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Addition By Abstraction

A Pre-NLP Primer 
Technology of Persuasion Lecture
 
October 7th 2015
Queens College, CUNY 
65-30 Kissena Blvd. Queens, NY 
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Abstracting, in the context of Korzybski's model, refers to physiological-neurological activities, or processes, that occur on non-verbal levels. Put another way, abstracting is something that your body-brain-nervous-system is continually doing, without respect to whether or not you're aware of it.

The anatomy of abstraction is represented by Korzybski's Structural Differential diagram...

 

Each level of the abstracting occurs in a given order, i.e.: 

Something happens (Event)
I sense what happens (Object);
I recognize what happens (Description);
I generate meanings for what happens; etc. (Inferences, Generalizations...)

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'IS' As The Enemy (How Labels Divide & Conquer)
Korzybski foresaw the power of propaganda and aimed to dismantle it by designing a portable way for people to unhook raw experience from refined perception. Formal language is still based in an Aristotelian model where the word IS functions as an equals sign. Korzybski aimed to design a non-Aristotelian model where people could develop a better and more conscious awareness of the process of abstraction. His General Semantics tools or devices were ways to keep the levels of abstractions from collapsing so people could avoid these pitfalls and circumvent the cultural conditioning he viewed as self-destructive on a personal level and toxic on a social one over time. 

 

  

 

Origins of Social Neurosis (Attention Dimension Disorder)
Around the same time, Trigant Burrow, the first American psychoanalyst, observed how our social roles create what he termed an I-persona or a partitive identity and how that warped image of ourselves impacted behavior both individually and collectively. He called this our social neurosis. He studied the dynamics of attention and his work, along with Korzybski's model helped along oddly by the age of cybernetics a generation later, led us to this awareness - oh, about 45 years later!

We figured out that 99% of learning is non-conscious and almost all communication is nonverbal. 80% of what we experience is shuffled memory. 90% of cortical activity is visually-biased. So it's really easy to live in our heads. It's not a shock that we are more at home in our mind than our body. The price for this inherent bias is a life of what I'll call 'cogsucking'. We spend a lot of our waking life taking in images, messages and random input of others and use it to fill our minds with thought. We literally suck ideas in constantly. In that way, we can avoid feelings and actions that put us in contact with our weak spots, fears, dreads and doubts. Words can't express this process accurately so we get feedback on what we've pushed out of our minds when we dream, imagine and sleep and consume! #merrychristmaseverybody   More on the User Illusion here

 

Obsession with Objectivity (3rd person cultural conditioning)
The origins of NLP took root in the early 1960's as the cultural underpinnings of the Cold War on the outside and the Consciousness Revolution internally combined to seek a more 1st person or experiential perspective. Thomas Hanna, founder of somatics, was an early voice in this movement. His explorations into the depths of this hidden subjective process is the physical shadow of Korzybski's non-verbal levels of abstraction. He called our issues with society's 3rd person conditioning - Sensory-Motor Amnesia (SMA). It is our current challenge as technology advances.

  

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The Post-NLP Society
We're about 40 years into the NLP era now. That means it's not new anymore, it's endemic in the fabric of society worldwide. We're almost 30 years removed from the Cold War. We're about 20 years into the age of the internet. We're about 10 years into the realm of social media. And yet were are still missing and longing for what we have within us to rise up...

That *thing* is called SENTIENCE...To harness it we need to balance it's two ingredients.

IRRITABILITY - That's a biological word that means the ability to respond to stimuli. It's not a defensive response either. It's essential for adaptation. To be irritable means you're awake of your inner and outer world and the ongoing exchange that is underway. You know WIGO ;)

COHERENCE - This is a physiological result of coordinating our input and output so we can optimize our energy and effort. It sounds kind of car manual boring but it's the hallmark of what an intelligent system strives for - effectiveness and efficiency. That takes practice!

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Travel Light Sapes!

  

Click here for Part 2 of the presentation