www.generalsemantics.org
The Institute of General Semantics (IGS) is a non-profit organization that was established in 1938. IGS now resides in Fort Worth, Texas but has members and subscribers in over 30 nations. IGS focuses on the study of general semantics, which can be described as a discipline that focuses on and integrates language, behavior, perceptions, evaluations, people, words, communication, etc. with such goals as creating a more sane society, better communicators, and critical thinkers.
IGS:
*Publishes the quarterly journal, ETC: A Review of General Semantics
*Maintains a 3,000-book private library
*Publishes The General Semantics Bulletin
*Hosts and sponsors seminar-workshops, conferences, and lectures
*Supports GS programs at high schools, colleges, and universities
*Etc.
GS deals with the study of language and behavior from a perspective that does not take language for granted. Some of the key principles of GS include:
• We live in a continually-changing, process-oriented world, much of which we have no means of directly observing or experiencing.
• What we do experience is therefore partial and incomplete; we abstract only a small portion of what’s there to experience; there is always more.
• Individuals abstracts differently from anyone else, based on his/her own experiences, backgrounds, interests, biases, etc.
• As we become more aware of this abstracting process, we learn how to become more accepting of our own, and others’, limitations and potentials.
• As a map reflects the structural relationships of the territory it symbolizes, so our language ought to correctly reflect our actual experiences. But as the map cannot be the territory, or symbolize the entire territory, there are limits to how adequately our language can reflect our experiences.
• Integrating this knowledge, we can become more critical thinkers and better communicators in our relationships with the world, others, and ourselves.
Please visit the IGS website at www.generalsemantics.org , give us a call at 817-922-9950, email us at
[email protected], or stop by if you're ever in the area.
What's Going On...
"A culture cannot be discriminatingly accepted, much less be modified, except by
persons who have seen through it, by persons who have cut holes in the confining
stockade of verbalized symbols and so are able to look at the world and, by reflection, at themselves, in a new and relatively unprejudiced way. Such persons are not merely born; they must also be made. But how?
In the field of formal education, what the would-be hole cutter needs is
knowledge; knowledge of the past and present history of cultures in all their fantastic
variety, and knowledge about the nature and limitations, the uses and abuses, of
language. A man who knows that there have been many cultures, and that each culture
claims to be the best and truest of all, will find it hard to take too seriously the boastings and dogmatizings of his own tradition. Similarly, a man who knows how symbols are related to experience, and who practices the kind of linguistic self-control taught by the exponents of General Semantics, is unlikely to take too seriously the absurd or dangerous nonsense that, within every culture, passes for philosophy, practical wisdom and political argument."
"Culture and the Individual" by Aldous Huxley, 1963
"When they think at all, the last thing men think about is their own thoughts. Every sensible man realizes that the perfections of a mechanical instrument depends to some extent upon the perfection of the tools with which it is made. No carpenter would expect a perfectly smooth board after using a dented or chipped plane. No gasoline engine manufacturer would expect to produce a good motor unless he had the best lathes obtainable to help him turn out his product. No watchmaker would expect to construct a perfectly accurate timepiece unless he had the most delicate and accurate tools to turn out the cogs and screws. Before any specialist produces an instrument, he thinks of the tools with which he is to produce it.
But men reflect continually on the most complex problems, problems of vital importance to them and expect to obtain satisfactory solutions without once giving a thought to the manner in which they go about obtaining those solutions; without a thought to their own mind, the tool which produces those solutions. Surely this deserves at least some systematic consideration."
"Thinking as a Science" by Henry Hazlitt, 1969
"If we value the pursuit of knowledge, we must be free to follow wherever that search may lead us. The free mind is no barking dog to be tethered on a 10-foot chain."
-Adlai Stevenson
"Who rules our symbols, rules us."
-Alfred Korzybski
