Alfred Korzybski Series #5
Read Science and Sanity and you will hear Korzybski repeatedly asserting that we humans are a semantic class of life. So what does that mean? What is the significance of that for Neuro-Semantics?
Being a semantic class of life means that it is our nature and job to create meaning and live our lives by the meanings that we create. Further, we are a semantic creatures due to the very way our nervous system and brain operates as it “abstracts” (e.g., generalizes and summarizes) from the world outside our neurology. In other words, we are beings who live by symbols (by words, images, sounds, sensations, ideas, etc.).
Actually, we can live so much by symbols that we can fail to distinguish between our symbols and the reality to which we refer, between our maps about reality and the territory of reality itself. When that happens, we confuse our map with the territory. We then identify two things which exist on different logical levels and this reduces our sense of sanity.
As a semantic class of life, you create and live your life by your symbols. That’s why you respond to your world in terms of your maps. NLP founders described this when they said “it is not the world that we deal with, but our maps of the world.” This creates several challenges. First, if you confuse your thoughts with the territory, you may stop looking with fresh eyes and ears and over-value your mental maps and devote yourself to them as if they were absolute and final. They are not and they cannot be absolute and final!
So the challenge is to not over-identify with your beliefs, understandings, decisions, intentions with reality. The challenge is to stay present, current, open, and flexibility. The opposite is being sure, definite, rigid, to know-it-all, to stop questioning and exploring. The opposite is to become a “true believer” and so believe in your maps that “you cannot be wrong,” “cannot be mistaken.” Do that and you will become a fanatic believer in your maps.
Isn’t this the challenge we all face—to see the world in a fresh way each day? To “lose our mind and come to our senses” (Fritz Perls). To purely observe and witness what we see, hear, and feel without judgment. This is not an easy thing to do. What is easy to do is to see the world through the lens of our paradigms and to assume that what we see is what is there.
Actually this describes the structure of hallucination and hypnosis, which is fine if you know that you are doing that! If you don’t, if you are not conscious of your mapping or abstracting, then you are in danger. Danger of what? Danger of making a “poor adjustment” to the world since you are conscious of the world as filtered through your map, not the world as it is. This, says Korzybski, first makes you “unsane” and if continued, then eventually “insane.” This continuum from sane to unsane to insane—is Korzybski’s language for a search for a good adjustment to the territory and the neuro-linguistic basis of sanity.
Everyday Semantic Reactions and Hallucinations
Imagine a teenage boy, Johnny, who likes to sleep in. If he doesn’t get up in the morning when called and does that regularly, he might get labeled “lazy” (unspecified verb). Let’s say his dad gives him that label and thereafter only see Johnny’s “laziness” (a nominalization) when Johnny doesn’t get up. In this case, the behavior becomes identified with the dad’s symbol that evaluates the behavior. Then dad’s linguistic map begins to determine his experience in relating to Johnny.
Or, if a little girl takes some money from her mom’s purse and mom gives her the label of “thief.” Will not mom then begin to think of little Suzie in terms of that label? To her Suzie is a thief. And this will disturb mom and create within her semantic disturbances. As this mapping occurs, it will affect mom’s nervous reactions creating within her such experiences as distress, anger, frustration, guilt, etc. She creates these “semantic reactions” to little Suzie’s actions as filtered through these linguistic mappings.
What’s the problem here? Is it what Johnny or Suzie is doing? Is it their behaviors? Or is the problem the mental models that linguistically maps these evaluations about the actions?
Sadly, this is true of most of our reactions. Most of the time our responses are semantic reactions. We are reacting in a holistic mind-body way to a linguistic meaning that we created in our mind. By mentally identifying certain words and understandings with some action, we generate our semantic reaction. And if not caught and corrected, this will eventually lead to more several pathological semantic reactions. Because we are a semantic class of life, our “nature” is inevitably comprised of our semantics (meanings, beliefs), and so our semantic reactions.
Neuro-Linguistic Awareness
A lady in her fifties came for therapy. “I can’t stand it!”
“What specially can you not stand?”
“That John won’t do the work of working on our marriage. He’s such a coward, such a wimp, such a ‘nice’ person that has to maintain his ‘nice’ image but won’t engage me.”
“Hmmmm. Sounds like you’re having a semantic reaction to this obviously unacceptable behavior.”
“Semantic reaction? What are you talking about? I’m just reacting to John’s irresponsibility!”
“Yes, John is certainly doing something that you don’t want and don’t like. So to help me understand, describe the external behavior that John is giving you without making any evaluative statements about it.”
“He left me. He says he doesn’t want to be married to me anymore because I won’t accept him.”
“Well done. That’s fairly descriptive about what happen in the outside world. Now tell me about your subjective world, the world inside your skin where you give meaning to things and emotionally register those meanings. What significance do you give to this behavior?”
“He’s betraying our marriage vows. He’s rejecting me and making me live a lonely life without companionship or joy.”
“Ah, yes I can hear that those are your semantics—your meanings. And what powerful meanings you’re giving to his behavior! You have created the belief that he has ‘made’ you experience these internal states. So no wonder you find it so distressful! And yet these are your semantic reactions. If you were giving it different meanings, you’d have different reactions, wouldn’t you? Do you want to be married to someone who won’t engage you?”
“No. Of course not.”
“Then his behavior gives you information about him. It tells you about his beliefs and limitations. When you think of it like that how do you feel?”
Summary
Ah semantic reactions! We all have them and we have them every day. We do not just react to things, we semantically react. We “get out buttons pushed” so that we become reactive, emotional, upset, frustrated, stressed-out, etc. And why? Because of the meanings that we give to things.
What’s the solution? In Neuro-Semantics we describe the solution with several statements and these will be explained more fully in the coming posts:
The meanings you give is the life that you live.
The meanings you give is the “instinct” that you live.
The meanings you give determine the very quality of your mind, your emotions, your relationships, and ultimately your life.
Because you are the meaning-maker, the ability to create, sustain, change, and transform meanings is your power to control the quality of your life.
International Neuro-Semantic Conference
July 1-3, 2011
GJ – Colorado (Grand Junction)
Country Inns Hotel and Conference Center
Early bird price means that it will cost you a grand total of $50 a day!
Register now for that price… www.neurosemantics.com
Three Workshop Tracks: Coaching, Business, and Personal Development Tracks
Presenters from 11 different Countries!
Michael Hall, Ph.D.
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