NEURO-SEMANTICISTS HYPHENATE FOR SANITY

I hyphenate. When I write meta-states, Meta-Coaching, mind-body system, Neuro-Semantics, etc., I hyphenate these words. I do not gam the words together, but put a hyphen between them. I do this on purpose. I do it because Neuro-Semanticists hyphenate for systemic sanity! What does that mean? What is hyphenating? How does it work for sanity?

I’m glad you asked! Alfred Koryzbyski introduced the use of hyphens and describe them as safety devices. They remind you that you are working with a system of responses, a set of interactions and not just a singular thing. Korzybski recommended hyphens as an aspect of the extensional orientation. This is the scientific method of questioning, observing, evaluating, and revising. And for Korzybski this involved the development of numerous extensional devices for operationalizing terms: indexing, etc. (et cetera), dating, over/under defined terms, E-priming, quotes, and hyphenating. Hyphens are used to reconnect words that when appearing in isolation convey a false elementalism.

Korzybski spoke about the values of this by referring to Einstein. Albert Einstein recognized that “time” and “space” were not separate entities, but part of a larger whole. So he hyphenated and called into existence a new concept— the time-space continuum. And from there he was able to pioneer new directions in physics.

Similarly Korzybski introduced the same thinking into the debate between “mind” “body” and “emotion.” These are not separate entities nor should they be dealt with as if they operated in a distinct and separate way; they are interactive. So he hyphenated to refer to the whole system— the mind-body-emotion system. Hence the hyphenated term— “organism-as-a-whole-in- environment.”

Hyphenating enables you to say, “What I’m speaking about is a rich, interactive phenomenon and not just a singular thing.” It also enables both you, and the person receiving your words, to think systemically. That is, to recognize that something is a system of interactive parts and that because it is a system, emergent properties will arise from that system. So with Meta-Coaching, I hyphenate these words because it refers to a system of Coaching involving seven formal models each corresponding to the 7 distinctions that we made about the process of coaching itself.

With regard to the Meta-States Model, the hyphenation says that a meta-state is not just a “state” of mind-body-emotion, it is more—much more. It involves meta-levels of the layering of other thoughts and feelings about the primary level of experience. We hyphenate Meta-States in order

to communicate the richness of the model and so that people can expect there to be emergent qualities that result from meta-stating.

Obviously, the hyphenated terminology from Korzybski — neuro-linguistics and neuro- semantics—speaks about the psychological system that emergences from the way we use words and create meanings within our neurology. This makes for our psycho-logics— another hyphenation from Korzybski that highlights the nature of “logic” inside the mind-body-emotion system. Your psycho-logics speaks about the nested states that construct the unique meanings that you experience in your reality. Bateson also hyphenated.

“It is now empirically clear that Darwinian evolutionary theory contained a very great error in its identification of the unit of survival under natural selection. ... The unit of survival is not the breeding organism, or the family line, or the society. ... The flexible environment must also be included along with the flexible organism because, as I have already said, the organism which destroys its environment destroys itself. The unit of survival is a flexible organism-in-its-environment.” (1972, p. 457)

Neuro-Semantics, following General Semantics, assumes a non-linear view of how reality works. So to avoid the world of "delusional verbal-splits" which so much of our language assumes, we follow Korzybski in using hyphenation as a linguistic device for putting the world back together again as a whole. Then we can deal with it holistically, as a whole or gestalt with all of its inherent complexity. And now you know why real Neuro-Semanticists hyphenate!