The Ultimate Nature of Reality: Korzybiski, Russell, Bryson -- and Lakota Elder Dan

With his "General Semantics," Alfred Korzybiski was trying to overcome the inherent science-blocking aspects built into languages, languages which had evolved way before the basic scientific models of reality existed. Particularly blocked by those old language habits and forms -- and the psychology connected to them -- is an understanding of the inherently dynamic and ephemeral nature of "reality" reflected in the assumed atomic and sub-atomic structure of matter -- not to mention energy, space and time.

Here's how Bertrand Russell put it -

"Our raw material consisted merely of events; but when we find that we can build out of it something which, as measured, will seem to be never created or destroyed, it is not surprising that we should come to believe in "bodies." These are really mere mathematical constructions out of events, but owing to their permanence they are practically important and our senses (which were presumably developed by biological needs) are adapted for noticing them, rather than the crude continuum of events which is theoretically more fundamental". --Bertrand Russell, "ABC of Relativity," pg. 117

Bill Bryson explains it this way:

It is still a fairly astounding notion to consider that atoms are mostly empty space and that the solidity we experience all around us is an illusion. When two objects come together in the real world -- billiard balls are most often used for illustration -- they don't actually strike each other: "Rather," as Timothy Ferris explains, "the negataively charged fields of the two balls repel each other ... were it not for their electrical charges they could, like galaxies, pass right through each other unscathed." When you sit in a chair, you are not actually sitting there, but levitating above it at a height of one angstrom (a hundred millionth of a centimeter), your electrons and its electrons implacably opposed to any closer intimacy. --Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything, pg. 141

Lakota Elder Dan explains the problems we modern language users have because of those language habits Mr. Korzybski's "General Semantics helps you break - - -

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 ALSO OF INTEREST?

UNCOMMON SENSE: The nature of "reality" via Bohr, Feynman, & Quantum Mechanics. AND political "states"

UNCOMMON SENSE: General Semantics. From 3 Directions - - -

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Ten for Orwellistan!

"The legal hallmark of dictatorship has always been Preventative Law -- the concept that a man is guilty until he is proven innocent..." --Ayn Rand

"Bear with us here. We are used to reacting to crime after it happens. Preventing crime before it happens is new to us and we must adapt. Prevention is now our top priority. We're learning with each new incident." --U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, CNBC, October 16, 2001, 12:45:10

Homeland Security moves forward with 'pre-crime' detection --Privacy Inc. - Declan McCullagh CNET News

"This study, just released, reveals that the U.S.government has played a major role in orchestrating most of those (399 U.S. Justice Dept. reported) terrorist plots. 94% of those cases involved pre-emptive prosecutions. That's the practice of targeting those who officials deem predisposed to committing crimes before an actual crime is committed. ...Unless there is a public outcry over government manufactured crimes, that too may become common practice to target anyone." --Marina Portnaya, Headline News, RT, June 13, 2014

There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws." --Atlas Shrugged (1957)

...approximately 40,000 new state laws took effect in the U.S. just at the beginning of 2012 alone. There are so many, even Congress can't figure out how many it passed, let alone all the laws passed by states, counties and municipalities, etc. And the rules, regulations, orders and controls promulgated by bureaucracies at every level. And remember, ignorance of the law is no excuse - - - even when there are millions of them. --But Does Peeping Tom Protect You?, by L. Reichard White

There are 100 million words of binding federal law or regulation... more than any person or business can reasonably expect to comprehend. Only a small fraction of these can be enforced - but which [fraction] changes depending on the whim of the inspector on the scene. --'The Rule of Nobody' - Washington Times

"Even if you're not doing anything wrong, you're being watched and recorded. You simply have to eventually fall under suspicion from somebody, even by a wrong call, and then they can use the system to go back in time and scrutinize every decision you've ever made, every friend you've ever discussed something with." --Whistle blower Edward Snowden: Leak of NSA spy programs "marks my end" - CBS News

Every year, thousands of upstanding, responsible Americans run afoul of some incomprehensible federal law or regulation and end up serving time in federal prison. What is especially disturbing is that it could happen to anyone at all -- and it has.... Federal law in particular now criminalizes entire categories of activities that the average person would never dream would land him in prison. --You're (Probably) a Federal Criminal, Brian Walsh - FOXNews.com, - July 21, 2009

Boston civil-liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate calls his new book "Three Felonies a Day," referring to the number of crimes he estimates the average American now unwittingly commits because of vague laws. ... L. Gordon Crovitz: You Commit Three Felonies a Day - WSJ

JEREMY SCAHILL: …you were one of only half-a-dozen members of Congress - not a single senator - to simply state on the record that American citizens have the right not to be assassinated by their own government without due process.

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: …it's amazing that we're in an America where we have to defend the rights of Americans to be free from assassination by their own country… How long is it before some local police department uses a drone to intercept and kill a suspect, and when that becomes commonplace? --Jeremy Scahill and Dennis Kucinich: In Obama's 2nd Term, Will Dems Challenge U.S. Drones, Killings?

ALSO OF INTEREST?

"Fiat money: The historical connection to totalitarianism" | L's Little Letters

UNCOMMON SENSE: The FBI's Greatest Hits, February 26, 2012

Who Ya Gonna Call? -- LewRockwell.com

The Handschu Scam: Short & Sweet, By L. Reichard White

Brief History of a Banana Republic, Compiled by L. Reichard White

UNCOMMON SENSE: Orwellistan? Are we there yet mommy??

Bonus Army: US military attacks demonstrating American War Veterans - YouTube

What CAN happen here -- « Antiwar.com Blog

EU funding 'Orwellian' artificial intelligence plan to monitor public for "abnormal behaviour" - Telegraph

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The Singularity is here -- and this guy is an under-achiever - - -

It may be hard to believe, but before the end of this century, 70 percent of today’s occupations will likewise be replaced by automation. Yes, dear reader, even you will have your job taken away by machines.... --Better Than Human | Gadget Lab | Wired.com  

Kurzweil suggests this will be technologically feasible much faster than this writer suggests.

If YOU don't, who will?

We broadcast from the United Nations climate change talks in Doha, Qatar, where expectations for a binding agreement on limiting greenhouse gases are low despite global emissions at a record high. The two-week conference comes at the end of the last year that the binding emissions cuts agreed to under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol are in effect. Despite the Kyoto Protocol, a new scientific report out Sunday found global emissions of carbon dioxide reached a record high in 2011 and are likely to take a similar jump in 2012.

WAEL HMAIDAN: Well, as you mentioned, at the end of the century, we are—might face a 6-degree warming world. There is a wide scientific view that a 4-degree world will mean the collapse of human civilization... If we don’t do rapid action in the coming five to seven years, we are not going to meet our 2-degree target and come closer to a 4-degree world.  --Climate Cliff: As Global Emissions Peak, Hopes for U.N. Climate Deal in Doha at All-Time Low <http://www.democracynow.org/2012/12/3/as_global_emissions_peak_hopes_for>

If you don't trust political bodies to fix the problem -- since the members need corporate campaign bribes to get elected -- you might consider this: Welcome to Alcohol Can Be a Gas! | Permaculture & Alcohol Can Be A Gas

And for a little more in-depth explanation, NEEDED: Unofficial Global Warming Fix | L's Little Letters

And for a suggestion for that fix, Unofficial Global Warming fix | L's Little Letters

General Semantics. From 3 Directions - - -

Seminal semanticist Alfred A. Korzybski: "The map is not the territory."

Seminal physicist Richard Feynman: "You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird... So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing - that's what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something." --and thanks to Brian Canton

Lakota elder Dan: "We didn't see that you had to name everything to make it exist, and that the name you gave something made it what it was." --Kent Nerburn, Neither Wolf nor Dog, New World Library, 2002 p. 165

When you take words as the things they represent (mistaking the map for the territory), as a result, you may often fail to "look at the bird and see what it's doing." This behavior is common, especially in "Western" super-"educated" cultures where book-learning -- which is nearly ALL words -- is emphasized.

This quirk of perception is surprising to members of those cultures which don't take the words as primary -- so much so, they often miss the implications. As Lakota elder Dan put it once he caught on, "We didn't see that you had to name everything to make it exist, and that the name you gave something made it what it was."

The question is, what is the main influence on your primary focus of attention. Is it what's suggested by words or is it the underlying reality?

Here's an interesting little test - - -

How did you do?

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The OTHER "Trickle-down" theory

The "trickle-down" theory is that if you reduce taxes on the rich, that money will "trickle down" in the form of jobs to the less rich.  The OTHER "trickle-down" theory is that if you give that tax money to the government, it will "trickle down" to the less rich.  --L. Reichard White, Monday, August 20, 2012 3:45 AM

The nature of "reality" via Bohr, Feynman, & Quantum Mechanics

"You decry "states", forgetting that without existing in a "state" you have no existence whatsoever (I am referring here to your earlier comment on how the root word "state" means "static" or unchanging)...that which is not in some recognizable state is an undefined cloud of random nothingness." --Greg

I see where the problem lies.

"States" are never unchanging -- except in someone's imagination. Those Rocky Mountains are slowly weathering away and in the distant future will be old worn down mountains like the Appalachians out east (which, aeons ago, were the tallest mountains in Earth's history), etc. We may, in such cases, ignore the changes which are, none the less, always occuring in everything and ASS-U-ME that the changes don't matter for current purposes -- and hope that assumption is right. None the less, the changes are, as any first year science student should be able to tell you, still occuring whether we like it or not.

And most folks don't like it. It makes them feel insecure. So, many seek the false security of an "unchanging condition" AKA, "state," which simply can't exist. And sometimes that imaginary concept metastasizes into a political "State."

As the Niarga River inexorably eats away at the bedrock beneath, Niagra Falls moves upstream from 3.5 to 7 feet per year. As a result, during its lifetime, the falls has moved about seven miles upstream. That's why it's where it is today. And, unsurprisingly, there is an organization that wants to stop the process. Lots of luck with that.

Like it or not, universal change is solidly based on established principles of Physics -- and is a basic tenet of General Semantics.

The most basic level models we have of "reality," especially quantum mechanics, indeed tell us everything is pretty much "an undefined cloud of random nothingness." Einstein didn't like this a bit. Neither did seminal quantum physicist Neils Bohr.

Which is probably why he quipped, "If you are not surprised by quantum mechanics then you have not understood it." And, further, likely as a result,

"Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future." --Seminal quantum physicist Niels Bohr

Another legendary physicist, Richard Feynman, agrees with Bohr about Quantum Mechanics - - -

"I think I can safely say that nobody understands Quantum Mechanics." --Richard Feynman

Since quantum models show "reality" to be pretty much "random nothingness" -- and have been reluctantly accepted by main-stream physics -- this probably explains another of Feynman's famous quotes - - - 

"I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything"... --Richard Feynman

At this point, either you "get" it or you don't.

It took me six months of intensive discussion with one of my friends before he "got" it. Another read "People in Quandaries" and "got it" pretty much on his own. It's not easy either way.

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