These are notes I have typed in from S.I. Hayakawa lecture 1968 on “General Semantics and Propaganda”.
Albert Korzybski said, “The map is not the terrain”. 1. comparing the relationship of a language with reality with the relationship of maps with territories. 2. the map is not the territory, the map is not all the territory. 3. a map is self-reflexive.
People are addicted to rigidity of thought. Dogmas. Catchwords, Slogans, Serutans.
Rigidity of thought: “Pigs are pigs and socialized medicine is socialized medicine. You are either for us, or against us — there is no middle ground. You can’t be A and not-A.”
indexing. lumping individuals together under a common name.
names give a false equivalence between non-equivalent objects.
identical reaction to all individuals with the same name.
Maps of yesterday, are used as guides for the territories of today. You can’t step in the same river twice. Heraclites. Dates are very important.
Today, 2024, I went to the nearby pharmacy to get vaccinated. The night before, online, I signed up at the Pharmacy website for three vaccines — COVID, pneumonia, and flu. Should I call it socialized medicine? I don’t really care what you call it. And so today, I drove to the pharmacy and waited in queue for my turn.
Fortunately, there was only one ahead of me. She was a school teacher, on the younger side of prime, and she was attractive once engaged in conversation. We talked about our COVID fears. Her motivation was that she worked around young children all day in a classroom. I explained that I had a gym membership, and was recently recovering from it.
I let out that I had been a teacher once — that I had been a professor of Mathematics. I am sure that impressed her, hell, it impresses me. That I had ever gotten a Ph.D., done original work, and taught advanced math. I related to her how difficult the job was. That I had to commute each day to my office and sit down at a desk for eight hours, pencil in hand, and stare at a blank sheet of paper. I communicated the story of Andrew Wiles who proved Fermat’s last theorem, and in exactly that habit, to sit down at a desk for eight hours and stare at an empty blank sheet of paper.
I asked her how difficult her tests were. Did she try to fail her whole class?
She reassured me, that most everyone passed through school.
Did I really have to prove Fermat’s last theorem to keep my job? I never thought of that before. But looking back at it, I really think about how insane the competition to land a professorship job really was, and to make a good living.
After a wait, I was ushered into the examining room by a medical personnel. I don’t know her training. But she asked me when I had last had my COVID shot, and I told her that I had gotten it and recovered. She was able to look up the dates from the Pharmacy database. I soon found out that I didn’t need to get a COVID shot. I had ‘herd’ immunity because I had recently gotten it.
I joked with her that I must be fat, dumb, and happy because I am part of the ‘herd’.
But in the back of my mind, in those hidden recesses. I am remembering how difficult it is to pass certain tests. And that sometimes everyone fails. It’s like the Arthurian legend of the Sword in the Stone. Or the elusive prospect of true A.I. Or proving Fermat’s Last Theorem.
