Dear Fellow Time-Binder: Letters on General Semantics

Preface

You may have had this experience before: You come across a set of ideas that just make sense. They stick with you and make you want to learn more about them. They give you a fresh perspective on life, the universe and everything (as Douglas Adams would say). They help you solve problems. They liberate, entertain and educate. And, naturally, you’ll want to share these ideas with other people with the hope that they may help them as much as they helped you.

This is the experience I had with the set of ideas called general semantics. The tag general semantics does not do justice to the power of the ideas anymore than the word dinner would be fit to describe a wonderful meal prepared by a world-class chef. But this is what you will discover in the pages that follow.

In the pages that follow, I will share with you some of the ideas I have found most useful. I could’ve done this in any number of ways. Certainly, there are some excellent presentations of general semantics in various books and essays (many of which I will name). But I wanted to try something a little different. I asked myself, how might I teach a curious friend about these ideas?

So, I hit on the idea of writing letters. Admittedly, few people write letters anymore. But the idea of using letters to instruct has a long tradition, perhaps beginning with the letters of Seneca. The old philosopher clearly wrote the letters with a broad audience in mind, as a way to share the teachings of the Stoics.

In a similar way, I wrote the following letters to share the wisdom of general semantics. The letters are mostly short and conversational and—I hope—easy to read. May these letters inspire you to apply general semantics to your life. And may these ideas help you as much as they’ve helped me.

Letter 1

Time-Binding and Alfred Korzybski

Dear Fellow Time-Binder,

What is a time-binder, you ask?

You and I are both time-binders. And time-binding is the most distinctive—and arguably most consequential—ability we have. To explain what I mean, let me start with a story…

Picture this: During a battle in WWI, an officer rides a horse amidst a barrage of gunfire. His horse is fatally shot and, in the ensuing tumble, falls on top of him—crushing his pelvis and dislocating his left hip. Somehow, he pulls himself free and remains at the front, using his sword as a crutch.

Sometime later, a general, seeing him hobble in intense pain, orders the young officer to a hospital. There, doctors tie him down to a bed, sedate him, and put screws in his leg and pelvis. The pain is so acute, the officer decides to kill himself. But he doesn’t even have the strength to reach for his gun. The injuries sustained leave him with a permanent limp. He would walk using a cane for much of his life thereafter.

That officer was Alfred Korzybski (1879–1950), fighting on the side of the Allies. And the transformative experience of the war helped propel him to develop a powerful idea: time-binding.

But before I get to time-binding, let me say a little more about this man Korzybski. (All of which comes from Bruce Kodish’s excellent biography, Korzybski: A Biography.) I think it helps to know something of a thinker’s life to give more context to his ideas. Korzybski thought so too. He once said, Let me give you [some] advice when you read a book. Read not only what you read but study the author.

Korzybski was born in Poland to an aristocratic family. You will occasionally still see some people refer to him as Count Korzybski, even though he himself didn’t use the title when he came to the US. He helped manage the family’s estate from an early age, supervising up to a hundred workers in the harvesting season. He learned a lot about horses, breaking them in and becoming an expert rider.

Korzybski also received an impressive education. He learned multiple languages—his native Polish, of course, but also Russian, French, German and, eventually, English. Korzybski studied engineering as a young man. And he clearly loved mathematics, though he read widely across a variety of fields, devouring many books.

He came from a family of Roman Catholics, and his mother wanted him to be a priest. Korzybski himself would be agnostic on religion, critical of the dogma of both theism and atheism.

He migrated to the US in 1915, settling in Chicago. He married Mira Edgerly, a painter who specialized in miniature portraits on ivory. She would become an important partner for Korzybski’s projects, providing inspiration and helpful criticism.

After the war, Korzybski would ask himself a question that would occupy his thinking for years: What is the definition or defining characteristic mark of humanity? In 1921, he published his answers in his first book, Manhood of Humanity. It’s a good little book, relatively easy to read, thought-provoking, and quotable. And it has the core idea that would launch a much bigger project later.

In Manhood to Humanity, we see how Korzybski’s early experiences shaped him. He writes warmly of mathematics and the methods of engineers. He writes about how engineers have to harness natural laws’’ to bring ideas to realization. Engineers learn these laws through observation and trial and error. And he thinks a comparable thing should exist for the study of humanity—a kind of human engineering that brings together the sum of our scientific learning and applies it to the advancement of human weal."

To create such a meta-discipline requires, Korzybski wrote, candor, an open mind, freedom from blinding prejudice, thoughtfulness, a real desire for truth, and enough common sense to understand that to talk of adding three quarts of milk to three-quarters of a mile is to talk nonsense.

Idealistic impulses seem to drive Korzybski’s vision, and the shadow of war and loss hang over the book’s pages like a warning—a reminder that the cost of failure in this project could be immense. The whole history of mankind, Korzybski wrote, and especially the present plight of the world show only too sadly how dangerous and expensive it is to have the world governed by those who do not know [this contemplated art and science of human engineering].

For Korzybski, the horrors of the war marked the end of childhood for humanity. Childhood was a period devoid of any real understanding of human values, when humanity behaved like a child who uses a priceless chronometer to crack nuts. Korzybski writes of the wanton waste of life and how we must not let the dead die for nothing—we must make the future worthy of their sweat and blood.

In short, humanity must grow up. Thus, the manhood of humanity. (Better would have been something like adulthood of humanity, but this was in 1921, after all.) To begin our life in adulthood, Korzybski thought it critical to understand what makes human beings different. In that difference we could discover the nature of man and find ways to live in accordance with that nature and allow humanity to prosper.

And here we get to his answer to the question: What is the defining characteristic mark of humanity? Korzybski found it in what people do, which other living things seem unable to do:

Human beings possess a most remarkable capacity which is entirely peculiar to them—I mean the capacity to summarize, digest and appropriate the labors and experiences of the past.

We can read Plato and Galileo, Newton, and Darwin. We can pass on complex ideas across many generations. We inherit plans and recipes, a treasury of know-how and experience on which we can improve and create new and better plans and recipes. We are, in Korzybski’s words, both an inheritor of the by-gone ages and the trustee of posterity.

This capacity Korzybski dubbed time-binding. Time-binding is what humans do.

This mighty term named the broad canopy that covered all the activities of human beings. Time-binding allows us to make everything from paintbrushes to stove tops, from golf clubs to bicycles. Time-binding allows us to publish books, to cure diseases, to build better homes and safer cars and bridges. Time-binding allows us to do more and more things, to explain more and more phenomena as the years go by. You might say the chief difference between human beings today and human beings of 500 years ago is that we benefit from 500 years of time-binding.

Time-binding fosters the flourishing of civilizations and the blossoming of individual potential. Time-binding allows human beings to make meaningful progress, amplified over time. As Korzybski put it:

Civilization… is the process of binding time; progress is made by the fact that each generation adds to the material and spiritual wealth which it inherits. Past achievements—the fruit of bygone time—thus live in the present, are augmented in the present, and transmitted to the future; the process goes on; time, the essential element, is so involved that, though it increases arithmetically, its fruit, civilization, advances geometrically.

Korzybski’s thesis was bold, though not entirely new. Others before him had similar ideas. But Korzybski coined the term time-binding and placed it at the center of his system.

Manhood of Humanity received quite a bit of attention in its day and put Korzybski on the map, so to speak. Remarkably, he had not written anything before—published or unpublished—in any language. When he wrote the book in 1920, he was 41 years old, already a mature and worldly man. Yes, the book is optimistic, at times arguably even naive. It can be repetitive and the language can sound dated—but these are also part of its charms. Korzybski’s is a pioneering effort, a sketch, as he would call it himself, of a bigger project he hoped the book would initiate—the study of time-binding.

Many questions remained, as he acknowledged at the end of the book. What are the limits of time-binding? What practices does clear and sensible time-binding require? What tools should we use to improve our time-binding skills? Does time-binding imply a kind of ethics?

It would take another twelve years for him to formulate his answers. Then Korzybski would publish what would become one of the most important books of the 20th century. I can say his book certainly had a big impact on my thinking. But this letter is long enough. If you’d like, I’d be happy to share more of Korzybski’s story and tell you about his magnum opus in a future letter.

In any event, I hope you’ll agree, fellow time-binder, that time-binding is an important activity—the capacity to bind time seems to be what makes human beings… well, human.

Your Fellow Time-Binder,

Chris

P.S. The philosopher John Dewey (1859-1952) made essentially the same distinction as Korzybski at almost the same time, in his book Reconstruction in Philosophy published in 1920. Man differs from the lower animals because he preserves his past experiences, Dewey writes in the first line of Reconstruction. We live in a world of signs and symbols.

Korzybski digested and synthesized an enormous body of knowledge in his magnum opus. So, you will find many predecessors and antecedents of his work in the great philosophers and thinkers of the past. Korzybski’s own work is time-binding par excellence.

Letter 2

Introducing General Semantics

Dear Fellow Time-Binder,

I’m glad you’d like me to continue with Korzybski!

I imagine Korzybksi must’ve cut a distinctive figure. Shaved head. Smoldering cigarette in cigarette holder. Thick Polish accent. That limp. That cane. He wore work shirts, open at the collar—apparently an eccentric choice at the time for an intellectual, as his contemporaries often noted. I attached a picture to this letter, so you can have a look.

Marjorie Kendig, who worked with Korzybski for many years, said he had a peculiar style of lecturing, a non-linear method of developing his exposition. He used shocking examples from his study of mental hospitals, from psychiatry, from his own experience with deeply maladjusted people, criminals, etc. to (as he called it) ‘shake them up’ and ‘get under the skins’ of the class. Sounds like fun to me. Kendig reports his face and hands would say as much as his words and diagrams.

For a time, he and his wife Mira had a pet monkey, a ringtail capuchin named Kiki. And then, later, a second monkey. Korzybski’s biographer reports that he finished his second book with these monkeys on his lap. He seems to have been a colorful, eccentric character.

Anyway, as I say, I’m also glad to hear you’d like me to continue with Korzybski’s big idea: time-binding. You’ll recall, I ended my last letter with a bunch of questions. How to answer them?

Here we get to applied time-binding, which has its own name. Time-binding provided a foundation for Korzybski’s envisioned field of study. In its applied aspect, his biographer Kodish wrote, Korzybski came to call his study—much to his and others’ regret—‘general semantics.’

General semantics, or GS for short. The name may sound off-putting and vague and even academic-sounding. GS proponents admit ambivalence about the name and say it does not do the ideas justice. The name seems to foster misunderstandings as to what Korzybski’s project is all about. Hence the regret Kodish refers to. But it also seems too late to change it now.

So what is it, exactly?

GS can be an elusive idea to summarize succinctly, partly because the name itself is not helpful and partly because it is a subject of great breadth and depth. Korzybski himself spent more than 800 densely packed pages, with a lot of math and footnotes, describing what it is all about. So, a definition won’t encompass everything, but I can try to fashion one that captures the spirit of it.

The relationship with time-binding may be helpful to keep in mind: If time-binding represents our ability to pass on ideas across many generations, then GS is the applied aspect of how we structure those ideas and how we can communicate ideas more clearly and evaluate them more sensibly.

That’s my bare-bones attempt, but let’s go through some richer descriptions of what GS is all about from past teachers and practitioners.

One description I like comes from Wendell Johnson, who wrote a fine book about general semantics back in 1946 titled People in Quandaries:

General semantics is not the study of words or the study of meaning, as these terms are ordinarily understood. It is more nearly correct to say that general semantics is concerned with the assumptions underlying symbol systems and the personal and cultural effects of their use.

I like how Johnson uses the phrase symbol systems, because too many people seem to want to reduce GS to a discussion about only words—and their meaning and use. But symbol systems includes mathematics, signs, images, etc.—all fodder for GS.

Another good description comes from Robert Wanderer, a writer on GS for many years:

General semantics is the study of the relationship between words and people, between symbols and behavior, between what makes sense and what sometimes prevents us from achieving the degree of sense we’d like. We’re concerned with false assumptions, unseen blockages in perception, hidden confusions in evaluation, and other ways in which we sometimes fail to act as efficient, as sensible, as human as we might.

That’s a pretty good catalog of GS’s chief concerns. As you can see, it deals with potent stuff.

I am also partial to Bob Pula’s description, included in his excellent A General-Semantics Glossary. Pula taught general semantics for many years and seemed a wise and affable fellow with a good sense of humor. Pula called GS a set of propositions which… can serve as the best tool we humans yet have for making sense of the otherwise baffling buzz of stimuli, noises, ‘movements,’ etc. that beset us from every side in all our days.

To make sense, or at least talk/think less nonsense, gets to the heart of why study GS at all.

One more thoughtful description, from Irving Lee, another of Korzybski’s students and the author of a good book on GS titled Language Habits in Human Affairs (1941):

General semantics sets up systematically (1) the characteristics of life facts about which communicators must be aware, (2) the host of language habits which represent those life facts inadequately, (3) specific, usable and teachable devices by which to make language habits produce proper evaluation.

Evaluation is a word that recurs in the GS literature. The meaning of evaluation is simple—anytime you like or dislike something, you’re evaluating, or making an evaluation. Anytime you form an opinion or do an analysis—again, you’re evaluating. Evaluation is verbal and non-verbal. It includes all your reactions, even knee-jerk reactions. It is something done by our