to give the individual a sense of direction, not a new, unformable framework..
General semantics is a discipline, not a philosophy.
Any number of new non-A philosophies can be conceived..
The most important thing for our civilization would undoubtedly be the development of a non-A.
We can categorically state that no such system currently exists..
The field is open to bold, imaginative men and women who want to create a system that will free humanity from war, poverty and tension..
To achieve this, it will be necessary to eliminate from power those human beings who identify.
Our nervous processes are copied from those of animals.
In human beings, nervous reactions of this kind lead to the pathological and posterity-less stages of infantilism in general, of public or private infantile behaviour..
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And the more technically developed a nation or race is, the more its system tends to become cruel, merciless, predatory and commercialized..
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All because we continue to think like animals and have not learned to think substantially like human beings..
(Alfred Korzybski) The problems of "evolution" are verbal and have nothing to do with life as such, which is made up of different individuals, "similarity" being structurally a manufactured article produced by the observer's nervous system..
Common sense, no matter what it does, cannot fail to be surprised on occasion..
The aim of science is to spare him this surprise and to create mental processes that will have to be in close harmony with the process of the outside world, so as to avoid, in any case, the unexpected..
(Bertrand RUSSEL) A thing is not what you say it is.
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It is much more.
It's an ensemble in the broadest sense of the term.
A chair is not a chair.
It is a structure of inconceivable complexity, atomically, electronically, etc..
As a result, thinking of it as a simple chair constitutes what Korzybski calls an identification..
It is the totality of these identifications that produces the unhealthy and the senseless..
When making a judgment about an action or an event, an individual \"abstracts\" only part of his or her characteristics..
If he says : \"This chair is black\", he must indicate that blackness is only one of his qualities, and he must be aware, as he speaks, of his other multiple characters..
Awareness of abstraction\" is one of the essential superiorities of a semantically trained individual over an untrained one..
Experience shows that first comes the 'feeling', then the 'idea'..
The 'sensation' being an abstraction, and the 'idea' an abstraction of a higher-level abstraction..
Experience also shows that among humans, this order is sometimes reversed.; that some individuals have 'ideas' first, some vestiges of memory, and then 'sensations', without having any external reason for these 'sensations'..
Such individuals are considered 'mentally' ill..
They 'see' where there's nothing to see.
They 'hear' even if there's nothing to hear.
They are paralyzed where there is no reason to be paralyzed, and so on ad infinitum..
This inversion of order, to a lesser degree, is extremely common and sustains almost all human misfortunes and difficulties..
In the interest of reason, use REFERENCES : for example, \"conscious\" and \"unconscious\" are two useful descriptive terms; but it has yet to be proven that these terms themselves accurately reflect what \"exists\" at the level of facts..
There are maps of territories on which we can never have exact information..
As non-A training is aimed at individuals, the key is to remain aware of the \"multi-ordinal\" meaning of the words we hear or pronounce..