Institute of General Semantics

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The members and administrators of the General Semantics Discussion Forums would like to get to know you a bit.

Please use this thread to tell us about yourself and how you developed an interest in general semantics.

If you wish to have a conversation with someone about a GS topic, please start a thread in another appropriate forum to keep this thread clean of conversation.

Hi Crushtor,

Welcome. I was in Sydney a few years ago invited to do some seminars by Laurie Cox (Founder of the Society), Gavan Callaghan, David Hewson, Robert James and a few others. It was a most enjoyable visit. I had a grand time doing the seminars, and being taken to visit other cities including the capital where Robert, the recently elected President of The Society, resides.

Speaking on behalf of Forum members I look forward to discussions with you and hope you will find them fruitful. I would like to suggest this: If you have the time and inclination, you might think of starting a discussion group in your area. That's one way to generate some interest in the system while benefiting from exchanges with others. From my experience, you are more likely to generate interest with an attractive title... A title including "General Semantics" does not usually work. Please feel free to contact me at <miltondawes@earthlink.net> for more in this.

Milton

Hey, great work Ben et al. I like the idea of having designated people responding to beginner GS students.

Tom

PS Whys does 'preview' not have a capital 'P'? It's my programmer coming out in me.

My first contact with Alfred Korzybski was in 1945 at the Institute in Chicago. I was then a young first year student at the University of Chicago, nearby, starting off in Robert Hutchins' program for young people. I was just 16 years old when I decided I needed a part-time job to cover my personal expenses. I applied for an "errand boy" time position at IGS at 1234 East 56th Street. My boss was Charlotte Schuchardt (Read). I was soon put to work washing floors, mimeographing scientific papers for publication and sale, wrapping bundles of books for postal delivery, updating membership lists and addressograph plates, typing correspondence, etc.

When I was introduced to M. Kendig she asked me if I would like to have a copy of "Science and Sanity" and attend a seminar. I told her I had very little money, but she found a way. Kendig sold me a copy of S&S that was unsalable, because several pages were not registered properly and the print was partially shifted off the page (in the preface). I bought the book for six bucks, which she took out of my salary at 50 cents/hour, i.e. 12 hours of work which I paid off in four days.

I got a free seminar with Dr. Francis Chisholm, because Kendig made me official EdisonPhone Recording Tech. I sat and recorded Chisholm on little green EdisonPhone discs and then typed up a transcript of his remarks.

When I started to read S&S I became fascinated with the material Korzybski was presenting. I temporarily suspended all my University studies for two weeks while I read S & S from cover to cover, making marginal notations as I read. I then reviewed the book again and expanded my marginal notations into a large notebook I bought for the purpose. I then read the book again for the third time.

I then decided I had to hear Korzybski himself, and Kendig arranged for me to record him on EdisonPhone later in the summer of 1945. This was the beginning of a close relationship with the IGS people and Korzybski himself -- over a period of about five years, until he died, and with IGS people for five years after that. More later.
David

Hello Fellow General Semantics Students,

My introduction to general semantics occured about 6 or 7 years ago when my daughter Julie invited me to join one of her classes at Alverno College in Milwaukee, WI.

The class was titled "Language Analysis II," taught by Prof Andrea Johnson (former IGS President). We used several texts, including Korzybski's "Science and Sanity" and Hayakawa's "Language in Thought and Action". I became so enraptured with the course, that I enrolled in "Language Analysis I " the following semester.

From then on, I have engaged in an ongoing study of general semantics with a focus on using general semantics principles, formulations, and tools to perceive, construct, and evaluate my thoughts, feelings, and actions.

Among other things, I have learned to intelligently evaluate and respond to media messages in entertainment, advertising, politics, etc. I have developed a greater awareness and acceptance of varying perspectives on issues, relationships, traditions, cultures, etc. And I have become more open-minded and less prone to prejudice toward unfamiliar ideas, ethnicities, religious convictons, cultures, etc.

And I have a much better relationship with my daughter...

So whatever your level of interest in general semantics--from casual beginner to seasoned practitioner--we invite you to participate on this discusssion forum with the idea that each and every one of us has something to learn from the other.

ETC !
Jackie

My name's Keith Nielsen, I was introduced to GS through the works of Robert Anton Wilson, and I'm here to get a firmer grounding in the original GS material, rather than Wilson's popularizations. I certainly don't have any problem with Wilson, and greatly enjoy his work, but I like to get at the source material when possible.

Greetings everyone! Here's my brief introduction. I come by my interest in GS via media ecology and my interest in communication and media, especially following the work of Marshall McLuhan, Neil Postman and Father Walter Ong, SJ. Like the founder of GS, I was born in Europe, in Czechoslovakia, of Latvian and Russian parents, immigrating to Canada at the age of 4. That makes for a complex ethnic identity.

I attended the University of Western Ontario (BA in English), and the University of Toronto (MA in Drama Studies, MEd, PhD in Educational Media). My career has been divided between university teaching and business, mainly in communication of one kind or other. My first job was as an instructor in English and Drama at the University of Manitoba (McLuhan's first university), where I also directed student theatre productions. Deciding to try my hand at business, I held management positions in the Canadian branches of several major publishing companies (Viking-Penguin, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, John Wiley), coming frequently to New York. Through publishing computer books, I became interested in information technology and switched over to working in the computer and IT training industries. I have always followed my interests.

Returning to education, I am presently a full-time Adjunct Professor of Communication for the Masters Program in Communication, Gonzaga University, which is in Spokane, WA. I am a specialist in online distance learning and I teach all my courses via the Internet from my country home in Hockley Valley, which is 50 miles northwest of Toronto, Ontario. My research interests focus on Marshall McLuhan, the educational foundations of media ecology, educational technology and online learning, Internet Studies. I look forward to memebership in the IGS and wonder why it took me so long to connect with your organization, as my interests coincide so much with yours........Alex

I serve as Trustee and Ambassador-At-Large of the Institute of General Semantics, having been a "student," "teacher," and "practitioner" of general semantics for over forty years.

I came across Science and Sanity in a library in Jamaica some years ago. I wanted to 'know' more about a star (Canopus, the second brightest star) which I had seen. It looked like a sparkling diamond set in black velvet with other sparklers around. It was, and still is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. (I enjoyed looking at the night sky in Jamaica.) In the library, the 'Science' shelf was opposite the 'Philosophy' shelf. In struggling through many books on philosophy--much of which didn't make much sense to me at the time--I came across Science and Sanity which I found the most understandable of them all ( although not as "philosophy" ).

I have presented papers at five IGS international conferences, published many articles in the Institute's quarterly journal, ETC, and have conducted numerous seminar-workshops aimed at helping students translate general semantics principles into daily practice.

I live in Montreal where I facilitate general semantics workshops and drumming workshops. I was one of the seven drummers who in 1978 started the first "Tam-Tam On the Mountain", which is now a tourist attraction.

For more information, please visit my website, www.miltondawes.com.

I am suppose to reintroduce myself? OK.

During my first summer (1945) working at IGS in Chicago, I listened to Frank Chisholm's introductory lectures. Then I listened to Irving J. Lee who lectured at IGS for a few days, and finally had a summere intensive seminar with Alfred Korzybski himself. I was just turned sixteen, but I was vastly impressed with Korzybski's works. I purchased a copy of Science and Sanity and took time off from my University studies ( U of Chicago), about two and half or three weeks of intensive reading, breaking only for meals, sleep, and bodily functions.

I began to acquaint my friends at the dormitory with Korzybski's formulations -- especially, "consciousness of abstraction", which I regarded (and still do) as one of the central formulations of GS. We set up a "laboratory" in the commons room of the dorm and practiced blindfolded weaving our way across the room using only sound waves and thermal reflections to avoid the randomly scattered furniture. We also practiced approaching the walls as closely as possible without making contact, by concentrating on reflected thermals from the relatively cool plaster. I was able to come within a quarter inch of the wall without touching with my nose.

We also used a pair of compass points adjusted to various widths and practiced estimating how far apart the points were when pressed gently into various skin areas.
We verified the tables in S & S, that one could find areas on the back where two compass points spaced about four inches apart felt like a single point, and two compass points two millimeters apart could be felt as two point on the tip of the tongue.

I returned to my studies full time after the summer of 1945. When I received my BA in 1948, I found that IGS had moved to Lime Rock CT. So I took an office job with Don Hayakawa's organization (ETC. publishing hdq), downtown Chicago along Clark Street. Eddie MacNeal was the office manager and his girl-friend, Carol Kessler, also worked there. When the payroll evaporated in mid-summer of 1948, I called M. Kendig in Lime Rock and asked if she had a slot for me, working at IGS in Lime Rock.
She asked me to come to Millbrook Prep School, near Millerton NY on a scholarship if I could help record the speakers at the summer intensive seminar there, offering me a scholarship in trade for my skills with recording equipment and familiarity with Membership list processing, filling mail orders, and like tasks. I was delighted to do so and got to meet and listen to a large number of people who were GS practitioners and authors of books, etc.

More next week, when final exams here at U of Tenn, Knoxville, Math Dept, are over. I have been a PhD Lecturer there, for some ten years or so. I have over 130 students to handle each semester in a variety of Sophmore and Junior Mathematics courses.

Regards,

David Linwood
dlinwood@bellsouth.net
David

Hello,

I am an Italian student in philology and linguistics. Actually I'm in France as a Foreign language assistant in colleges. I'm also graduated in Italian Literature. My interests in General Semantics are principally bound to my studies in linguistics and anthropology (especially, relationships between language and representation of reality, language as a human behavior, cognitive science, psychology etc.). Other than Korzybski, my researches involve authors like Saussure (formalizer of the arbitrary of the linguistic sign), Sapir and Whorf (both, independently, authors of the hypothesis binding language and representation of reality), Henry (a less-known French author who wrote, among many text, an interesting paper concerning language and meaning) etc.