[Neurons] 2018 Neurons #55 KORZYBSKI AND SEMANTIC REACTIONS

[Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall

2018 Neurons #55   

December 24, 2018

Executive Thinking and Korzybski (#4) 

 

ALFRED KORZYBSKI

AND SEMANTIC REACTIONS

 

You know what a reaction is.  But what is a semantic reaction?  It is a
reaction to something due to its semantic meanings.  You are reacting not
because something has impacted you, but because something means something to
you.  And, you were the one who created that semantic reaction within
yourself!   That's because you have attributed some meaning to some stimulus
(a word, action, tone, experience, concept, etc.) and now you are
unthinkingly reacting.  Now instead of thinking, considering, and being
mindful of the stimulus and even your thoughts about it and keeping your
thinking current, you are reacting.  And you are doing so unthinkingly. 

 

Now in analyzing how this process works, Korzybski said that a person has
identified two things which exist at different logical levels.  That is, you
have treated those two different things as if they were the same or
equivalent.  To you they are identical.  There's no distinction between
them.  NLP later recognized as a "complex equivalent" and the NLP formula
E.B. = I.S. (External Behavior equals Internal State) lies at the of
reframing (which is fully developed in the book, Mind-Lines: Lines for
Changing Minds).

 

Yet a semantic reaction of this sort is not innocent nor is it harmless.
Actually it creates all sorts of emotional distresses- distresses that are
self-made and unnecessary.  Korzybski wrote:

"Through wrong evaluation we are using the lower centres [of our nervous
processes] too much and cannot 'think' properly.  We are 'over-emotional,'
we get easily confused, worried, terrorized, or discouraged; or else we
become absolutists, dogmatics, etc.  ... Owing to wrong evaluation we add
self-made semantic difficulties to the difficulties which we actually find
in nature.  When we live in a delusional world, we multiple our worries,
fears, and discouragements, and our higher nerve centres, instead of
protecting us from over-stimulation, actually multiply the semantic harmful
stimuli indefinitely." (S&S, p. 481)

 

Here we "cannot think properly" because we are only using our lower nerve
centers.  Conversely, by "proper thinking," Korzybski means using your
higher nerve centers-those that are associated with the executive functions
of your cortex and prefrontal lobes.  He means the advanced thinking of an
adult who thinks things through, reasons well, checks contexts, chooses what
is ecological, etc.

"Roughly the central part of the brain which we call the thalamus is
directly connected with the dynamic world through our 'senses' and with
those semantic manifestations which we usually call 'affective,' 'emotions,'
all of which manifest themselves as dynamic." (Ibid)

 

The thalamus and other lower structures in the lower part of the brain
create a very different picture of the world than the picture derived in the
higher levels.  That world is emotional-dynamic, shifting, in flux, etc.

"The cortex which gives us the static verbal reactions and definitions, is
not connected with the outside world directly but receives all impulses
through the thalamus.  On semantic levels the thalamus can only deal with
dynamic material, the cortex with static.  Obviously the optimum working of
the human nervous system, which represents cyclic chain, where the lower
centres supply the material for the higher centres and the higher centres
should influence the lower, we must have means to translate the static into
dynamic and the dynamic into static; a method supplied exclusively by
mathematics." (S&S, p. 758)

 

For an optimum functioning we need both the higher and the lower functioning
of the brain.  And for holistic thinking, we need them communicating back
and forth between each other.  This, in fact, is the secret for a higher
level of quality thinking- being able to translate up and down the levels of
the brain.  Korzybski said that intelligence itself requires passing from
level to level in both directions.  That lies at the heart of "proper
training in consciousness of abstracting." (Ibid., p. 486).

 

What's the reason for this?  When you can distinguish the level of the
"abstracting" (thinking, generalizing, etc.), then you will not be
identifying and that eliminates the semantic reaction.  That's why the most
basic semantic reactions are the Cognitive Distortions- awfulizing,
personalizing, emotionalizing, etc.   These are actually the characteristic
ways that children think!   Yet for them it is okay.  Children have not yet
developed the capacity or maturity to distinguish levels.  And that's also
why Korzybski asked about your "semantic age" (Ibid., p. 149).  "How old are
you anyway, semantically?"  Semantic reactions indicate childhood thinking,
not adult thinking and responding.

 

If the lower nerve centers in the brain process data so that it registers as
more fluid and dynamic and if the higher in a more static code, then
translating dynamic information upward and stable generalizations downward
gives you a fuller and richer understanding.  It's like a movie.  When you
watch it, you experience it as dynamic, moving, and fluid.  Yet when you
stop the movie, when you freeze-frame moments in the movie-you can detect
the finite differences. At the lower levels, you have variance at every
moment, conversely at the higher levels you have "invariance" (Ibid., p.
292, 230, 578).

 

Both levels are needed in your thinking and responding.  The lower levels
gives you a sense of continuity where you swim in an ever-shifting and
non-permanence of details.  The higher levels arrests the pictures to give
you stable (or static) understandings- ideas and principles that are
permanent at that level.  We inevitably and naturally move upward to draw
conclusions.  Yet if you made those conclusions permanent and unchangeable
and identify them with what is "outside and beyond the nervous system, then
you create for yourself semantic reactions.

 

If, however, when you encounter the ever-moving, shifting, and dynamic world
"out there" and then move that information upward as you draw conclusions
and then be ready to extensionalize those static representations, you will
keep yourself current to the ever-changing territory.  Knowing this explains
why we have several processes for dancing up and down the levels in the
Cognitive Make-Over training for Executive Thinking,

 

 

 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D., Executive Director 

Neuro-Semantics 

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO. 81520 USA                             

               1 970-523-7877 

                    Dr. Hall's email:
<mailto:meta at acsol.net\hich\af31506\dbch\af31505\loch\f31506> meta at acsol.net


    cid:261CED33-4408-4124-862B-B9A4B37A367A

    

 

Dr. L. Michael Hall writes a post on "Neurons" each Monday.  For a free
subscription, sign up on www.neurosemantics.com.   On that website you can
click on Meta-Coaching for detailed information and training schedule.   To
find a Meta-Coach see  <http://www.metacoachfoundation.org>
www.metacoachfoundation.org.   For Neuro-Semantic Publications --- click
"Products," there is also a catalog of books that you can download.   

 

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