ALFRED KORZYBSKI AND THINKING

In consideration of “critical thinking,” Korzybski began by writing about thinking itself. That sent him to neurology and how the nerves in our bodies work to bring data into itself and transform it so that it becomes “thought.” It also sent him to engineering and mathematics to find a language that would assist in modeling how the nerves, the nerve centers, the nerve sense receptors, the nervous systems, the lower and higher nerve centers of the brain, etc. does this incredibly complex activity that we call thinking.

A key discovery: The process of “thinking” is a part of the mechanism of “abstracting.” This term refers to taking some input (data) and summarizing it as you select certain parts and as you put into a form or code what you take from the input. At first this occurs far, far below what we call “thinking,” as your body, in the form of nerve endings and sensory receptors (eyes, ears, skin, etc.), abstracts from the energy manifestations of the electromagnetic spectrum “out there” which impacts you. The neurological form of your sense receptors have developed to be able to pick up certain vibrations and to then translate them into a form (a code of some sort) that you use physiologically. That first level is far, far below awareness, consciousness, and thinking.

Eventually the information constructed from the impulses become an activation in your nervous system and code by the lower levels of the brain as sensations and feelings. Later those abstractions are translated into what we call our “senses” —sight, sound, sensation, smell, taste, etc. Sometime after that, the nervous systems abstract again so that you become aware of your senses. And that begins consciousness—you become a sentient being with awareness and begin to “think.” From there the abstracting process gives us language so that we develop a meta-representation system for thinking, first sensory-based words, then more abstract words.

While it is all very complex and even today we do not know how all of it works, we have known a couple key facts for a long time.

One, thinking arises from the abstracting process, first in neurology, then in language. Two, thinking follows the abstracting levels and so has an order or sequence, from lower to higher. That makes thinking multi-ordinal; we think at various levels and layer thoughts upon thoughts. Three, our thinking is therefore self-reflexive; we can think about our thinking. Four, the thinking process is similar to the mapping process—it works best when we start with the elements and events of the territory and map it so that the structure of our thinking corresponds as best as possible to the structure beyond our nervous system. “The map is not

the territory.” Five, thinking can be sane so we make a good adjustment to the world, unsane in that we do not make a good adjustment, but suffer from dis-orientations and problems involving the nervous energy in our system, or completely insane so that we cannot adjust ourselves at all to the reality that we’re living in.

Now for Korzybski the basic problem that we all learn in childhood is to treat words as real and to identify them as the same as the referent that the word as a symbol stands for. He called this identification and it seems to be built into the way the lower nerve centers of the brain work. How does it show up in life? Associations. Our nervous system and brain associates one thing with another. For the infant, the cry magically produces the milk. Soon the word “hungry” brings about food. For small children, this introduces the stage of magical thinking, the word “is” the referent (the map is the territory). We equate. What I say something “is,” that is what it is.

With that, the unsanity begins. In this way we create semantic disturbances and semantic reactions. A semantic reaction, unlike a physiological reaction (blow air onto the eye, tap the knee), is a reaction based on a meaning— “His tone is insulting.” “Her huffing is disrespect.” “His strained and harsh voice is scary and makes me afraid.” By equating a stimulus with a response, we invent “complex equivalences” (NLP) so that “A = B” or cause-effect structures, “A causes or makes –> B.” This disturbs us. We get upset, irritated, fearful, anxious, etc.— a semantic disturbance.

Now our thinking is not very clear or accurate. In fact, with semantic structures like that in one’s head, it is hard to think when a given stimulus occurs: sitting for a test, asking for a raise, thinking about the discipline in going to the gym, inviting someone out on a date, etc. Now a person can’t think, or thinks in such distorted and wrong-headed ways, the person cannot succeed in reaching goals or even understanding how the world works.

The solution? Stop identifying. Stop using a map (even a single-word map) to explain, understand, and interpret things, and open your eyes and ears to freshly experience the data. Then you can learn to build up more useful maps for navigating life. This means delaying the semantic reaction, taking a moment to be silent, and program into your neurology that whatever you say about anything, those are words and not the thing. “Whatever you say it is, it is not.”

In our newest Neuro-Semantic Training on Executive Thinking, Cognitive Make-Over, this is the process of unlearning. This refers to the fact that oftentimes in order to learn something new and more effective, you first have to unlearn an old habit of thinking, feeling, speaking, and acting. You may have to unplug some of your semantic buttons. You may have to release old “learnings” that have become redundant and irrelevant.