I know about Korzybski and his general semantics, but very little about the actual substance of the stuff. Beyond E-Prime, which seems cutesy but too flimsy for any serious lifting. My brain keeps wanting to slot him up in that weird corner of mid-20th century American ideaspace that spawned Ayn Rand and L. Ron Hubbard. He has the pulp science fiction connection, the cranky outsider contrarian fans who think the system as the end-all of philosophy, and yet his stuff seems mostly ignored by contemporary academia. None of this is an actual indictment, but with no evidence to the contrary, it does keep me from being very interested.
the cranky outsider contrarian fans who think the system as the end-all of philosophy, and yet his stuff seems mostly ignored by contemporary academia.
i haven’t heard that end-all of philosophy bit (could come from his strong following of Wittgenstein) , but I do know he is considered to be a principle predecessor of self-help psychology, which might explain the anti-academic bias...i would not stereotype him with likes of Rand or Hubbard (yikes!)
The only academic I can recall talking to him about was my Learning and History & Systems of Psych. prof. who knew who he was (he had dual Ph.Ds in psych. and philosophy) but expressed being baffled as to why I liked him...however, this is the same guy who also said stuff like you don’t need to read Wittgenstein to know language is a game, and, “Philosophy’s a bunch of bullshit and Kant’s the biggest bullshitter of them all,” and who when I lent him my copy of RAW’s Quantum Psychology held it up to the whole class the next day and lectured on why you shouldn’t read books like that. He also was a cranky (outsider-ish) contrarian...but maybe he was right...maybe you don’t need to read RAW or AK to know the map’s not the territory
i would not stereotype him with likes of Rand or Hubbard (yikes!)
Yeah, there’s the difference between deciding that his stuff is actually the same kind of stuff as some very iffy stuff, and then skipping it, and just noting a vague and very possibly unfair surface resemblance to iffy stuff, and then not bothering to investigate further since the stuff is 70 years old and there should be more people saying it’s important if it really is.
I lent him my copy of RAW’s Quantum Psychology held it up to the whole class the next day and lectured on why you shouldn’t read books like that.
What should I know about this one? I know that when a book has “quantum” in the title and is not a physics book, the odds are that it really is a book you shouldn’t be reading. If my quick-and-unfair pattern match for Korzybski was Hubbard+Rand, my quick-and-unfair pattern match for something titled “Quantum Psychology” is The Secret.
Then again, I do know that RAW should be more interesting than that, though I also have the suspicion that his stuff may be a bit too stuck in the counterculture of the 60s and 70s to really have aged well.
I know about Korzybski and his general semantics, but very little about the actual substance of the stuff. Beyond E-Prime, which seems cutesy but too flimsy for any serious lifting. My brain keeps wanting to slot him up in that weird corner of mid-20th century American ideaspace that spawned Ayn Rand and L. Ron Hubbard. He has the pulp science fiction connection, the cranky outsider contrarian fans who think the system as the end-all of philosophy, and yet his stuff seems mostly ignored by contemporary academia. None of this is an actual indictment, but with no evidence to the contrary, it does keep me from being very interested.
i haven’t heard that end-all of philosophy bit (could come from his strong following of Wittgenstein) , but I do know he is considered to be a principle predecessor of self-help psychology, which might explain the anti-academic bias...i would not stereotype him with likes of Rand or Hubbard (yikes!)
The only academic I can recall talking to him about was my Learning and History & Systems of Psych. prof. who knew who he was (he had dual Ph.Ds in psych. and philosophy) but expressed being baffled as to why I liked him...however, this is the same guy who also said stuff like you don’t need to read Wittgenstein to know language is a game, and, “Philosophy’s a bunch of bullshit and Kant’s the biggest bullshitter of them all,” and who when I lent him my copy of RAW’s Quantum Psychology held it up to the whole class the next day and lectured on why you shouldn’t read books like that. He also was a cranky (outsider-ish) contrarian...but maybe he was right...maybe you don’t need to read RAW or AK to know the map’s not the territory
Yeah, there’s the difference between deciding that his stuff is actually the same kind of stuff as some very iffy stuff, and then skipping it, and just noting a vague and very possibly unfair surface resemblance to iffy stuff, and then not bothering to investigate further since the stuff is 70 years old and there should be more people saying it’s important if it really is.
What should I know about this one? I know that when a book has “quantum” in the title and is not a physics book, the odds are that it really is a book you shouldn’t be reading. If my quick-and-unfair pattern match for Korzybski was Hubbard+Rand, my quick-and-unfair pattern match for something titled “Quantum Psychology” is The Secret.
Then again, I do know that RAW should be more interesting than that, though I also have the suspicion that his stuff may be a bit too stuck in the counterculture of the 60s and 70s to really have aged well.