Our long-awaited and fourth double issue 75:3-4 (2018) of ETC: A Review of General Semantics is in the mail and is now available for download from the IGS Store in searchable PDF format.

• Click here to download ETC 75:3-4 from the IGS Store.

Table of Contents Preview

"Holocaust Commemoration and Stolpersteine" by Gary Gumpert and Susan Drucker

"The 'Ize' Have It…" by Milton Dawes

"The Way of the Word" by Michael Moore

"What Can You Do for General Semantics?" by Ben Hauck (J. Talbot Winchell Award 2018 Acceptance Speech)

"Aldous Huxley and General Semantics" by Martin H. Levinson

"Responding to Hypocrisy: Getting a Handle on its Abundance and its Apparent Irrelevance" by Corey Anton

"The Medium Is the Membrane" by Lance Strate

"Emojis: New Language or Technology-Based Trend" by Marcel Danesi

"Walter Ong’s Last Book: Language as Hermeneutic" by Sara Van Den Berg

"Playing the Fool: Trump’s Appeal to Each of Korzybski’s Fools" by Julia C. Richmond and Ernest Hakanen

"Meta-Semantic-Painting" by Dom Heffer

"Postman and Aristotle on Language" by Laura Trujillo Liñán

"How Do You Know?" by Chris Mayer

"Taxonomies, the Ecological Fallacy, and the Net Generation" by Brett Lunceford

"As She then Was: CF v Alberta (Vital Statistics) and the Power of Breaking" Logical Fate" by Jan Lukas Buterman

"Democratizing Photography: The Evolution of the iPhone Camera" by Angie Caruso

"Referents and Objects: A Parallel between General Semantics and Yog!ac!ara Buddhism" by Thomas A. Rowe

"Ali Baba in Australia: Tale of a Semantic Shift" by Gabor Korvin

"'Go Look It Up!' Dad's Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition" by Suzanne G. Beyer

"'I Feel That…,' 'I Feel Like': Problems Big and Small" by Mark Bernstein

"Eight Poems" by Barry Liss

"Nietzsche’s Lost Aphorisms on Management" by Ross Jackson

"I Was So Tired This Morning and Now Here I Am Awake" by Edwin Torres (in collaboration with Kristin Prevallet)

Plus Letter from the Editor and Book Reviews.

Cover Art

Ross Jackson, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Business at Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio. His current research interests include linguistic and existential facets of the military-industrial complex, and the potential intersectionality among analysis, data visualization, and d´etournement. Through his work, he advocates for a more poetic existence, or at least one that is slightly less banal.

The Institute of General Semantics is pleased to announce the first book in its Language in Action Series.

The book, Diatribal Writes of Passage in a  World of Wintertextuality: Poems on Language, Media, and Life (But Not as We Know It) by Lance Strate is his second poetry collection.

About the Language in Action Series

The Language in Action series, sponsored by the Institute of General Semantics, publishes books devoted to creative modes of expression that can open the doors of perception, and foster better understandings of the nature of language, symbols, communication, and the semantic, technological, and media environments that we inhabit. Through processes of play and probing, art can bring into awareness alternative forms of experience and evaluation to the everyday, routine, taken-for-granted world. It can also shed new light on mind and method, consciousness and culture, abstracting and attention, ecology and enlightenment, and, most important to students of general semantics, science and sanity.

Founded in 1938 by Alfred Korzybski, the Institute of General Semantics promotes, in the words of S.I. Hayakawa, the study of how not to be a damn fool. As a non-aristotelian system devoted to enhancing human potential, general semantics has inspired numerous novelists, poets, artists, musicians, and creative thinkers. General semantics today is devoted to explorations of meaning and the meaning of meaning, of metaphors and memes, archetypes and arts, symbols and signals, signs and significance, codes and ciphers, sense perception and sense-making, and the vast variety of ways of seeing, feeling, and thinking that humanity is heir to. The quarterly journal of the IGS, ETC: A Review of General Semantics, has been publishing essays, research, and literary work since 1943.

About Strate's New Book

Strate's entry in the series brings together an eclectic mix of poems that address the themes of language, communication, media, technology, and poetry itself, etc.

A bold and radiant journey into a jigsaw universe, Strate’s poems reveal a redemptive self-awareness, a playful exuberance with the twists and turns of the whirling worlds of language and imagery, feeling and experience.

–T.C McLuhan, author and filmmaker

Significant, casually formal, sly, engaging, passionately inexact, curious, playful, and utterly readable: the magic in Lance Strate’s poems is in the profound and humble poetic intelligence that guides them. With it he creates a charged silence in the gaps between the words where their consensual meanings, along with the reader, pass through the universe of things thus far unsaid–the ever-present substance of what life feels like–before they reach the next word on the other side.

–Chuck Wachtel, poet, novelist, Pen/Ernest Hemingway Citation recipient

Lance Strate’s wordplay unleashes a tumbling and a turning of phonemes and phrases skipping consciousness like stones on a lake. This is a delightful collection resonant with sound and rhythmic flourishes. The poet’s jesters that “…the meaning of meaning is meaning… a leaning” then immediately goes about his craft pitting story against a light-hearted dance with language.

–Lillian Allen, internationally acclaimed poet and Professor of Creative Writing, Ontario College of Art and Design University

Lance Strate’s clever, pithy, and logocentric poetry at once celebrates language and manifests itself as performance art. Poems with titles such as “essays,” “prose,” and “these words”—unlike the verbiage described in “up in smoke” becoming “disappeared for all time”—will endure. Why? Because, for example, the science fiction poem “ode on a geekian urn” poses the definitive question of our brave new science fiction virus-sodden world: “thank goodness the Force was with us then is it with us now?” The answer: emphatically yes. We have Strate’s luminous poetic illocutionary force to accompany us and light our way during dark times.

–Marleen Barr, novelist, literary critic, and Pilgrim Award recipient

Lance Strate has created a joyous maelstrom of cultural symbolism, timeless mystery, and linguistic dance. His style is both childlike and profound… as if Mother Goose had a son with Lewis Carroll raised by Camille Paglia and Kurt Vonnegut and given a mission to expand the boundaries of perspective and wonder. Treat yourself to insightful, poetic lunacy of the highest order.

–Stephen Roxborough, internationally acclaimed poet, co-founder of Burning Word poetry festival, and Head Poet for Madrona Center on Guernes Island

The book is now available in the IGS Store.

• Click here to purchase Diatribal Writes of Passage in a  World of Wintertextuality from the IGS Store.

The Institute of General Semantics recently digitized hours of recordings from Alfred Korzybski and S. I. Hayakawa rescued from reels in our archive.

These recordings are now available for listening and download from the IGS Store.

The following recordings of Alfred Korzybski were recently digitized:

• General Semantics as Applied Physico-Mathematical Method (Scripta Mathematica 1947)
• Understanding of Human Potentialities, Key to Dealing with the Soviet Union (Hotel Chatham 1948)
• Time-Binding: The Foundation for General Semantics (Cooper Union 1949)

The following recording of S. I. Hayakawa was recently digitized:

• Language: Key to Human Understanding (AHA 1955)

These recordings come after the recent digitization of more than 15 hours of recordings made from the Institute of General Semantics 1948 Summer Seminar-Workshop at Millbrook School, Millbrook, NY.

These recordings were digitized by IGS trustee Ben Hauck.

Download these audio recordings and more from the IGS Store »

 

In 1948, the Institute of General Semantics hosted a Summer Seminar-Workshop at Millbrook School in New York. Over 15 hours of audio recordings from that course were recently digitized, and for the first time ever, the recordings are now available for listening and download from the IGS Store.

Recorded in August and September 1948, the recordings reflect a wide range of speakers, general semantics lessons, and teacher-student interactions. They were digitized and enhanced in 2020 from reels rescued from the Institute of General Semantics archives.

Included with the MP3 album of 25 audio files is the Listener's Guide for IGS 1948 Summer Seminar-Workshop by Ben Hauck, which meticulously brings together archival information about the course -- from its planning to names of those in attendance, and more.

The following general semantics lecturers speak in the recordings on these subjects and others:

• Stuart Chase - House on Un-American Activities
• William Exton, Jr. - Audio-Visual Aids, Maps, Non-Verbal Symbols
• Harry Holtzman - Visual Art; Abstract Art
• Douglas Kelley - Work of Adelbert Ames, Jr., Psychiatry, Structure, Function of the Human Nervous System, Conditioned Reflexes; On Magic; Prejudice, and Question & Answer Session
• M. Kendig - Introduction to Allen Walker Read; Neuro-Linguistic, Neuro-Semantic Environments on Teaching and Writing General Semantics
• Alfred Korzybski - Introduction to Douglas Kelley
• Irving J. Lee - Statements of Fact, Inferencing; Question & Answer Session
• Allen Walker Read - Semantic Guide
• Sam Rosen - Using General Semantics in Medical Situations

Approximate Running Time: >15 hours

These audio recordings and listener's guide complement the motion picture produced during the 1948 course:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qep9ppZ0oK0

 
This audio collection is available as a downloadable ZIP file including 25 MP3 audio files and a listener's guide PDF with photographs.

Click here to order the 1948 Summer Seminar-Workshop Audio Collection »

NOTE: The ZIP file is 162MB, a large file. You have 4 days from the moment of purchase to complete the download, and 4 attempts to succeed.  Only order when you have enough time to download the file to a computer or external hard drive with enough space. To open the ZIP, you may need to extract the contents of the ZIP file with additional free software.

Martin H. Levinson has just released the revised second edition for his book Sensible Thinking for Turbulent Times,  and it is now available in the IGS Store.

About the Book

In these times of rapid change and constant upheaval, can we learn to think and communicate more effectively — at home, in school, on the job, and as citizens in the larger world? This book, which is based on the formulations of general semantics, says yes, yes, and yes! Topics in it include practical ways to improve your thinking ability, emotional self-management, creativity, and analysis of important social issues.

Order Sensible Thinking for Turbulent Times (Revised Second Edition) in the IGS Store »

About the Author

Martin H. Levinson, Ph.D., is the President of the Institute of General Semantics and the author of numerous articles and several books on general semantics and other subjects.

The audiobook version of Martin H. Levinson's popular, humorous book of general semantics lessons, Practical Fairy Tales for Everyday Living (Revised Second Edition), is now available for purchase and download from Audible.

In addition, the audiobook is available for download on iTunes (Apple Books).

About Practical Fairy Tales for Everyday Living

In Practical Fairy Tales for Everyday Living, fanciful characters that one can identify with battle personal problems, mishaps, and mayhem. None of them are guaranteed a happily-ever-after, but by applying the fundamentals of general semantics -- a communication-based self-help system -- they are better able to evaluate and understand everyday conundrums to successfully vanquish challenging situations. While these 24 stories may not be true in the literal sense, G.K. Chesterton observed that, “Fairy tales are more than true, not because they tell us dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.”

The book is by IGS president Martin H. Levinson, and the audiobook is narrated by IGS trustee Ben Hauck.

All proceeds from the audiobook will be donated to the Institute of General Semantics.

The book is available in softcover and Kindle versions. You may order the softcover from the IGS Store.

Audiobook Links

Purchase the audiobook from Audible »

Purchase the audiobook on Amazon »

Purchase the audiobook on iTunes (Apple Books) »

To the IGS YouTube account, we have added nearly all of the videos of presentations from the 67th Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture and its subsequent 2-Day General Semantics Symposium, sponsored by the Institute of General Semantics, and co-sponsored by the Media Ecology Association and the New York Society for General Semantics.

The entire event was held at the Princeton Club in New York City, October 11-13, 2019.

The videos are compiled into a sequential playlist that mirrors the sequence of events from the weekend.

As of publication, not all videos are available as we await consent from the presenters. As presenters consent, we will release more videos in the playlist.

Watch individual entries from the playlist »

Our long-awaited and second double issue 74:3-4 (2017) of ETC: A Review of General Semantics is in the mail and is now available for download from the IGS Store in searchable PDF format.

• Click here to download ETC 74:3-4 from the IGS Store.

Table of Contents Preview

"The Pathologies of Perfectionism" by Paul Watzlawick

"Fanaticism: The Panhuman Disorder" by Margaret Mead

"The Rise of 'Middle Region' Politics" by Joshua Meyrowitz

"Television: The New State Religion?" by George Gerbner

"Laws of the Media" by Marshall McLuhan

"The Mystery of the Discovery of Zero" by Robert K. Logan

"An Aspect of the Role of Persuasion in a Technical Society" by Jacques Ellul

"Human Engineering and Social Adjustment" by Edward L. Bernays

"The Information Environment" by Neil Postman

"Harold Innis: A Man of His Times" by Eric A. Havelock

"A Few Speculations on the Future of General Semantics" by Russell Joyner

"Educational Research: The Romance of Quantification" by Charles Weingartner

"The Semiotic Aspect of Alfred Korzybski's General Semantics" by Allen Walker Read

"How Things Get Better" by Henry J. Perkinson

"Structuralism in Reverse" by Jay Rosen

"Multiordinality: A Point of Viewing" by Milton Dawes

"Time-Binding in Oral Cultures" by Lance Strate

"Dreamy Americans Prefer a Paper Moon to the Real Thing" by Lewis H. Lapham

"Not Without Us" by Joseph Weizenbaum

"Literacy as a Deviance" by Christine Nystrom

"Knowledge or Certainty" by J. Bronowski

"On the Recently Minted Hundred-Cent Piece" by John Updike

"Undoing Babel: C.K. Ogden's Basic English" by W. Terrence Gordon

"General Semantics and Practical Philosophy" by Sanford I. Berman

"Silence and Paralanguage as Communication" by Joseph A. Devito

"The Relevance of General Semantics" by Alvin Toffler

"Toward Understanding E-Prime" by Robert Anton Wilson

"How to Think Scientifically about Yourself, Other People, and Your Life Conditions" by Albert Ellis

"The Computer 'Virus' as Metaphor" by Raymond Gozzi, Jr.

"The Arithmetic" by Steve Allen

"ETC (Volume I, Number 1) Revisited" by Martin H. Levinson, Ph.D.

"Media Literacy, General Semantics, and K-12 Education" by Renee Hobbs

"Korzybski and Bateson: Paradoxes in 'Consciousness of Abstracting'" by Corey Anton

"Neil Postman's Advice on How to Live the Rest of Your Life" by Janet Stenberg

"Young Alfred Korzybski" by Bruce I. Kodish

"Appreciative Inquiry + General Semantics → IFD Disease Resistance" by Mary P. Lahman

Plus Letter from the Editor.

Cover Art

"Walter in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" by Dom Heffer (b.1978, London) -- an artist, based in Hull, who has worked with many arts and research organizations, some of which include the
Institute of General Semantics, the Media Ecology Association, UK City of Culture, 20/21 Visual Arts Centre, Scunthorpe, Arts Council England, and The Estate of Francis Bacon, London. Further information about Dom’s work is available at: ideasinthevoid.com

To the IGS YouTube account, we have added nearly all of the videos of presentations from the 66th Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture and its subsequent 2-Day General Semantics Symposium, sponsored by the Institute of General Semantics, and co-sponsored by the Media Ecology Association and the New York Society for General Semantics.

The entire event was held at the Princeton Club in New York City, October 26-28, 2018.

The videos are compiled into a sequential playlist that mirrors the sequence of events from the weekend.

As of publication, not all videos are available as we await consent from the presenters. As presenters consent, we will release more videos in the playlist.

Watch individual entries from the playlist »

Dominic Heffer is a trustee of the Institute of General Semantics and an artist based in the United Kingdom.

Throughout December, his recent work "Meta/Semantic/Painting" will be shown on Big Screen Leeds, Millenium Square, in Leeds city centre.

The work was initially made for the 2018 General Semantics Symposium in New York City.

The work shows the developing structures of three paintings through a series of animated thought processes that emerge into "final" images. Ideas such as Alfred Korzybski's map/territory analogy and Gregory Bateson's research into denotative communication, inform the work.

You can see the full length film at https://ideasinthevoid.com/2018-meta-semantic-painting/.

Below are some representative images from the work.