Sedate and Anaesthetize

I just saw the latest episode of Doctor Who. Russel T. Davies wants to go out on a bang, and he certainly isn't going to disappoint. Steven Moffat better not drag the good Doctor into the soppy dark ages, however.

I'm slowly running out of money and sanity. I never thought having money was contingent on my mental health, but its beginning to seem that way. Every time i fork over currency, my mind is forming resistances and dark reminders that I shouldn't be spending or staying at home. Every bill is like a blade being twisted in my spine - I lost my gym membership card the other day and I flew into a rage just because I knew it incurs a replacement fee. I gained perspective, eventually. I'm sort of numbing myself to any and all effects that the outside world wants me to have. Its so I can function and experience more so than live and feel, and I think I'm fine with that.

Control Denied

Due to my development of a blatant disregard for any type of formal learning, I told my examiners to define their questions better. I wrote about an entire page on why their question "democracy is more desirable than any other feasible alternative" was too subjective to be thoroughly answered. Sociology and Political Science can go fuck itself - there's nothing falsifiable about conjectures that can't be refuted. I'd much rather call my Political Science degree a Political Theology degree - there's a lot of faith and belief in which rational thought is supposed to belie.

Because thousands of Tibetans march on the street because they hate the Chinese government mean that they desire democracy? We assume they do. We believe that democracy and freedom are hand-in-hand, indissoluble, colloidal. In this democracy of mine, we lock up artists, deny same-sex couples to formalize their relationship and treat our adults like children by depriving them of the chance to fuck up and learn for themselves. If you believe democracy is freedom, remember that when you say something is, it is not!

That exam was almost as stupid as the time one of my old high-school mates gave me shit for putting too many print articles in the school magazine. That isn't relevant. But it was just as retarded.

The Adolescence of Humanity

"The conclusion of the World War is the closing of the period of the childhood of humanity.
This childhood, as any childhood, can be characterized as devoid of any real understanding of values, as is that of a child who uses a priceless chronometer to crack nuts." - Alfred Korzybski, The Manhood of Humanity

Written over 80 years ago, Count Korzybski's seminal work on time-binding postulated that humanity had finished its childhood and was ready to enter "manhood" as he described it. As much as I do not wish to ride roughshod over his incalculably valuable works and systems, he forgot one thing - a child does not enter manhood instantaneously, he must experience the unwieldy period of adolescence. A time of self-indulgence and insecurity; to find what knowledge one has accumulated and to apply it to their interpretation of the world - not quite a child but not yet a man. Which brings me to Dr. Phil and his "expose" on the already ubiquitous and not-so-clandestine seduction community.

Dr. Philip McGraw, PhD holds a degree in psychology, notably in behavior-modification therapy. His southern "straight-talk" soothes audiences by applying scant conventional wisdom to seemingly innocuous problems. He invited two walking advertisements for the Mystery Method on the program who spouted - almost verbatim - what their mentor "Mystery" had told them (and some throwaway maxims that Neil Strauss plagiarized to boot - so cringeworthy) which had me groaning at a television more so than usual. (Especially when it turns out he just copied down the game of "First-Degree Rapo" from Berne's Games People Play and spun it out into 200 pages to be applied to women by men rather than vice-versa.) He then turned our attention to Ross Jeffries and his Speed Seduction techniques which I discovered is little more than SS draped in NLP clothing. However, the following exchange earned Dr. McGraw a bit more credibility in my eyes at least:

McGraw: How much success have you had with this product?
Jeffries: Well, what is success? Is it how many students I've taught? How much money I've made? I can say that I have made a lot of men very happy. Hopefully women too.
(Me: I wonder if this bastard can NLPify his way out of this one.)

...

McGraw: So what differentiates your method with these fellers'?
Jeffries: I ask women about their good feelings ... and I anchor it with a tap on the nose or by moving a glass-
McGraw: So you're using neuro-linguistics.
Jeffries (visibly startled): Yes, Neuro-Linguistic Programming. I've been an NLP Master Practitioner since 1987.
(Me: Impressive.)

Normally, I wouldn't give a shit since I use NLP myself to various advantages. But then the words of Korzybski struck me, since he had an invisible hand in creating these production-line Don Juans - we have the knowledge to improve our daily habits, to eliminate unsanity and to use General Semantics and its offshoots to guide ourselves to the Manhood of Humanity - but I think Count Korzybski was premature in his optimism. First, we must grasp the value of the knowledge we have been given in order to truly appreciate it. Not to say that the aforementioned application of this knowledge is completely useless, I merely posture that we haven't begun to unleash its full potential for a greater benefit. Nevertheless, I coined this phrase (which Shai thought was too good for the likes of me) to remind myself about how dumb we all can really be:

"Nearly everyone has the capacity to be smart. The problem is, idiots never ask how and smart people won't tell them."

Enjoy!

Belief and Manipulation

"A definition is the start of an argument, not the end of one." - Neil Postman

Its a very cold world. The image of the outside of my skin, the feel of its contours and the sounds of its going on are just processed and filtered, inverted and diluted and end up being verisimilitudes in one way or another. Someone asked me in a round about way what the point of Facebook is. Facebook is a product of its medium. On the internet, communication and feedback isn't requisite to the spread of information. It changes the focus from "allowing" communication to happen to "insisting" that you do. This gives credence to the maxim that "you can't not communicate." Facebook is never silent. Even when you walk away, it is still communicating and insisting that you do every time you log on. Facebook is not a compendium of facts, or a fun-looking Wikipedia about non-famous people; it becomes an advertisement so people can make emotional value judgments about other people. It, like most things, renders irrelevant information relevant and vice versa.

For example, take the book "The Game" which purports that, using a swathe of bastardized NLP techniques and cocky attitude, any man can pick up any woman at any time. "The Game" does not teach people to become modern-day lotharios, it tells men to become walking sandwich boards to elicit emotional responses from others to achieve their goals - it teaches them to become walking bullshit-spouting advertisements. An advertisement tells you nothing about the product; it only claims certain abstract positions and forces you to react on an "emotional" level. If you want someone to buy your product or use your service, you must make them "feel good" about it. The world of modern-day advertising aims at just that. I can promise you abstracts, therefore I can promise the world. It is hard to refute an advertisement, since it doesn't set itself up to be challenged. Game rules, indeterminacies and double binds make sure of it.

Hey, I'm not one to make a case against it - if the shoe fits, wear it!

Ghost Office

I was going to write a tedious rant about how people hate other people and how cigarettes are awesome because they kill you, but I thought it would be prudent and less shit to have some lulz. A corruption of LOL. Which stands for Laugh out Loud.

PRESENTING!

THE UNSENT SECRET LETTERS FROM FAMOUS PEOPLE TO OTHER FAMOUS PEOPLE (USLFFPTOFP)

My rampant unemployment has led me to devour books at an alarming rate for a member in a society taught to think as little as possible and react as much as possible. These letters will never be sent because, well, people are pussies. And some of the mentioned are dead (or at least, dead to me.) Here's the first USLFFPTOFP:

Rick Astley is a cult internet phenomenon. Everyone's been rick rolled. If you haven't yet, you're either over 40 or living in Sierra Leone. Bill Hicks in his masterful Half-Sane pilloried Astley for being a general jackass and complete wanker. Here's what Astley would send to Mr. Hicks if his tarred lungs didn't give out on him:

From: Rick Astley
To: Bill Hicks
Subject: Funny

Hey Bill, hope you're well. I've almost forgiven you for calling me all those horrible names you did in that video. It's funny because even though my video is a source of derision, it does generate a lot of laughs - more laughs in a shorter length of time than you ever got in your entire career, and i'm not even a professional comedian! And I didn't have to do shit!

Your pal,

Rick "Roll'd" Astley

The truth hurts. So does this:

To: Jeff Walker, Bill Steer, Mike Amott (Carcass)
From: Mille Petrozza (Kreator)
Subject: Raise, the flag, of hate

I want my GOD DAMN RIFFS BACK!

- Mille

Actually, that could be sent to absolutely everyone after 1994.

Here's some more from the wonderful world of comic books:

To: Paramount Pictures
From: Stan Lee

I love my Marvel creations as if they were my babies and my gold-plated Mack Trucks, and I want to you to treat them with due care and diligence like you do with your million-strong audience and teams of dedicated, hard working writers.

Love,

"The Man"

They've only released the same movie about 15 times already, who is realistically going to notice now?

Here's one I would personally like to see sent:

From: Roadrunner Records Promotions Department
To: The Metal Community at Large
Subject: LOL

HAHA WE R IN UR BANDS, MARKETIN THEM TO COMERSHUL INCHRESTS

P.S NO, I WILL NOT MAKE OUT WITH COREY TAYLOR

SLAYERRRRRR! (FIRST)

- RRPD

Then this one, if the Parliamentary Spam Filter didn't catch it:

From: Andrew Fisher, John Watson, James Scullin, Ben Chifley, Gough Whitlam
To: Kevin Rudd
Subject: BASTARD

YOU GOD DAMN, SON OF A BITCH - WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU, STAN MOTHERFUCKING BRUCE?

Signed,

The Australian Labor Movement

If only. If only.

Here's another one that I think would be quite appropriate

From: Endemol Southern Star Productions
To: The four remaining Big Brother viewers
Subject: Why Bother?

We were going to write a letter to make fun of your incalculable idiocy, then we figured you wouldn't be able to read it.

And I'm out. Stay tuned!

Dust and Neglect

I've embarked on the road to success only to be confronted by obstacles in my path. I've lost all sense of direction, I can't seem to figure out where up goes or if down is where it is supposed to be. I've wiped my mind of fugues of discontent with books and other such written sense, and its transformed me into a saner person. Even though I began to hallucinate the other day - it was unbelievable. I believed that a person that is dead to me now was suddenly living; as if they had never left.

I guess it's a matter of believing myself over my eyes, at any rate. I think there are some ghosts left over in my brain that I need to exorcise. But writing that down won't help me, and doing all the terrible things that I vowed to do can't alleviate the constant imaginary crises I'm experiencing either. When I was sucking down another cigarette the other day with accompanying piece of shit cup of coffee, I thought to myself; "I can't realistically drift forever.

I'll die eventually."

General Semantics: Null-Sanity

Welcome to Part 5 in my introductory series on General Semantics.

General Semantics and Sanity
In my own research, I generally don't approach it scientifically - I usually familarize myself with what is current and work my way backward. What came before or what influenced this idea until I find the very core of what I'm getting at or trying to fully understand. This was evident when I started to familiarize myself with NLP - neuro-linguistic programming. NLP is a set of "models", that was devised by two researchers, namely John Grinder and Richard Bandler, in the 1970s in order to find out how the techniques used by leading therapists such as the hypnotherapist Milton Erickson, gestalt therapist Fritz Perls and anthropologist Gregory Bateson (among others) could be replicated by others for achieving success and mental health (success being the buzzword there.)

In the opening paragraphs of one of the books I've read on the subject (and several since) were printed the words the map is not the territory. Bereft of any mention of where this idea originated, I went and discovered the linchpin that bound all these various therapies together - Alfred Korzybski and General Semantics.

Influence on Psychotherapy
Dr. Albert Ellis, founder of Rational Emotive Therapy was the first to apply Korzybski's General Semantics into a complete doctrine of psychotherapy. The most obvious link between GS and REBT is the consciousness of abstraction - that we miss the lower-order abstractions and "awfulize" almost through unconscious reflexes. (The Activating Event-Belief-Consequence model.) Ellis succinctly explains the link in his 1991 Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture:

"[B]oth general semantics and [Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy] hold that if people think about their thinking, and minimize their "natural" tendency to overcategorize, they can significantly--though perhaps never completely--free themselves from some of their thought-language limitations and achieve a more self-fulfilling life."

Gestalt therapy, extemporized by Fritz Perls also owes a great debt to Count Korzybski, although he only gets a passing mention in his literature. One of his great "Gestalt experiments" that he asks his patients to perform are no less than Korzybski's own examples of the consciousness of abstraction!

For an illustration, let us consider such an ordinary object as a pencil...Notice first that the pencil is this unique thing. There are other pencils, to be sure, but not this very one. Say its name, "pencil," and realize vividly that the thing is not the word! The pencil as thing is non-verbal. (italics mine.)

It is no wonder that Perls and Bateson were used as models by Bandler and Grinder, as their therapies and theories all stem from the denial of the essence or "is" of identity and the consciousness of abstraction. They most importantly encouraged precise thinking arising from otherwise muddled and improper confusions of language. The idiom "map is not the territory" is simple enough to read and say, however when probed and explored for oneself, becomes a wondrous and powerful tool for inspiring and maintaining mental health and preventing "un-sanity."

References
Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics, Alfred Korzybski, Institute of General Semantics, 1950, 4th edition.
Language in Thought and Action: Fourth Edition, Samuel I. Hayakawa, Harcourt, 1972.
Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Gregory Bateson, University Of Chicago Press, 1972.
A New Guide to Rational Living, Dr. Albert Ellis and Dr. Robert Harper, Wilshire Book Company, 1975.
"A General Semantics Glossary" by Robert Pula in ETC.: A Review of General Semantics, Dec. 22, 1993.
Gestalt Therapy: Growth and Excitement in the Human Personality, Dr. Frederick Perls, Gestalt Journal Press, 1951.
Introducing Neuro-Linguistic Programming, John Seymour and Joseph O'Connor, Thorsons Publishers
Patterns of the Hypnotic Techniques of Dr. Milton H. Erickson, M.D., John Grinder and Richard Bandler, Metamorphous Press, 1996.
"General semantics and rational-emotive therapy: 1991 Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture." by Dr. Albert Ellis, ETC.: A Review of General Semantics, Oct. 1, 2007.

So, I herd u liek...

Believe it or not. Snapped this yesterday in The Australian.

Dear Reuters:

Please check the IDs of idiot computer programmers before you interview them. You just think you're journalists when you pull this shit. Go back to J-school before it's too late.

Love and cupcakes,

Tom.


Among other things I didn't supposedly do on the weekend was try to join the Australian Society for General Semantics. Calling people shouldn't be that hard. I'm still dying of the black lung disease. Its very cold outside. I am liking the new Weezer album too much. My heart says that The Greatest Man That Ever Lived is the best song ever written, but my head has put up yet another one of its characteristic fight-to-the-death resistances again. Curses. A thousand curses and poxes on both your houses!

And now I'm sitting here in this rather splendid sports jacket, all dressed up with absolutely nowhere to go. No coffee, no beer, no cigarettes...and the line is still busy.