[Neurons] 2011 Meta Reflections #4

[L. Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall

Meta Reflections 2011 - #4

January 24, 2011

 

Series on Alfred Korzybski #1

 

 

 

KORZYBSKI'S ORIGINAL NLP

 

 

A long, long time ago in a galaxy far away NLP began in another form and
presentation than what is typically told in NLP histories.   It began when
an engineer during the First World War left Europe and came to the United
States totally fed up with mankind's semantic non-sense that was generating
the stupidity of war and destruction.  As an bridge engineer, that original
thinker began thinking so thoughts that would launch a whole new way of
thinking and of living.

 

This engineer began his thoughts wondering ever-so curiously, "What is man?"
"What is a scientific description of human-kind?"  And what he wanted was a
definition that could be used so that solid and actionable knowledge could
be built upon it-year after year, generation after generation, so that just
like the construction of bridges and buildings, people could be built and
supported and empowered so that things continually improve.

 

This attitude came from his engineering perspective.  

"Why do we continually create more functional and effective buildings,
bridges, airplanes, etc.?  Why do we keep progressing in the hard sciences
generation after generation, but not so in the soft sciences?  Why have we
not created a solid foundation for the social and psychological sciences?
What is the difference between the tremendous advances in one while
simultaneously in the other there is still major confusion,
misunderstanding, and disagreement?

 

Now once this engineer arrived in America and learned a whole new language,
he wrote two books.  In the first, he created a scientific definition of man
and in the second, he created a whole system for mankind's science and
sanity.  He titled the first book, The Manhood of Humanity (1921)to indicate
the possibilities of the human race after it grows up from infancy and
childhood.  He titled the second book, Science and Sanity: An Introduction
to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics (1933).

 

Then Alfred Korzybski, founder of General Semantics, began conducting
classes and trainings in the 1930s and 1940s in Neuro-Linguistics.  This was
his term that he invented and used in his 1933 book.  And it was Korzybski
who established the foundation of NLP by writing:

"A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar
structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness. ... If we
reflect upon our languages, we find that at best they must be considered
only as maps.  A word is not the object it represents; and languages exhibit
also this peculiar self-reflexiveness, that we can analyse languages by
linguistic means.  This self-reflexiveness of languages introduces serious
complexities, which can only be solved by the theory of multi-ordinality.
The disregard of these complexities is tragically disastrous in daily life
and science." (p. 58)

 

Now classic NLP (1972-1975) quoted Korzybski on the first part ("A map is
not the territory") but it did not go further, it did not pick up on the
importance of self-reflexivity or multi-ordinality.  Well, NLP did not until
I did that in 1991-1992 when I began publishing articles on forgotten and
unknown Meta-Model distinctions of Korzybski (later incorporated in the book
that updated the Meta-Model, Communication Magic 1997) and published in
Anchor Point as a series of articles (1991-1993), and in 1994 with the
discovery and creation of the Meta-States Model.

 

Every time I'm interviewed and people ask, "How did I create the Meta-States
Model?  Where did it come from?"  I not only tell about the modeling project
on resilience, I tell about my research and modeling of Korzybski's original
Neuro-Linguistic work.  In fact, it wasn't until I went back to read the
source, that I discovered that Korzybski invented the terminology we use -
Neuro-Linguistics, Neuro-Semantics, Human Design Engineering, etc.

 

My first reading of Korzybski's massive classic work Science and Sanity was
1989.  That led first to the extending of the Meta-Model by identify several
key linguistic distinctions that Korzybski introduced that had not been
brought into the original Meta-Model.  It led secondly to exploring the
self-reflexiveness in language and as part of human consciousness which led
to the Meta-States Model. 

 

Then with all that I had been writing about the General Semantics
foundations of NLP, Denis Bridoux and Philip Nolan in England asked that I
would do a workshop that would do a comparative analysis of General
Semantics and NLP.  We titled that first workshop, The Merging of the
Models.  And from those workshops (which we ran three times) arose the
distinctive features of Neuro-Semantics that takes NLP to the next level.

 

It only took a little while in my very first exposure to the writings of
Alfred Korzybski to realize how much NLP arose from this source- and how
much NLP had failed to recover and develop from Korzybski.  Classic NLP had
only take a few choice bits from Korzybski and there was much, much more
about the structure of experience, language, states, systems, etc.!  And I'm
still convinced that there is yet more to be mined from Science and Sanity
for modeling excellence in human experiences.  And because of that, I have
recently re-read Science and Sanity for the eighth time and sure enough, I
found more things that I had missed in the previous readings.

 

So with this post begins a series of articles the first person to actually
conduct Neuro-Linguistic Trainings-  Alfred Korzybski and the rich
discoveries within his work.  My design in this is to identify many of the
basic NLP concepts that goes back to Korzybski (to give him due credit) and
to identify many other things that we have brought into Neuro-Semantics that
takes NLP to a next level:

            A much more thorough focus on meaning

            What it means that we are a semantic class of life

            The nature of semantic reactions

            Seven linguistic distinctions that expand the Meta-Model

            Systems thinking and mapping

 

Why?  First, to let you know more about this foundational source of NLP and
also to present Korzybski's vision for the human condition, namely, raising
the level and quality of the human experience so that we can generate
continuous improvement in the psychological and social realms as we do in
engineering, physics, chemistry, mathematics, etc.

 

 

 

For more about Neuro-Semantic NLP --- 

          See www.neurosemantics.com 

 

Details for the First International Neuro-Semantic NLP Conference is now on
the website.  Click "Trainings" and "NS Conference" for the information and
video .

 

 

            Registration is now available --- having begun in January 2011.

 

 

 

 

 

L.  Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Neuro-Semantics Executive Director  ----   <http://www.neurosemantics.com/>
www.neurosemantics.com

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO.  81520 USA                             ----
<http://www.self-actualizing.org/> www.self-actualizing.org

1 970-523-7877                                               ----
<http://www.meta-coaching.org/> www.meta-coaching.org

 

     

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Reflection articles by Dr. Hall are sent out every Monday (Colorado time).
Trainers' Reflections are on Tuesdays and Meta-Coach Reflections on
Wednesdays.   Contact Dr. Hall at  meta at acsol.net  

 

 

 

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