Ch. 9 How George Carlin Made Legal History (3/30-4/5)

Hannah

Try to explain the difference between a Playboy centerfold and a nude by Renoir. Discuss among the whole group and see if you can arrive at a conclusion that makes sense when stated in operational-existential language.
Perform the same delicate semantic analysis upon a soft-core porn movie and a hard-core porn movie. Remember: try to keep your sentences operational, and avoid Aristotelian essences or spooks.
When U.S. troops entered Cambodia, the Nixon administration claimed this "was not" an invasion, because it "was only" an incursion. See if anybody can restate this difference in operational language.
The C.I.A. refers to certain acts as "termination with maximum prejudice." The press describes these acts as "assassinations." Try to explain to each other the difference.

Also, imagine yourselves as the victims. Do you care deeply whether your death gets called "termination with maximum prejudice" or "assassination"?

In the 1950s, the film The Moon Is Blue, became a center of controversy and actually got banned in some cities because it contained the word "virgin." How does this seem in retrospect? Discuss. (If anybody finds Mr. Carlin's paraphrased jokes offensive let them explain why the above film no longer seems offensive.)

Hannah

Omg, this topic is so prescient right now with the Iran war language semantics.. a few things are coming up for me.

RAW says "The road you can talk about is not the road you can walk on." This reminds me of the line from Liber 65, cap. V:

And I answered and said: It is done even according unto Thy word. And it was done. And they that read the book and debated thereon passed into the desolate land of Barren Words. And they that sealed up the book into their blood were the chosen of Adonai, and the Thought of Adonai was a Word and a Deed; and they abode in the Land that the far-off travellers call Naught.

We are clever apes and sometimes get trapped in the feelings of specialness our clever mentation inspires. Anyone can say anything, and the more confident one sounds, the more easily others perceive them as true. Yet all of this exists in the mind alone.

I can really see this in the news. For example, someone I care about watches Fox News and when protests were happening in Los Angeles, this person reached out to me worryingly, thinking it was a war zone here. Yet, within our community, everything was quiet. To that person, LA was truly a war zone, warranting more strict crowd control measures. This was completely ungrounded from reality. It is our goal to perceive nature with as clear eyes as possible, which requires a serious look at our own limitations and the motivations of others in their descriptions of said reality.

jjones

@Hannah Wow! I'm so curious how the rest of the conversation went! I totally understand if you'd prefer not to share the details, but if you do feel like sharing, did you tell the person that's not the case? How did that person respond?

Fox News is an excellent example of this stuff. For a while, I was living with someone who listened to Fox News regularly. By regularly, I mean that he had it on 24/7. It was extremely difficult to meditate with Fox News on. I have since then learned that Fox News was designed to keep people plugged in 24/7, and that most of Fox News's fans do this too.

Not only did Fox News outright lie about multiple things (while also telling viewers that they were more in the know than anyone else for believing those same lies), their name in and of itself is a lie. They are recognized by the federal government as an entertainment channel, not a news channel. The repercussions of this means that they can lie to the American people without any fear of retribution, because an entertainment channel is not required to tell the truth. In fact, they actively present a reality tunnel that proclaims Fox News as the expert on what "is" considered American. Sounds pretty treasonous, in my opinion.

I'm sure I don't have to describe this, but by using the word "News" in their name, they appear as a genuine news source to people who do not have media literacy. It is entirely misleading, and I believe it should be held in similar light to yelling, "Fire" in a movie theater. They do not have any standards of journalism, and therefore are just a propaganda machine meant to control crowds. I liken it to yelling "Fire" in a movie theater precisely because they are spinning yarns about how cities in the US are warzones and we have government officials who then make decisions based off those very same yarns.

I have also caught them using some of the 7 Forbidden Words that RAW and Carlin brought up. In their case, they got away with the words because it was related to something the president (and/or his cabinet) has said (which is a whole other issue in and of itself). The fact that Fox News gets away with the 7 Forbidden Words because the president said them and they are "reporting," only illustrates RAW and Carlin's point that these words themselves are clearly not the problem, no matter what the FCC says. All the while, you'd think a "conservative" "news" network that is trying to bolster the State with propaganda would refrain from such words since they claim they are the role model and final say on what American Exceptionalism looks like. I suppose the message they want to send is that American Exceptionalism just adds up to the freedom to say really bad things and target people's mental health without repercussions?

Yet, people really believe the reality they are sold by Fox News. I have yet to meet someone who seems genuinely happy while also listening to Fox News. Instead, most of the people I have met who's media diet is Fox News tend to be very bitter.

jjones

In a previous forum post, I mentioned Alfred Korzybski and Semantic Reactions. Expanding on my earlier post seems to be the most fitting response to this chapter on my part.

Alfred Korzybski founded the field of General Semantics. He is notable for a book, Science and Sanity published in 1933. Korzybski sought to expand our understanding of semantics beyond our internal mechanisms of meaning making and interpretation. He focused primarily on how we react to language and symbol in our environment, including our moment-to-moment interactions with other humans in conversation.

One of Korzybski's key concepts was Semantic Reaction. Semantic Reactions are whole-organism responses to a symbol. Rather than the denotative definition, this is the feeling one develops in response to a symbol. Whereas connotative meanings tend to be cultural and sociological, Semantic Reactions are the individual's physiological responses to a symbol based on the individual's psychology.

A great example of this is the word, "Socialism." Oxford Languages defines Socialism as, "a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole." That definition sounds pretty cool (assuming we're living in an ideal society), right?

As many already know, when you use the word, "Socialism," around different people, there is a wide diversity of responses. Some people may say that Socialism is positive and that they aspire to live in a society where Socialism makes up the structure of that civilization. Others may say that Socialism is a dirty word and react as if they smelled something foul. A third group may not have any internal experience of the word, finding it to be nothing more than a string of letters.

The range of feelings associated with the word are Semantic Reactions. Korzybski believed this occurs because information processing is not a neutral mechanism. Instead, our nervous system responds to symbols based on prior conditioning, memory, fear, desire, prejudice, anxieties, etc. This may not seem like a new idea now but considering how many people ignore the importance of word choice in our daily lives, it's not hard to believe how revolutionary this idea seemed in 1933.

Korzybski argued that Semantic Reactions form when we confuse the symbol for the reality it is describing. In fact, Korzybski is the one who coined the phrase, "The map is not the territory," which RAW uses as a primary thesis of Quantum Psychology. When we use language, we create an abstraction out of some "referent," the actual object we are trying to refer to. Sometimes, people speak as if the reality of the referent is smaller than the abstraction or word used to refer to the referent.

To go back to my earlier example, when some people use the word, "Socialism," they do not seem to be responding to the definition of the word. Instead, they respond to what they've been told about the word. Most people in the United States have not experienced a socialist government. Yet, those who respond to the word with disgust tend to be certain that Socialism is a bad word not even worthy of contemplation (much less education on its meaning), and those who respond with pleasure tend to be certain about that a socialist government's merits and values overshadow the fact that we do not live in an ideal society where people are 100% good.

I would argue that the term, "Buzzword," refers to this idea of Semantic Reactions when the reactions are positive, pleasurable, and/or addictive. People use Buzzwords, or specialized terms, to assert authority and/or impress those around them. These words often become trendy and experience an increase in usage not because of what they mean, but rather because of the Semantic Reactions they elicit in others. People mimic others, spreading Buzzwords like Social Contagion, until their nervous system is attenuated to that Semantic Reaction. When attenuation occurs, the Semantic Reaction loses its novelty or thrill, much the same way a drug addict develops a tolerance. Then the Buzzword fades away as people no longer use that term.

Semantic Reactions can be even more subtle. For example, when I catch someone in a "lie," my natural reaction is to label that person a liar. Liar is a negative category in my mind, and makes me feel very distrustful, sometimes even angry at the person labelled "liar." But suppose this person spoke in Good Faith, unaware that I labelled them a liar? Perhaps their information is simply skewed or ill-informed and they are unaware. Depending on how they presented their information to me, I might be in the wrong for projecting the label, "liar," onto them. The person may have spoken in a way that made me feel as if they were a liar. Since "Liar" is a bad word, my anger and distrust are a reaction to the meaning I've projected onto the word "Liar." If this is the case, then my reaction is maladaptive and unfounded.

Being able to perform maintenance on our Semantic Reactions was one of Korzybski's calls to action. In future chapters of Quantum Psychology, RAW presents a formulation of the English language that, when internalized, provides a means of recognizing our Semantic Reactions. However, certain Buddhist exercises also seek to accomplish this as well.

When one becomes aware of Semantic Reactions, communication becomes more miraculous. At a certain stage of my own path, I became acutely aware that people were not actually listening to the words I was saying. Instead, people were listening to the Semantic Reactions they formed from their own associations with words. I discovered that often, others and I were not actually communicating with each other. Instead, we were essentially responding to whatever words we liked and didn't like completely independent of the actual messages we were trying to communicate.

This led me down a rabbit hole that made me wonder how much of my speech and others was truly understood, and how much of it was simply forced into the conditioned responses to the words myself and others were using. This will, of course, drive someone insane because we can never know the depth of such a phenomenon. I suspect that people with more knowledge and care about their words are perhaps more likely to understand me than those who believe words are unimportant. Considering there are people in positions of power that are unaware of these ideas, it's a bit of miracle that communication and social cohesion exist at the scale that they do.

In response to the specific chapter we read, RAW seems to be emphasizing institutions like the FCC are policing what is considered acceptable language by forcing other people to agree with their Semantic Reactions. Given the nature of American culture, it is likely that these Semantic Reactions are particularly puritanical. The 7 Forbidden Words are a particularly useful example in showing how groups can enforce Semantic Reactions. With a large group to enforce Semantic Reactions, it is not hard to see why RAW believes many in our modern society operate and cogitate similarly to those from Medieval England. Semantic Reactions are perhaps one of the best explanations for what the occultist can mean when referring to “spirits,” as they are one of many unseen forces that affect individuals as well as groups.