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by Eldon Taylor

A frequently asked question of myself and staff goes like this: "Why is priming the mind with positive statements so important?" Years ago I wrote a piece titled Sticks and Stones Will Break My Bones but Words Will Slice and Dice Me. The thrust of the article bared a penetrating observation: for most people words do more damage than things. It's not the sanitary word itself, Webster's definition, that's damaging or fearful, it's the emotive value attached to words.

It's easy to note the fear of many when it comes to words of rejection, words that make fun of people or are excessively and inappropriately critical, words that condemn, words that are negative labels such as ugly, stupid, loser, failure, and so forth. Words however have still other emotional domains that they either anchor, or that are like search words in a web browser, when inputted they trigger a host of related sites stored deep in one's memory. Indeed, due largely to our educational system and culture, most words can be said to have values. Think about it, even so-called innocuous descriptors such as color have value attached. Some colors are preferred over others, some colors are simply obnoxious, for some, an emotional disturbance or trauma may be connected to a color, and so forth.

Our thinking system is such that we all have been taught relative values, judgements, that are reflected in our description of everything we know about ourselves and the world around us. And for most, at least in the Western culture, we generally think of words of at least being capable of accurately describing the world of shoes and ships and ceiling wax, including ourselves, our feeling, our thoughts, our reasons.

Our world is so dependent upon words, semantics, that it is hard to imagine thinking without them. Indeed, thinking seems to presuppose semantic possibilities, for how else would we ever be able to communicate or understand our thinking? Even the images in our dreams are thought to be better understood when we can explain them. So dominant is this thinking priority, this semantic communication necessity, that a failure to be able to linguistically communicate an idea, a feeling, an urge, an intuition, an image, a sense, etc., is thought to be the result of either inadequate education or basic genetic equipment. After all, where would we be if we couldn't ask such meaningful questions as: What did that mean to you? How did that make you feel? What do you mean by that? Describe the sense or feeling or image or how do you know it's a valid intuition and not just fanciful thinking?

Not only is our world known through semantics, linguistic communication with self and others, it is modeled by each of us in just this same way. Now to say that knowing the world through words is quite different than knowing the world through actual sensing participation, is just obvious and trite. To say knowing oneself, or better still, modeling oneself and their behavior through this same word lens should be even more conspicuously ridiculous. Still, for most, it is precisely through the lens of words that both self and the world are known.

We know much more than we know, at least about ourselves. We all came into this world knowing how to naturally sense our environment, how to explore and provide honest feedback about our feelings, how to allow our imaginations to just deliver intuitions and images without challenge, and then to feel them for that value alone. Ah, but alas, we all learned to be educated and to cherish thinking, and not just free thinking, but thinking according to the taught order of correct thinking (e.g. mathematics, logic, etc.). Once the rules of thinking were learned we were graded on our ability to reproduce the method in our every walk and talk of life.

One day, incorporating our learned methods of thinking with our acquired meanings or values to events and words, we subverted our natural selves to the higher order of being what we should be--unnatural. Our extended dependent maturation made us particularly vulnerable to basic needs such as protection and nourishment, and therefore additionally vulnerable to supplanting ourselves with the personification of what was expected, what was accepted, what was tolerated, what brought reward and delivered punishment. To that extent, even in rebellion, we formed a bond with a self that was perhaps alien to our true selves. Moreover, we anchored all of this emotional memory in and with words and then we explained ourselves, at least to ourselves, using this vocabulary.

As semantic descriptions (sd) and semantic distortions (SD) are built, semantic reactions or responses (SR) are encoded and a semantic belief (SB) system is coherently hinged, to the degree that coherence is possible within the rules of thinking as we have learned them. When incoherence is obvious, a defense mechanism is employed to mask the failure. The outside world, together with the inside world, have at this point become more or less a series of semantic anchors (SA) composed of SD, SR, & SB, all seamed together like a fisherman's net with semantic references definitionally reenforcing each other.

Our world, to use the words of Alfred Korzybski1, has now become often, perhaps more often than any sane person would like to admit, both false to facts and often distorted. As Korzybski puts it, the difference between sanity and insanity can be found in false to facts distortions that are semantic in nature. Ergo, it is precisely the mechanism of semantic distortions that underlies thinking processes which are or become neurotic or psychotic. It is also this very same mechanism that gives rise to self sabotaging behavior and self limiting beliefs. This very same mechanism, and mechanism is a good word since the process becomes so automatic that it operates without conscious awareness, martials our defenses to action whenever our sd, SD, SR and SB are challenged. In fact, the unconscious pervasiveness of the mechanistic nature of these sd, SD, SR and SB is such that even the most knowledgeable of specialists on the matter must maintain a constant vigil to guard against them. This may explain why an individual can be very successful in a given field and fail miserably in others.

Our language usage, the value and meaning one attaches to words, can literally blind rational thinking. One could effectively argue that genius escapes this language barrier in order to be genius, to go beyond the boundaries, to see the common differently, to gain a perspective not formerly found. For our world not only assigns values to words but insists on a sort of "isness" property that is somehow supposed to give the word an existence of its own. The label, noun, becomes the thing. The verb may even vicariously become the action.

We all can be fooled by word propositions that address definitional meanings, isness and rules, the so called logic of our methods and use, or should I say misuse, of language and thinking. A theist could argue that God is all powerful while the atheist might refute this claim with a question such as, "Can God create a stone so large He can't lift it?" Word traps and their confusion can and literally have led to many atrocities.

It's easy to forget the nature of personal truth when it masquerades in an argument of reason. Logic and linguistics make assertions about many things that are simply false to facts. For example, a gallon is equal to a gallon. This is simply not true. Not true from many perspectives including the most obvious. A gallon of water added to a gallon of alcohol does not equal two gallons of combined fluid. Ergo, 1 + 1 =2 is not necessarily so of the "real" world. No two things are alike in every way. Additionally, it is not possible to know the so-called "total" of anything. Words are not the things they represent and what they are supposed to represent is much more, and much less, than could ever be written. Indeed, as has been said many times, probably in its most noteworthy form by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, whatever we say about something, it is also not that. Words are not things and word things such as a griffin do not necessarily exist.

Behavioral scientists basically agree that there are four basic drives: fight, flight, feeding and the propagation of the species. In order for a drive to operate there must be an underlying urge, even urgency, what I shall just call arousal. There are different thresholds of arousals relative to differing stimuli. Often the threshold requirement is met without conscious awareness. William James asserted over fifty years ago that we see a bear, run, and are afraid. For years this statement was criticized. We see a bear, consciously determine that it is life threatening, and then flee. Fear followed our conscious comprehension of the threat. Modern research shows rather clearly that the fact is just as James described it. But then, for years students were also taught the so-called limbic system as the emotional center of the brain. Today, the best of modern technology has failed to locate any such limbic system or center, at least as described. In fact, one of the preeminent scientists in the field, Joseph LeDoux, flatly insists that there is no such thing. LeDoux's research clearly suggests that most, if not all, emotional memories, for that matter, emotion itself, is amygdala dependent. Good old cortex, as one of my teachers, Professor Carl LePrecht, used to put it, is at its best when inhibiting a response.

Cortical inhibition works well when the system is rational. However, since almost all cortical inhibition is word driven, irrational SA, supported by irrational SD and SB, not only fails to properly inhibit an irrational emotional response but indeed only further distorts or reenforces the existing SD.

The human condition needs arousal. As John Kappas puts it, modern man has chiefly substituted fight and flight for anxiety and depression. Words produce anxiety and certainly can lead to depression. Words spoken by another and words spoken to ourselves. For many, sd are more often SD (distortions rather than descriptions). The arousal level necessary to produce chronic anxiety and clinical depression requires an irrational semantic distortion. True fight/flight responses are rare for most in today's society, but if they do not really exist in the neighborhood, then they can easily be fulfilled from our entertainment. Vicariously experiencing some outrage and revenge is what much of our television, videos and movies are all about. Violence, sex, arousal--that's entertainment.

Where feeding and breeding are concerned, everyone recognizes quite readily the required arousal stimulus. What is most interesting to me is to watch the threshold of arousal in our day and age seem to systematically require more and more stimulus. A patient suffering from anorexia-bulimia is a classic example of one with irrational SD. (This implies that we can have distortions that are perhaps failing in some real descriptive way and thereby handicap how we judge such things as one gallon of water added to one gallon of gasoline. It also suggests that other distortions are those of a more emotional sense and that they are fundamentally irrational).

SR are further distorted given that the human condition has both a need for arousal and that today it is virtually immersed in a constantly ever more stimulating arousal oriented environment. It should come as no surprise that our society is built more on irrational expectations and threshold needs than ever in recorded history. Our semantic responses (SR) are systematically altered by the combined effects of our arousal need (AN) and our increasing arousal threshold (AT) as effected by our semantic expectations and environment (SE). The impeachment of Bill Clinton is evidence of at least one aspect of this interactive function. The daily discussions of oral sex and other acts, as nationally televised, were to many disgusting, titillating and outrageous. To some, they were all of these things at the same time. The charges seemed to most to stem from a perniciousinvestigation that entered into an area believed to be personal and private. Today there is nothing outrageous about the reporting and little concern about the acts that led to the news story. The early sensationalism gone, what remains is the damage in the psyche of the mind and in the precedent allowed investigators, journalists and so-called spin meisters. Without this desensitization, it is highly unlikely that NBC would have aired the alleged rape story, that although apparently could not be disproved by NBC, could not also be proven. My point is neither political or moral, it is rather an illustration of how easy and quickly our SR can be manipulated, or conditioned, by our environment. The media creates much of our environment through the images portrayed of adventuresome heros, comely lasses, romantic encounters, sexual fantasies, and the like. It also operates on us in just this same way through less obvious means such as the news or the latest so-called health report which itself is designed to create the expectation of illness and sell the remedy. After all, this all only reflects the "normal" condition of the average person--doesn't it?

What is normal? Perhaps Karen Horney describes normal in her book title, The Neurosis of our Time. Perhaps as Robert Lange says it in his fabulous work, The Politics of Experience, the condition of the normal man is one of self alienation, where he loses himself in order to become normal. We do live in challenging times. Violence, sex and feeding are just as dominant today as ever. However, in my view, a fifth force has been added. Today we want more. More and more and more--more sex, more violence, more scare, more thrill, more things, more of everything. I don't want to admit that for myself, let alone find a single kernel of truth in the statement. Yet, deep down, I know that for me it is often true. I am aware of my need to constantly defend against the input of ever increasing changes in semantic relationships, ranging from arousal stimuli to definitional impingements, on feeling and thinking.

Is it possible to arrange all of this in a series of simple relationships? I think so and I think it might also be helpful. To that end, here goes:

SA[approx equal]SB & SD[less equal]SB & SR[less equal]SD. Therefore: SR [florin] SD [florin] SB. Arousal Need and Arousal Threshold are "hard wired" in the species and then interpreted and reinterpreted according to semantic conditioning (SC). Since the threshold must by definition be approximately equal to the need for there to be an arousal, we could say AT[approx equal]AN and SR, SD & SB are functions ([florin]) of SC. Further, we should rightly conclude that the manipulation of AT and AN vary proportionally with SC. As such, we can therefore say SC[delta]AT[approx equal]AN (semantic conditioning is an increment of arousal threshold which is approximately equal to arousal need).

So, what's in a word? It seems that a great deal is in both a word and the words we choose to understand ourselves and the world around us. The words that go round and round in our heads, from the lyrics of songs to the self talk of doubt and fear, those are the words that mirror our beliefs, predict our responses, fulfill our needs, meet our arousal standards, in short, perhaps they are who we have become. Perhaps the "isness" of words is more similar to the" isness" of who some of us have become than we would like to think. The real question is will the real you stand up?