IGS Discussion Forums: Learning GS Topics: How General Semantics Has Helped You
Author: Ralph E. Kenyon, Jr. (diogenes) Wednesday, November 9, 2005 - 05:06 pm Link to this messageView profile or send e-mail

I realize you asked for specifics, but that is not how general semantics helped me. After I attended my first seminar-laboratory-workshop, I just 'took off'. I saw the experience, especially the here-now "encounter" group, as freeing and enabling. That seminar also opened me up to 'people experiences'. Prior to then my "passion" had been almost exclusively "pure" science fact and science fiction. Everything at the seminar "clicked" together. After that, all of philosophy, psychology, human relations, etc., were readily integrated and used. I read, understood, and integrated more books in the year following that seminar than I had in the ten years previous to it. I got involved with life, whereas, prior to that, I tended to be "escapist" oriented.

I can be specific about one thing though. The entire perspective of general semantics with its focus on language, map-territory analogy, the philosophy of science, and multi-meaning, in particualar, were direct inputs to my completing my dissertation in Philosophy by resolving Zeno's Paradoxes. General semantics came together with mathematics and physics to "present" the solutions to me. (Of course, solving a problem in philosophy does not bring much prestige with it; that is reserved for those who discover new problems.) Of course, my exposure to general semantics was not without its difficulties; I did "argue" with my professors much more on a wider variety of topics than my fellow students - getting kicked out of the program once, but I fought for my rights and stuck it out.