General Semantics: An Outline Survey

I have been curious about General Semantics for quite a while, but after I recently read a science fiction book by Van Vogt that talked about it, I finally decided to actually find out more.

I was not sure that I would want to spend the time reading some very long book on the subject, but as luck would have it, I guess, I came across this outline of the subject by Kenneth Johnson. The outline itself is only 34 pages long (in the version I read) and was very easy to follow and very informative to me at least.

The main point to take from it is, I guess, that we take many things for granted in how we observe the world around us and communicate with it. We leave out many details, and then act as if we we have the full picture or at least what is truly important, while this is often not the case. This can lead to innumerable problems.

It seems that even merely being and staying aware of this issue on details goes far in solving such problems or at least in minimizing their bad effects. Going a little further and applying the scientific method when evaluating would probably result in something even better as the outline explains.

I recommend giving the outline a try at least. By the way, it is available free on the Institute of General Semantics website.

The World Of Null-A

In his book, The World of Null-A, author A E van Vogt gives readers an Earth far in the future that is being run using Null-A philosophy and is seemingly better off than today. Or is it? There are some not so enlightened aliens apparently set to take over. The hero, Gilbert Gosseyn, a Null-A'er and a man with two brains and apparent amnesia, gets tangled up in the invasion plans and tries to stop them with the help of some other interesting characters. It is hard to tell if he is successful at the end.

For the most part, I enjoyed the book, as the author used some clever and at times amusingly quaint plot devices, but it does have some downsides.

First, the book was written a long time ago (the 1940's), so presents the future in a somewhat strange fashion, at least viewed from our "more modern" perspective. The author apparently tries to extrapolate future technologies/discoveries based on what existed in his time. For example, he keeps talking about "tubes" whenever dealing with devices - I think he means something like vacuum tubes. Transistors as we know them today probably were not invented or widely known back then. Another example is Venus being covered with plant life and inhabitable by humans without environmental suits. To be fair, he does come up with some Star Trek like transport technology - well sort of like that.

Second, the author does not do a very good job explaining the Null-A philosophy used by the hero in the book. Null-A refers to non-Aristotelian type logic (from the General Semantics of Alfred Korzybski) as opposed to classical two valued logic. Interested readers might take a look at articles on wikipedia if interested in Null-A/General Semantics, but they should be warned that it is not easy reading.

Third, I believe that this book was originally published in serial form which seems to result in some choppy, short chapters which I found most noticeable towards the end.

Fourth, the book ends in a somewhat unsatisfying manner. However, there are sequels.

Despite the downsides mentioned, the book is entertaining, and I think worth reading. Younger readers might find it a bit old fashioned though.

The Lessons of History

This book by Will and Ariel Durant was written to present what lessons they saw that history teaches us considering what they learned in the writing of their mammoth series, The Story of Civilization. It is truly amazing that they seemed to have pulled this off in only about 100 pages.

The book looks at various "factors" and discusses what history generally has to say about each. These "factors" include morals, religion, economics, government and war.

Not all may agree, but I think the Durants effort here was a success in most respects. I actually laughed out loud at times, because they were often so very right.

Keep in mind however that the book was written in 1968, so it is not always politically correct, and they followed some (then) current trends and (may have) incorrectly predicted the future - like the Catholic Church would increase in influence in the USA and that the communist and capitalist systems might move toward each other and each survive that way. Some might say that the opposite of these two predictions happened, but then maybe we need to wait a little longer. After all, the Hispanic population is growing in the USA and most are Catholic. Also, China is still communist to some extent and becoming more important and market oriented. We'll see, I guess.

Give it a try and see what you think.

The Center Within

I'll admit it, I was not willing to commit the time to read all 2000 or so pages (or whatever it is) of the entire Urantia Book. Still, I was curious to know a little about it.

I read excerpts and commentary complied/written by Elstrott in The Fifth Revelation (which I do recommend and reviewed a while back), but I wanted more. I thought that this book, The Center Within, would be like that, but unfortunately it was not so.

The Center Within appears to be a collection of "channeled" (not sure what else to call them) messages that are said to be related to the Urantia teachings. There are quotes from the Urantia Book after each message on a similar point, presumably selected by the editors (Harris and Belitsos).

I realize that the Urantia Book itself may have a similar "channeled" origin (again using this terminology for lack of better), but this makes "double channeling" I guess and a bit much for me.

In fairness, the messages are not bad, although a little repetitive and preachy at times. I did find some to be quite inspirational, but overall this book was just not I was looking for when I got it.