My Encounter with General Semantics

The following is a narrative about my encounter with General Semantics.  If you are like me, you’ve probably never heard of GS, and my initial introduction to the subject via the Internet put me on the defensive.  If I was to summarize GS in a neutral and objective manner, it would be to call it praxiological - that is, its concerned with practice.  It is a specific knowledge (logos) of acting and conducting oneself.  In this vein it is ethical, not in the a highly moralistic way (as the word might connote) but rather in the sense that it is concerned with “right” or “correct” acting, in the same vein that Stoicism or Zen Buddhism are considered ethical.

Returning to my introduction to GS via the Internet (Wikipedia etc), I learned the fact that Scientology, the mysterious “religion” invented by L. Ron Hubbard, was inspired in part by aspects of GS.  However, at the same time, a number of respected colleagues of mine from graduate school were to varying degrees interested in GS and I felt it deserved at least a fair shake.  And to be honest, who doesn’t love the chance to root for the underdog - or potentially expose the rotten core of Scientology that GS may represent.

I decided my more formal introduction to GS would be via a book.  Having briefly attempted to gain knowledge by stirring the pot on the Official GS Facebook group, I concluded that a book would be the best option.  My attempts to “learn” via FB, like most efforts that involve FB, was largely wasted and probably misguided to begin with.  Expecting strangers to openly want to educate someone who hasn’t taken the effort to educate himself - especially when those strangers are probably wary of the scepticism aimed at GS - makes failure somewhat inevitable.  My FB encounters did, however, indirectly introduce me to Bruce Kodish whose book, co-written with his wife Susan, Drive Yourself Sane was positively reviewed on Amazon and reasonably priced.  I decided this would be my introduction to GS.

While the title of the book (once again, its Drive Yourself Sane) was both embarrasing - I attempted to hide the cover when reading in public - and irksome - I felt the claim to be a tad bit hubristic - I read it cover to cover.  To my surprise (given my initial prejudices), I found much of the description of GS to be laudatory and complementary to many of my own research findings.  I’ll briefly enumerate them before continuing to some basic issues I also found with GS.

1. GS recognizes and affirms modern metaphysics.  Much of my research prior to my interest in GS dwelt on the subject of the debate or quarrel between the ancients and the moderns.  This actual war of words historically took place in what we call early modernity when leading intellectuals took sides on the topic of whether to affirm the values of the ancient world (as exemplified by Greece and Rome) or the modern world that developed in recent centuries.  While this quarrel sometimes became vulgarized as one between reason (attributed to the Greeks) and faith (attributed to moderns), others argued, incisively, that the ancients possessed one version of reason (and a corresponding structure of belief) and moderns another.  
2. GS opposes Aristotelian metaphysics to those of modern science.  Aristotle is singled out as a representative of ancient reason, but what is primarily the target seems to me to be a science that is one-sidedly objective, linear (teleological), and static.  GS, with frequent reference to modern theorists, especially those in 19th and 20th century fields, stakes its claim on relativity, reciprocity, and multi-causality - all positions that would be unthinkable for Aristotle and his peers.
3. GS emphasizes operational over abstract knowledge.  A great schism between modern and pre-modern thinking came via nominalism.  This name is given to those moderns who criticized a thinking that granted reality to abstract entities that, in their minds, were merely “names.”  Aristotle is relevant here because he believe that universal categories were more real than their particular instances.  For example, the category “horse” was more real than any particular horse one might find on a field.  The nominalists rejected this view, believing the category to be merely a name and descriptor which served to abstractly unify disparate objects but which had no reality in and of itself.  GS rejects the emphasis and reliance on these abstract terms in exchange for a switch of focus onto effective truth.  To quote Forrest Gump, stupid is as stupid does.  It is the latter which defines the former.

Inasmuch as I agree with much of GS, I couldn’t help but be irritated by a number of aspects of GS culture I experienced which may (or may not) have to do with tenets of GS theory itself.  I’ll explain the behavior in reference to the claims of GS I believe might drive them.

1. The Silent Level.  I mentioned earlier that my initial foray into things GS was a failure.  This, I admit, was partially my fault.  However, I couldn't shake the feeling that GS was a closed community and that this closure was not fully the result of unfair hostility directed at GS.  Indeed, my honest attempts to inform myself through others were often rebuffed or greeted with redirections.  I was told that part of this stems from the fact that the truth GS provides cannot simply be learned but must be discovered.  Meditation and comparisons to Zen were made and may be warranted.  I remain, however, troubled by this claim.  For one, while the gospel of GS does include as a firm tenet the claim that truth is found through self-searching and meditation, the very existence of GS literature seems to indicate a desire for communication - even if the latter serves only a secondary capacity.  For this reason, I felt that redirects to meditation were unsatisfactory.  Much of GS appeals to me precisely because it is defensible by reason and yet, for some, GS belongs to that vulgarism (mentioned earlier) between reason and faith, where the truth can only be found in the latter to the exclusion of the former.  The hesitation to engage in reason (which is not itself necessarily abstract or Aristotelian, as GS itself illustrates) made me confused and wary.
2. The Silent Level, II.  While my first complaint (or criticism) may perhaps be simply subjective - based on my personal experience with GS - this second one will be broader and hence more abstract.  I lead with this in order to anticipate a challenge to the criticism, namely that by speaking abstractly I am missing the truth that comes from the experience itself.  So be it.  My second issue relates to the recourse to the silent level itself.  Recourse to a non-verbal “reality” is nothing new and GS is aware of this, as allusions to Zen and other meditative programs indicate.  This groups GS then with a number of praxiological regimes that posit that truth exists non-verbally “beneath” the surface.  Most all metaphysics would agree with such a position.  Indeed, the idea that the essence of cat lies somehow on the surface of the letters c,a,t is preposterous.  Moreover, while meaning can be deferred to a description, this process is necessarily infinite such that, to paraphrase Derrida, meaning is always and eternally deferred.  As such, meaning cannot be found at the level of mere words alone.  If one wished to speak Biblically one could think of the famous comparisons between the letter and the spirit as another useful analogy.  Indeed, that latter example provides us again with a certain history of meditation (the convent, the monastery) as places where the ineffable was to be contemplated.  The first such monastery, however, is truly the Platonic academy (and the Aristotelian lysium) which places us back into the knowledge/practice relationship of the ancients.  Given GS’s aversion to the static abstract in favour of the active and operational truth, I am surprised that it doesn’t seek to adopt the stance of the Mother Abbess in The Sound of Music that pushes Maria into the real world (in much the same fashion as Father Zosima did Alyosha in Dostoevsky’s Brother Karamazov).  The decline of the monastery/convent initiated in modernity (following its upsurgence in late antiquity through to the middle ages) accompanies a shift in the locus of truth from the silent-real to the historical.  Truth is as much in the here-and-now - as Machiavelli shows us - as it is beneath or beyond it.  Moreover, the contemplative stance breaks with what GS supposedly holds dear: relativity, reciprocity, complexity.  These latter concepts name ways of relating to the world and others - and yet truth, GS tells us, is to be found alone, in silent isolation.  This presents itself to me as a contradiction and a violation of the key metaphysical “turn” represented by modernity over antiquity.
3. Opposites attract.  Part of the grievances I expressed above relate to how GS appears in some ways to be identifying with that which it categorically opposes: Aristotelianism.  My dissertation focused on how contrary positions often align or reverse themselves into that which they oppose.  I see this partially in GS, as I believe the previous point illustrates.  GS, for example, situates itself against Aristotelianism (and the Eleatic origin of ancient philosophy in general) by affirming becoming over being and dynamism over stasis - Heraclitus over the Eleatics, as the Kodishes allude (61).  A couple of times in my interactions with GSers I was reminded that “being” is “becoming” a fact to be validated by my own meditative experiences.  At this point, I am unable to confirm or deny this truth of GS from the depths of the silent level, but I am aware enough of the contradictions attending the notion of “being” and equally those that accompany its antagonist, “becoming.”  I have generally subscribed to the view of Nietzsche who, after long opposing the two concepts, came to the idea that becoming must be stamped by being - that the two must be thought together - indeed, that the tension of these two opposites held close would generate fruit rather than the barren limbs of negated contradictions.  And yet despite that epiphany, I have found GS generally to locate itself categorically in a single camp, that of becoming.  Superficially, this opposition seems to belong to the one I named earlier (between modern and ancient) and yet, as Nietzsche and others like him knew, it was rather a return of ancient metaphysics once again.  I give you Kierkegaard: “...when speculative thought mediates between the doctrine of the Eleatics and that of Heraclitus, this can be altogether proper, because the doctrine of the Eleatics is not related as an opposite of speculation but is itself speculative, and likewise the doctrine of Heraclitus.” (Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 376).  Kierkegaard’s point is simple, and taken in the larger context of the book, illustrative.  “Existence and existing are the very opposite of speculation” (380), they are, in fact, the modern operational concepts GS wishes to elaborate, yet the doctrines of both being and becoming are speculative.  Kierkegaard, who as a representative of the “modern” camp, distinguishes an existential (factual is the term preferred by GS) approach from an abstract intellectual one, and thereby eludes the false opposition between being and becoming.  Moreover, in identifying the trap of abstraction (what he calls speculation), Kierkegaard does not resort to the mystification of the “silent level” even if he holds to its existence.  Indeed, one only has to examine the size and scope of his prodigious work to know that Kierkegaard valued the search for truth through communication not meditation.
4. Particularism.  Another opposition I am wary of I also mentioned earlier.  While I agree with the criticism of Aristotelian universalism (the granting of reality to abstract categories), I am cautious about the opposite position.  GS’s embrace of the particular at the expense of the universal was anticipated by Hegel who described this choice in terms of a contradictory reversal.  Hegel saw that while universal’s clearly do not exist, neither do particulars.  Try, for example, to indicate in any manner the particular uniqueness of a given object.  If you do, you’ll probably notice you used words that can be applied to many other objects.  If I try to point out “this blue pen” I could be talking about a million blue pens.  I could describe imperfections or exceptions but even then I would be using language - whether verbal or gestural - that inevitably relies upon universal categories (“this,” “blue,” “pen” and others I might add like “broken,” “oversized,” etc).  There is no sign or symbol for only one thing.  As such, we’re stuck with universals and while we are wise not to over-emphasize their importance (as did Aristotle) we cannot simply reverse that position without defeating all attempts at communication (unless, of course, that’s the point).  Indeed, such a reversal would mean that we could only “know” an object through non-communicative means (enter the silent level), which makes it open season for non-rational “revelations.”  In this way, GS suddenly seems to veer far off-course from modern science with its emphasis on verifiability and the community of researchers into the solipsism of individual experience.  

The belief in the virtue and validity of the individual, meditative, non-cognitive, experience has a long history.  I’ve already mentioned Zen and Stoicism as possible forerunners of the GS model.  One could also list European Romanticism which followed the Enlightenment’s exaggeration of the power of logos.  The driving force of Romanticism was to protect faith from reason (part of the vulgar opposition of the two I mentioned earlier).  This opposition caricatured both sides - the one affirming the truth of the heart against the cold logical grasping of reason.  It worries me that this contradictory “dialectic of enlightenment” may be at play in GS.  This doesn't mean I will be dismissing it out of hand going forward.  I plan to continue dabbling in this field which has provided me useful exercises in clarifying and articulating my thoughts on my own research.

Truth & Artifice: A Return to Form

Having started this blog in the 'tween of my undergraduate and graduate careers, where the mundane repetition of the real world seemed to open a void that called out to be filled by thoughts and the good cheer of diversions (in my case, mainly music), my return to the academy spelt its eventual demise (as can be witnessed in the gradual drop in posts beginning September 2006).  I am not yet sure if my loss of voice ought be attributed to the discovery of my own ignorance, as if my encounter with the university was akin to that of the citizen of Athens with the great Socrates, or if, rather, it was the product of an increasing sickness of the Word itself brought about by the loquacity of mealy-mouthed academics whose strutting and fretting upon the stage convinced me of the nothingness of signifying and the significance of nothingness.

It is the irony of the academy that I have seen many with much to say say nothing and those with nothing to say take centre stage.  The survivors of the academic process that demands "publish or perish" convert their every passing thought into scholarly currency, spinning straw into gold these Rumpelstiltskins covet and secure the professorships of the nation all the while devaluing the stock of knowledge everywhere.

The sickness of the Word is the presence of this very knowledge and yet to recognize it and face it elicits no courage nor calm.  The cure lies in the very disease itself, in the Word, in putting pen to paper and making thought actuality whilst not losing oneself in the (im)materialism of academic honourship.  A conviction to return to the pen, to out ideas as charlatans if they alone thrive in the recesses of the mind, and to prepare the way to contribute something, if only one thing, to the intellectual activity of the world.  This is my task.

York University Exceeds the Western Standard

More of a momento than a rant or opinion piece. Below is some excerpts from Western Standard's "Nuttiest Professors" article which seeks to denounce the general state of academia in Canada and then name some names behind its downfall! I was proud to see York sporting two profs on the short-list! One being my very own Technopolitics professor Shannon Bell! I hope she reads this as an honour, as I did, and not as Grandpa and Grandma Conservative will be!

Universities today are hothouses of intellectual repression, encumbered by censorious codes stifling free speech and weakened by employment-equity programs that force faculties to favour diversity over accomplishment. Just ask Lawrence Summers, the former U.S. treasury secretary who was hounded from the presidency of Harvard this year after suggesting publicly that males and females may have innately different capacities for science and math. Or Margaret Somerville, the distinguished McGill ethicist, nearly denied an honourary doctorate from Ryerson University this summer after faculty protested her skepticism toward same-sex marriage (she got the degree but several professors turned their backs on the ceremony).

Today, there are probably just as many, or more, left-wing professors than a generation ago. If our situation is similar to American universities (where there's been extensive research on the issue), most faculties are tilting so far left they're lucky they haven't slid into the Pacific. One study last year found that three quarters of all faculty members at U.S. colleges considered themselves left-wing (as much as 87 per cent at Ivy League schools and even higher in the humanities).

SHANNON BELL, ASSOC. PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, YORK UNIVERSITY

Political science has never been this risqué. But Bell doesn't exactly cover filibusters and Senate reform; try post-contemporary theory, fast feminism, sexual politics, cyberpolitics, identity politics and violent philosophy. The self-described "performance artist" holds workshops teaching the art of "female ejaculation" (also available on video for those off-campus). In 1998, she made news testifying in defence of a sadomasochist prostitute, saying such deviant sexual behaviour was "therapeutic" and that she was an experienced dominatrix herself. In 2000, she was found by police in an illegal lesbian bathhouse. In class, Bell says she dresses provocatively to get a rise out of her students. Early in the term, for example, she usually dons over-the-top feminine outfits. "Then, around the end of October, things are getting intense in terms of their assignments," she's said. "And I move into solid leather for about a month."

So kudos to Shannon and thanks for offering the best class this semester!

The full text of the Western Standard article can be read (after registration) here.

Cheating: Chapter II

This past week has proven to be an interesting one since I accepted the assignment mentioned earlier. A colleague at work who had read my blog made note that he did not see the classist aspects especially for the price of the essay and also pointed out that there may be an ethnic factor - something I hadn't considered.

When my friend brought-over the assigment - completely bagged with instructions, an outline and a handful of research materials - I raised some of the questions I had about the assigment. Most interestingly, the structure of whatever organization I had become a part of was based on a cellular model. I only had contact with the friend who'd offered me the job (mainly because he had no time to do the project himself) and he received his offers from someone else who may or may not have originally 'solicited' the client. In Sopranos-speak, I'm getting my marching orders from a wiseguy who probably reports to a capo somewhere up the line and each receives a taste of the proceeds. My friend (or should I use the family "our") told me he started doing papers at $12 a page and knew that at least $8 was being kicked upstairs. Taking this into consideration with the classist argument from before, I think that $150 paper might well have retailed at $250 to my struggling wanna-be historian of a client. At this price I think I can definitely re-assert my original argument!

The second element I brought up had to do with ethnicity. I asked my friend if he had any idea of who the people whose work he was doing were. He replied that they were all Asian, at least in his experience of a dozen or two assignments. So how does race / ethnicity play into the cheating game? Many, but definitely not all, Asians who come to Vancouver are wealthy, so is it just a class arrangement or are poor but hardworking Asians compensating for certain handicapps (poor English skills; cumbersome family and work obligations) by seeking outside assistance; or indeed is it cultural, a realization that people should do what they can to get by, a rejection of WASPy guilt-complexes and mildewy do-it-yourself manuals. Certainly history has shown that money has allowed their White competitors get an unfair advantage...

I couldn't guess an answer but some new facts do weaken my original argument. For instance, student 'clients' request most often that the assigments reflect their grade average in the classroom (or perhaps only minorly improve it). I was instructed not to use "big words" and definitely not to ace the assigment. An anonymous B would be prefered. Good but not great; not poor either. Not the aspirations of a student that wants to get ahead. Is it caution or simply the fact that this assignment is being outsourced to save time in a pinch and not part of a strategic attempt to slip through school with minimal effort and good marks? An understanding that Karma might kick their teeth in later???

Too many questions. The only fact I know is that I thought writing it would be easy but instead its like I'm back in university. I guess the difference between being paid and paying to write a paper isn't that big after all. I should go and start it; but maybe I'll find another way to procrastinate. I still have a few more days until the deadline!

PS. I love how I'm being paid to write essays for UBC students five years after graduating high school with grades that wouldn't even have elicited the time and money of printing a rejection notice for my application to UBC.

technorati tags: cheating, university, class, ethnicity, honesty, strategy

Moral-Ethical Questions and The Like

In my search for some extra spending money, I've been approached by a friend to write an essay for a 3rd year university student at UBC. Now, obviously, this isn't some groundbreaking moral dilemma, however I found it does raise some interesting questions.

Firstly, this kind of cheating has a class-dimension. Unlike your regular peeping-tom style which any hack can do, especially those of with long necks and laser-eye surgery or doing some cut-and-copy off the Internet, this method provides a brand new original essay tailored to the course and material for a decent fee ($15 / page). With the increasing surveillance of students' works through enterprising profit-driven startups like www.turnitin.com the tailor-made approach can (counting on the integrity of the writer) help the 'client' slip by undetected, and with top marks. In fact, one of the factors that have made software like turnitin.com a supposed necessity is the fact that professors can no longer personally tend to their students - learning their strengths, weaknesses and style. The ambuigity of large class sizes and the incorporation of accurate yet mechanistic forms of counter-plagarism anticipates this more costly form of cheating. In the end, as usual, the rich find a way to get by while the poor will likely get nabbed.

Of course, $150 for a ten-page paper isn't exactly a staggering sum, considering the cost of tuition fees these days at universities such as UBC. I'm sure that as most of the poorer students are already being weeded out at the gate the classist aspects of cheating and counter-plagiarism strategies isn't exactly a priority for them. Nevertheless, interesting: high tuition bars access to education; low funding increases class sizes, decreasing quality; university administrations flame the fires of the "growing crisis" of plagiarism (which has always existed and only been exasperated by the quality and access issues mentioned above) and advocate for cracking down on students through mandatory electronic surveillance of their works by a for-profit company that, as part of its service retains indefinitely the students' work to increase its database and thus further its accuracy (and future profitability). The wealthy students turn to poor but smart graduates who have the ability but not the connections (or lack of morals?) to be successful. The wealthy students make it through, often times at the expense of smarter but poorer students who spend time too much time working to pay their tuition fees and living costs to make it through the course. The wealthy students find jobs made available by the connections money makes in the first place (and credentials bought-and-paid-for for appearances sake!).

Now, whether or not to accept it. I'm not someone that would consider himself a moral person - at least not in any strict sense. Not only do I do immoral things, I advocate on their behalf. But aiding some, obviously wealthy, kid stroll through university does affect a certain sense of pride and integrity (see my previous rant). Do I really want to grad more idiots into this world? Analogies abound but I'll let them pass, I'm being too wordy as is. Regardless, it seems the consequence of this action is more intruiging to me than its inherent immorality.

So I've tentatively accepted the assignment. If only to experience how it will feel to create something that is my own and have it consensually usurped from me like a labourer's surplus value. Maybe I'll provide an update. In the meantime that $120 will go to something good, perhaps a new camera in order to start adding some art to all this surplus truth!

technorati tags: moral, ethical, plagiarism, cheating, class, university, education, tuition

All Or None: Skepticism Long Gone

I read my friends blogs regularly and I stumbled upon one that helps define the ideology you must likely subscribe to (see it here:http://quizfarm.com/test.php?q_id=6916 ). Now the friend whose blog I found the link had taken the test and scored 100% in the far-left categories (Green, Communist, Socialist, Anarchist) and 0% in the far-right categories of Republican, Nazi or Fascist with Democrat being somewhere in the middle. I took the test myself and didn't receive any marks nearly as black and white although anarchist seemed to win out in the end.

And this is at the heart of so many of my questions nowadays. Left / Right / Middle-of-the-Road? You know what word I never heard in school: truth. Now I'm likely exaggerating but my point is simple: school (and the rest of our lives) doesn't seem to give a rat's ass about truth anymore. Its sign-up time for your favourite ideology and that's that. No one seems to care about whether its correct or not; true or false. Everything's got a paradigmatic response. Human nature is twisted to solve any riddle: humans are greedy; humans are cooperative; humans are social beings; humans are destructive. Whatever fills in the ideological puzzle.

I'm even shocked at the pervasiveness of political party clubs on campuses; not to mention their cadres of zealots and partisans. I've perused some former colleagues blog's who are now attending Master's programs in Political Science and the like and their opinions read like they're straight off the teleprompter at X party's HQ. Its one thing to support a political party but the amount of blind obedience to ideology and partisanship produced at the university level is as astonishing as it is irritating.

I guess I'm out of touch; maybe stuck in an ivory tower? But I'm not advocating living in a commune in the woods nor abstaining from voting. I'm not against supporting your party of choice or taking a stand on issues. I guess what I'd like to see is more skepticism and the acknowledgement that truth and ideology (no matter what flavour) are mutually exclusive items.

technorati tags: truth, ideology, politics, paradigm, partisanship, university, education