Learning to Apply General Semantics
Something worth recalling from M. Kendig's 1943 "Introduction" to the Papers From The Second American Congress On General Semantics: Non-Aristotelian Methodology (Applied) For Sanity In Our Time . (The Congress took place in August 1941 at the University of Denver.) Kendig wrote:
Learning to apply general semantics is similar to learning to fly, in that no one ever became a pilot by studying the principles of aeronautics and watching a demonstration; much less by ability to carry on 'philosophical disputations' on the subject. This is an over-simple analogy but perhaps it will suggest the complexities involved in a re-education which aims to bring so many unconscious habitual responses under conscious control. ... (p. xviii)
It should be noted that no one ever became a pilot without "studying the principles of aeronautics and watching [many] a demonstration" (at least, not since the Wright brothers). Moreover carrying on "philosophical disputations" - a significant amount of questioning, answering, and arguing - forms a significant part of the learning process for pilot candidates as well as anyone else involved in active learning. No one "really" learns to understand who merely inputs and repeats. Active learning requires re-thinking, re-formulating, questioning, and, yes, arguing.
Flying entails a major investment in learning cognitive and motor skills that are precisely well defined as well as highly regulated by a major government body. No one becomes a pilot without demonstrating strict adherence to precisely well defined procedures as well as an ability to strictly conform to precise verbal standards that are highly regulated. Such standards are required for communicating with air-traffic controllers and for safety.
No such strict standards or regulating body exists for General Semantics. Even the principles of general semantics belie the formation of such standards within general semantics, as "the map is not the territory" dominates the relation between words and actions, between words and meanings, and between meanings and actions under the rubric "the map is not the territory".
In flight training rigorous consistency is maintained. One must pass rigorous verbal and physical standard tests in order to be licensed as a pilot. General semantics has no licensing requirements, no verbal standards, no licensing body, and no oversight process. What each one understands as general semantics depend on their respective exposure; meaning varies within each person; and language ("is not the meaning" - map is not territory) varies as well.
Unlike general semantics, the consequences of failure to apply the rigorously enforced verbal and physical standards and skills in flying has immediate deadly consequences. My brother and two companions died in a small plane crash for failing to properly apply the cognitive skills precisely and carefully. They conducted stall and recover testing with insufficient altitude and with a third person in the plane - contrary to the warning of the pilot handbook. Failure to apply the cognitive skill by not precisely following such recommendations meant that no amount of physical skill could save them when they went into the spin predicted. They were in a hurry to qualify on their newly acquired plane. Flying is unforgiving of loosely interpreting the precise knowledge that comprises the principles of aeronautics and its application in flight.
Learning general semantics requires a re-education away from the kind of precise definitions, standards, and enforcement found in learning to become a pilot, because general semantics emphasizes that the word is not the thing and that we live with ubiquitous uncertainty.
We learn to turn our awareness inward to our own information processing in order to bring to consciousness many aspects of perception, word usage, thinking, associating, hypothesizing, etc., that we heretofore performed unconsciously. We must become awakened to multi-level consciousness - holding an awareness of what we are perceiving, labeling, thinking, associating, hypothesizing, etc., while we develop a sophisticated awareness of how we are doing these very aforementioned things. We learn to "see" how we are learning-knowing simultaneously with what we are learning-knowing, and how to use the second and higher order knowing (how) to alter the first order knowing (what).
To put it simply and crudely, "I" become "divided" into two parts, a watcher-doer and a watcher-watcher applied primarily to all my observation-evaluation processes; the "watcher" keeps attention on the "doer" evaluating and correcting what the "doer" is perceiving, learning, deciding, etc. Such a process has many levels or stages of development involving cultivating many skills. We call this "consciousness of abstracting".
Developing and applying consciousness of abstracting becomes a lengthy process that may continue to improve throughout one's lifetime. But it is far from learning a highly regulated body of knowledge and skills with precisely defined terminology. (more)
