For a kook, Korzybski sure got a lot right.
It really is all about structure. The structure of the language shapes your thoughts and determines what is easy to think about and what is difficult to think about. The models we absorb condition us.
This is why grand and sinister agendas can be accomplished even though, as a group, humans are stupid and incompetent. Fashion your memetic virii with the right structuer, and it doesn’t matter how well-meaning, oblivious or inept their carriers are. Vast conspiracies of coordinated action are a myth; but conspiracies-by-osmosis permeate our lives.
Have you ever read Snow Crash by Neil Stephenson? Part of the main plot revolves around memes and how the grow and are propogated. Really good book. I can loan you my copy if you like.
I’d guess he has, he recommended some Stephenson to me previously. I did enjoy snow crash – interesting application of burrough’s writings on language as a mutating virus we constantly transmit to each other and as an instrument of control
So true. When I was studying rhetorical theory and linguistics, I realized that language really does shape a person’s reality by controling the way they perceive things. Crazy stuff.
Except for the word “all”…
in the second sentence… I agree completely…
Language structures are some of the most important structuring elements in our world…
but… they are not the only ones… I disagree with the claim that all thinking is done through language.. there are other modes of thought–visualization, many kinds of artistic expression, and other things that also shape thought…
What I have always found interesting, is that it is the people whose job it is to study words who come up with the idea that everything in the universe is words…
Thus.. they are the ones who then obviously tell us what is going on… 😉
Re: Except for the word “all”…
In this case, the guy was an engineer.
And he got that there were other ways of seeing the world… but he maintained that all the knowledge in language consisted of structure.
Re: Except for the word “all”…
with that claim… I can live… I would have to read more… but I seem to remember that we have already chatted about this once on line…
Very astute. Nothing else could possibly explain the persistance and success of Jerry Springer.
well. korzybski said some very good things – best of all was “the map is not the territory” – but he’s a mixed bag on language.
language is not just a social construct. yes, language provides pre-fab shapes and to a certain extent influences – but a highly flexible tongue like english has incredible potential for expression of all kinds of different paradigms, and language after all evolved out of our socio-neurological potentials.
just f.y.i., with no intention of snark, i disregard entirely the conspiracy claims without direct evidence, and evidence of intent.