Another neuro-semantics week-end by Michael “the meta-wizard” Hall.
Everyone as best as he can!
Have Joy
Giannicola
Alfred Korzybski Series #14
We could all be genius, says Korzybski, if only we clarify our symbolism and use it effectively. Then we could actually use our nervous systems the way they are designed in creating maps that keep us sane and able to create a humane science. To that end he worked to identify how to use “nervous system abstracting.” Do that and you can step up to a new level of creativity and actualize your potentials. And while Korzybski only used the term “genius” a few times, he did hold (as did Maslow) that the average person has much more potential of intelligence, creativity, joy, focus, etc. than he tapped into. And that’s what we mean by self-actualization.
Korzybski’s work was focused on both the neural processes of the nervous systems and the role that our semantics play in it. Here’s a bit of what Korzybski (1933/1994) wrote
“One can learn to play with symbols according to rules, but such play has little creative value. If the translation is made into the language of the lower centres— namely into ‘intuitions’, ‘feelings’,’visualizations’ etc.— the higher abstractions gain the character of experience, and so creative activity begins. Individuals with thoroughly efficient nervous systems become what we call ‘geniuses.’” (p. 307)
Maslow and Rogers would later call that a “fully functioning human being” —a self-actualizing person.
“As a descriptive fact, the present stage of human development is such that with a very few exceptions our nervous systems do not work properly in accordance with their survival structure. In other words, although we have potentialities for correct functioning in our nervous system, because of the neglect of the physiological control-mechanism of our semantic reactions, we have semantic blockages in our reactions …” (p. 28)
What stops you and me in accessing our personal genius states are our semantic reactions and semantic blocks (which is the reason for several of the previous articles). Now in his day, Korzybski did not use the term self-actualization; I’m not even sure if the term existed during his time. It was Maslow’s studies of self-actualizing people in the 1940s that popularized the term and gave it the meanings that we use today in Neuro-Semantics. What Korzybski did talk about was creativity, sanity, and proper human adjustment.
“We should avoid the mistake of assuming that the average man, or a moron, does not ‘think’. His nervous system works continually, as does that of a genius. The difference consist in its working is not productive or efficient. Proper training and understanding of the semantic mechanism must add to efficiency and productiveness. By the elimination of semantic blockings, as in identification, we release the creative capacities of any individual.” (p. 485)
Long before the Human Potential Movement that grew out of Maslow’s work, Korzybski identified the eliminating of semantic blockings as a key process for the unleashing of a person’s potentials. So while he did not use the language that Maslow and I have about leashing and unleashing, he certainly knew and described these processes.
For Korzybski, it is the realization that we abstract in different levels that we slowly acquire the most creative structural feeling that human knowledge is inexhaustible. Then we become increasingly interested in more knowledge, we become more curious and more creative— this is actually the very spirit of NLP (something that I discovered decades later, see The Spirit of NLP, 1997).
Korzybski also did not speak about “peak experiences.” Yet he did speak about the joy of life— “the joy of living is considerably increased” with the consciousness of abstracting. “We grow up to full adulthood” and we become mature “for the taking up of life and its responsibilities.” “Life becomes fuller,” and semantically balanced (pp. 526-527)
In terms of leashing, he noted that …
“Semantic ‘emotional pains’ absorb nervous energy and prevent a full development of our capacities.” (p. 528)
And about unleashing, it is when you release the semantic reactions and blocks that you stop fighting “semantic phantoms,” and as you do, then stores of energy is released within you which becomes useful for creative purposes. How you use your neurology in “abstracting” (map making, meaning-making, semanticizing) determines whether you leash or unleash your highest and best potentials. And that’s why General Semantics and NLP after it has focused on the mapping or modeling processes. We do not deal directly with the territory (“reality”), but indirectly through our maps. So the better and more accurate your mapping, including your framing of the mapping as a tentative and fallible process (so you don’t fall into the trap of believing in your maps), the more likely you will be unleashing more of your potentials.
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L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.