by W…
Three key perceptions which need to be better understood by all of us, especially in light of recent events:
- The classical Three Laws of Thermodynamics which, as Norbert Wiener demonstrated in his Cybernetics And Society, also apply to all forms of structure as being energy and to all forms of information as being energy.
- From a very different direction in Physics, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle.
- A key tenet of Korzybski, in Science And Sanity: An Introduction to…….General Semantics: “the map is not the territory.” …And all which that means and implies.
I strongly recommend closer study of these, and even re-issue a call for writers to help in the task of working these fundamental concepts into forms which even very young children can understand, on the grounds that their wide dissemination would greatly improve mental health. Surely we can rise to the challenge of cognitive psychologist Jerome S. Bruner who, in his provocative The Process of Education arguing for a “spiral core curriculum,” declared that any idea or concept can be taught in intellectually respectable form to any child at any age level or any mental age level, provided that it is put to him in his own working conceptual vocabulary.
Learning and appreciating “The map is not the territory” at an early age (11 years) turned out to be vital to my own mental health. Fairly creative even at that age, like many creative people I had emotional ups and downs (the ups are great for getting on a roll and creating; the downs are good for editing and discarding, which is why that association). Once I really dug that not only ideas, perceptions, names and even words were only maps and not whatever reality they were depicting; that even feelings were only maps and not the situation they were depicting…… Well, I simply stopped having “bad” days!
A second dividend in mental health from this key tenet was accepting that my own idea or theory or notion about ANYthing was not identical to that thing. That ALL our maps are in error to SOME degree. Thus it is not shattering to be wrong, but inevitable, the question was where and to what degree and how in need of correction. That whether as scientist or citizen our task is to work our maps into better and better approximations of what they are maps of. That makes it much easier to be open to contradiction, surprise and correction, and to not falter from the effort to improve one’s ideas, theories and pet notions.
I’ve drifted some distance from the original assumptions in General Semantics (and some distance from those most visibly associated with its practice), rightly or wrongly. But what I’ve just outlined so sketchily above remains not only still largely valid for me, but what I perceive as a means to improve to extraordinary degree the emotional and mental health of entire populations. And at least a worthy experiment for anyone working difficult problems, whatever his or her conscious or unconscious and underlying assumptions and beliefs. So I renew my request for writerS….I emphasize the plural because there is so much need for materials to this effect, at all levels. Happily, I am now reviewing one contribution which is off to an excellent start, and which I will report on later.
Many on this list hold to a different philosophic view: that the only reality we can ever know is what our senses show us; therefore our only reality is our perceptions. To misquote Berkeley’s solipsist argument, adhered to by psychocyberneticists and those of “the New Age:” if a man alone in the forest says something, without his wife there to correct him, is he still wrong? Philosophically, that view appears to be as valid as Korzybski’s very different view. From a mental health standpoint, though, these views appear profoundly unequal. Acceptance of one’s own errors and a continuing effort to correct them and improve your notions, is built into the understanding that map and territory necessarily differ to at least some degree. A self-correcting loop is not automatically part of the solipsist perspective. If it’s any consolation, this writer HAS drifted somewhat from the Korzybski view but what I personally believe is not at issue here. What is at issue here, at least what I’m writing about, is the matter of what is conducive to emotional and mental health, and to human progress.
Along with Map vs. territory, belong the other two points above. I think all of you reading this have some familiarity with the Heisenberg. Some of you reading this, familiar with the classical thermodynamic laws and with Wiener’s extension of them to structure and information as forms of energy, may be surprised at my reference to what at first blush was so pessimistic a model. It seemed to point toward a universe running inevitably downhill toward an eventual lukewarm “heat death.” Those of you who are familiar with either Nobel Laureate Ilya Prigogine’s bases for “negative entropy” or my own (for a touch of the latter see http://www.winwenger.com/strangif.htm) , may find themselves looking instead at something extraordinarily positive. I have cited these three highly various factors: thermodynamics, Heisenberg, and map-is-not-territory, as proposed bases not only for personal study but as part of a universal curriculum because among other things, once these points are really “dug,” you have better mental health not only from the standpoint of emotions, that having a “bad” day is usually more a matter of one’s own internal feelings than it is of objective external events. (Though we’ve had a objectively bad day quite recently.) It’s really digging that our own error is not only inevitable, that its discovery a welcome step toward a better grasp of things.
With that said: I experience considerable concern and dismay at reports that some of those who just mass-murdered seven thousand mostly innocent human beings, and some of those commanding the main terrorist organizations around the world, are intelligent, highly educated, and even thoughtful men. It is that which has turned some of my attention back to issues concerning mental health, and to one of several areas of possible solution which will have to be addressed before the world can be free of more events like September 11, and of the conditions which gave rise to them. With apologies to the several distinctly differing views represented on this list concerning the nature of reality, truth, and our relation to these: ….win
PS: some of you remember, and maybe were even shocked by, the late Mother Theresa’s saying that she could as easily have been like Adolf Hitler. I pretty well understand that statement. If we are ever to emerge from this present situation to a better world free of mass murderings of various kinds and of other terrorist acts, I imagine more of us will need to understand and reflect on the meaning of that statement and of such truths as may be found behind it. …w