Manhood of Humanity [essay by Alfred Korzybski]

[eye2i2hear]

WHAT I BELIEVE
Alfred Korzybski
Author of Manhood of Humanity and Science and Sanity
Paper from Manhood of Humanity, 2nd edition 1950
© I.G.S. Englewood, New-Jersey
INSTITUTE OF GENERAL SEMANTICS
(compiled from the Symposium, The Faith I Live By)
Trailer:

Alfred Korzybski Wrote:In religions we translate the still unknown into inferentially 'known', which become creeds, but based on primitive or pre-scientific assumptions. The most primitive religion in which the savage believes, or the more generalized and more organized religions in which the 'man in the street' believes, represent non-elementalistically his inferential 'knowledge', which involves his 'feelings', wishes, desires, needs, fears, and what not, as combined inseparably in living reactions with his 'intellect'.

I firmly believe that the still prevailing archaic, split, schizophrenic orientations about ourselves, which without a modern science of man are practically impossible to avoid, are an extremely hampering influence to any understanding of the potentialities of 'human nature'. These outlooks, inherited from the 'childhood of humanity' and perpetuated linguistically, keep our human reactions and so our cultures on unnecessarily low levels, from which we try to extricate ourselves through violence, murder, rioting, and in larger expressions of mass sufferings, through revolutions and wars. This is in sharp contrast to the peaceful progress we have in science [an evaluative discipline], where we are free to analyze our basic assumptions, and where we use a language of appropriate structure.

I firmly believe that an adequate structure of language is fundamental for human adjustment to the silent levels of happenings, 'feelings', etc.
... "We have found a strange foot-print on the shores of the unknown. We have devised profound theories, one after another, to account for its origin. At last, we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the foot-print. And Lo! it is our own."

"To progress again man must remake himself. And he cannot remake himself without suffering. For he is both the marble and the sculptor."

http://esgs.free.fr/uk/art/ak2.htm

[NonEntity]

Wow! great quote, dude.

- NonCityofNEWyork

[Grey beard]

Language has always been the key. Right now it's used primarily to suppress cultural maturity.