Just shaping up some text for the Maybe Logic Academy sessions we intend to run in parallel with the 'Find The Others' festival, which accompanies the Cosmic Trigger play in Liverpool.
I have volunteered to moderate a couple of weeks, one on E-Prime, and one on the 8-Circuit Model. I will use this blog to post the rough drafts.
WEEK ONE
Tools for Thinking - To Be, or Not To Be
Language as a Virus
Much of RAW's work revolved around perception and 'belief
systems', and most people use words to create their models of the world, which
may (or may not) have a close match to the non-verbal 'reality' in which we
live. Other ‘languages’ include
mathematical ones, music, art, dance, etc.
Although many cultures (and religions) consider humans
somehow different from 'animals', much of our behaviours remain rooted in our
primate nature.
We humans may prove unique in our development of a verbal
language (although communication in some form pervades the animal and plant
kingdoms).
The particular aspect of language that we will look at now
relates to the human ability to pass messages down through the generations
(Korzybski called this time-binding) and we can receive messages not just
orally, as with most tribes, but through writing, which can store information
indefinitely.
Unfortunately, such messages may pass on information
accurately, or create distortions.
NLP (which owes a lot to Korzybski’s work) refers to deletion, distortion and generalizations, as ineffective ways to
communicate.
War of Words
Korzybski spoke several languages, so seems far more likely
to have understood how each language imposes a 'grid' over the world. He also
worked as an engineer, and understood the precision of mathematics, compared to
the ambiguity of words. People who only speak one language can easily mistake
their verbal description for 'reality', rather than 'just one way of describing
the world'.
In the 1930s, even the maths of Quantum Mechanics began to
throw up strange results, undermining the old certainties of scientific
language and creating paradoxes (when translated from maths to verbal language).
Korzybski set out to 'clean up' English, to avoid the distortions inherent in
each kind of language, and create a more rational or objective form of
communication.
He devise a series of tools to help formulate the language
to avoid ambiguity, and misleading implications, as he thought improvements in
the way that we think could help eliminate prejudices, avoid the risk of war
over belief systems, etc.
Some of those tools we have already incorporated into modern
thinking: the hyphen to link things that language otherwise appears to separate
(body-mind, space-time); 'air quotes' around phrases, etc. You can check out “Science & Sanity” when
you have plenty of time available to you.
Bob (and Alfred K) call two-value logic ‘Aristotelian’ – which
does not allow any grey areas (the Excluded Middle) or the flexibility of Fuzzy
Logic. Mr K calls his work non-aristotelian
or non-A, Bob calls it Maybe Logic.
E-Prime
David Bourland developed one particular aspect of the work,
by suggesting the use of English without the verb 'to be'. Specifically, the 'is' of identity and of
predication. So many arguments take the
form of flat assertions: “There is a
God,” the certain of which may well elicit in someone else “There isn't”. The sea is
blue; my favourite band is the best,
and so on. Such two-vale logic offers little in the way of resolution, but to
say “I believe in a creator god” at least owns that it is a personal belief,
not a description of “the way things are.”
It can feel awkward at first, to use E-Prime (like learning
any new language), and if you find it difficult to make the above distinction (the
‘is’ of identity and predication) then you may prefer to hunt down and
eliminate all uses of the verb 'to be'. However, even Bob found it difficult to
speak in E-Prime continuously, so when it proves too difficult you can always
let yourself off the hook, in what we call E-choice, rather than struggle with
alternatives.
e.g. How old are you?
I am 25.
Note: The spook of the continuous present (I am going) is not so
important, as it is a quirk of English.
Je vais (French), voy (Spanish) = I go, I am
going, I do go. The use of the verb 'to
be' as an auxiliary does not create big problems, just as “I have seen...” does
not have anything to do with the possessive (to have).
Occasionally replacing 'is' can feel convoluted, just as
writers, feeling bored with 'he said, she said', can get carried away with 'he
emphasised, she shouted, he answered, she clarified, etc.'
Many objections got raised on Bob's course. People complained about how it made the
language longer and less elegant, that it sounded clumsy, etc. In fact, many people resisted before even
attempting the exercise (often the sign of a taboo).
On a more positive note
Sometimes the verb ‘to be’ gets used on purpose,
particularly in advertising and propaganda:
Guinness is
good for you.
This is
your brain on drugs.
You will often find it used in making flat assertions [There is a God], or affirmations.[Don't worry, be happy]
John Lilly’s
Beliefs Unlimited (a
self-hypnotic script) contains lots of uses of the verb, and attempts to
convert it to E-Prime proved difficult for me.
“What is believed to be true, either is true,
or becomes true, within limits to be discovered through experience and
experiment.”
In the province of the mind what one
believes to be true either will result in accurate predictions now, or will
later fulfil any predictions (?)
"In the province of the mind there are no limits."
The province of the
mind does not appear to me to have any limits.
"There are no limits."
No-one has ever found the edge.
When asked about my translation attempts, Bob replied:
For ritual I think the Milton Model works
better than the Meta Model.
In NLP, the Meta
Model tries to remove deletions, distortions, generalisations, etc – to
improve the accuracy of the intended communication. E-Prime would fit here, as
a useful tool. Indeed RAW invented the word 'mosbunall' (most but not all) to soften the effect of generalizations.
The Milton Model, on the other hand, deliberately employs ambiguous language, allowing people to project their
own ‘content’ into the material. You can see
why advertisers might prefer that.
In the section of Bob’s book “Everything Is Under Control” (note the ‘is’ in the title) called Language as a Conspiracy, he says this:
“The present author has written two books in E-Prime and finds it does tend to
clarify, to de-dogmatize, and to make prose somewhat more scientific. Attempts
to write the present book [i.e. Everything Is Under Control] in E-Prime quickly
proved hopelessly baroque and created unreadable prose. You need the ‘is of identity’ to describe conspiracy theories.
Korzybski would say that proves that illusions, delusions, and ‘mental’
illnesses require the ‘is’ to perpetuate them. (He often said, ‘Isness is an
illness’)."
Exercise
Let's just treat it as an exercise for the week, to discuss
the subject of language, communication and how we model the world, employing
(as best we can) E-Prime.
Consider it a simple experiment (like not using the word 'I'
for a week) – to raise awareness.
The original motto for the MLA forums offers an
example: “We only have one rule in
this area of cyberspace - if you can't achieve tolerance, at least attempt
courtesy.”
(Not “if you can't be tolerant, at least be courteous.”)
Further reading
William S. Burroughs
The influence of Burroughs on RAW remains one of the things we never got around to in the MLA - The 23 Enigma; authoritarian control systems; conspiracy; distrust of verbal systems and a preference for hieroglyphics or pictograms (RAW ran a course on The Ideogrammic Method); alternative calendars; non-linear writing and, of course, Cut-Ups, which Bob employed to describe drug and dream states in his fiction.
In this context, Burroughs actually studied with Korzybski, and promoted not only avoiding the 'IS' OF IDENTITY, but disliked the EITHER/OR (aristotelean) construction (right or wrong, body or mind, true or false), and use of the definite article "THE" (as in 'the universe', 'the way, the truth and the light', etc).
For more on that, have a look at WSB's
The Electronic Revolution; "Journey through time-space" in WSB's The Job;
Robert Anton Wilson
As proof that E-Prime does not have to end up with inelegant
language, Robert Anton Wilson wrote the whole of “Quantum Psychology” using
E-Prime. I doubt most readers feel aware
of anything odd in the writing. You can
find the section about E-Prime online here, and it also contains exercises you
might like to practice with.
http://www.rawilson.com/quantum.html
The same chapter appears here, but with links to additional
reading.
This blog offers an amusing take on why some people get
so angry about E-Prime:
WEEK TWO
The evolution of an idea – the 8 Circuit Model – "the
latest model, not the last"
“You never change
things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new
model, that makes the existing model obsolete.” Bucky Fuller
RAW often called himself a 'model agnostic' – in the sense
that, using mental models as tools to understand things can prove very useful,
but ideally you don't mistake your mental model for 'reality'. The map is not the territory. The model is not the mind.
He particularly liked the 8 circuit model from Tim Leary,
which both Bob and Antero Alli expanded and added to. Antero Alli still runs courses on the subject
– with lots of practical work, too.
You will find the model explicitly referred to in both RAW's
fiction and non-fiction, and, once familiar with it, you will also notice
implicit references to it. Fnord.
In the Illuminatus Chronicles, Sigismundo Celine is aware
of the first three ‘souls’ (from Aquinas, drawing on Aristotle) – the
Vegetative, the Animal and the Human.
His initiations will supposedly open up the ‘fourth soul’ (connection to
the NoMind) and no further distinction gets made).
Bob wrote those books with full knowledge of the later
evolutions of this model, which teases out various other levels within that
psychedelic ‘fourth soul’.
In these later models, a fourth level appears within the
‘terrestrial circuits’ – related to the pack or tribe, and the price we pay to
feel part of the group. It mostly gets
described as including mating and reproduction, so naturally folds back to a
new life, beginning again in Circuit 1.
For individuals who get out of that endless loop, the
escape takes various forms, and other levels unfold as the individual follows
that path. This higher realm gets
divided (in this model) into four other systems, whose attributes vary, their
names have changed, and even the sequence doesn’t seem fixed and final.
In brief, the first circuit refers to the most basic spatial
dimension, approach – avoidance,
just as the plant reaches for the sun, or the amoeba avoids things it does not
wish to incorporate so some things appeal to us, and others repel. The second
circuit relates to the mammalian aspect of space, dominance – submission, finding our place (I’d say up & down,
but Bucky Fuller considered those an illusion of beings living on the surface
of a planet). The third spatial dimension, we know as left and right (sometimes they mirror each other, sometimes they
seem different). This circuit is linked to the human, using both sides of the
brain, and relating to language (in the complex form we have uniquely evolved),
and the opposable thumb – our preferred way of considering ‘intelligence’. The
fourth circuit relates to time, the
tribe, our links to others, and the rights and responsibilities that go with
that, including reproduction.
That fourth circuit appears far more limited than the
‘fourth soul’ of the Illuminatus Chronicles.
In this later model all those higher aspects of mind get teased out into
four further circuits, which not everyone necessarily discovers. Ecstatic
realization of the body-mind; thinking about thinking; the genetic adventure
which may not yet be over; the Quantum Field, No-Mind, etc.
History of this model
Leary appears to have originally got it from 24 images
relating to a Tantric map (you can read the story in
What Does WoMan Want?) He and Bob later elaborated on what he had
learned, and they spent much time correlating information from other models
(astrology, tarot, kaballah, etc).
In Leary's The Game of Life the 24 get divided into 8
'sets' of 3 phases - (reception, storage/integration/analysis, and transmission
of information). Exo-Psychology continues in that mode.
Generally, later work has ignored this complexification, and
concentrated on the 8 circuits.
In fact, early on, in
Neurologic, (1973) Leary only describes seven systems.
Sometimes they get called 8 circuits, 8 systems, 8 channels,
8 modes, etc (RAW's own course he called 8 Dimensions of Mind, and based
it on the sequence found in Prometheus Rising) – and although the model
may seem to imply a hierarchy (e.g. 4 'terrestrial' and 4 'post-terrestrial' circuits),
we could consider them all functioning simultaneously (like blood circulating,
the autonomic nervous system, the central nervous system, digesting, walking, seeing,
etc) – but with difference degrees of conscious awareness, perhaps.
This one week could never prove enough for someone new to
this model, so you will find links to useful reference material here. It might work out better to focus on the
'lower' four circuits as we all have experience of them, and can observe them –
the 'higher circuits' may seem more interesting, but not everyone has
necessarily experienced them all.
Feel free to play with this material as much as you like.
Antero Alli (on his dedicated course) suggested we create a
set of ‘tarot’cards to carry around – you can make them up with collage,
illustrations, etc.
If you look at these PDFs of Bob's texts you may notice that
the 6
th and 7
th circuits were reversed in
“Prometheus
Rising” (1983) – which contains exercises for each circuit - and yet RAW
had used the more
common sequence
in
Cosmic
Trigger (1977). By 1990, he had
re-aligned with Leary and Alli in
Quantum
Psychology – surely an invitation to play around with this model yourself.
When asked about the anomaly (by email) Bob replied:
“
Leary revised this model several times.
The version in Prometheus Rising contains a few revisions
of my own.
Scientific models often need revision.
The model in this course is the latest, not the last... “
Discussion about people's perceptions of the 'higher
circuits' might prove a fruitful discussion point in a thread of its own –
especially as they may appear more elusive in their characteristics.
However, if we look at the basic 4 circuits (common to
virtually everyone) we may find it easier to discuss the value of them as a
model to help analyse our own everyday experiences.
Suggestions and provocations:
·
Read through the 24 brief Tantric descriptions (
see link above) and see how they
correlate with (or have inspired) the current model
·
Browse the
Winner
and Loser Scripts for each circuit, see if anything sounds familiar –
especially if you are familiar with NLP, or like to use positive affirmations,
etc
- Make
up a set of cards to note down details picked up here and there in the
research, and for jotting down your own insights.
- “The
map is not the territory”.
Korzybski argued that ‘is not’ does not have the same damaging
effect as using the word ‘is’. Does
that feel right?
- When
using maps we need several other tools – we need to know the scale; the
orientation; our current position (in relation to the map); and what the
map emphasises - no map contains all the data, so we need to understand
the features highlighted by any particular map – using the icons in the
delightfully named ‘legend’ that goes with the map.
- In
Cosmic Trigger Bob dismisses astrology, more or less, but Antero Alli
shapes all his work around that map, or model. Do you have other tools/maps/models that
you find useful?
- 1.
The map is NOT the territory
- 2.
The map does not show ALL the territory
- 3.
One can make a map of the map
