To regard human beings as tools - as instruments - for the use of other human beings is not only unscientific but it is repugnant, stupid and short sighted. Tools are made by man but have not the autonomy of their maker - they have not man's time-binding capacity for initiation, for self-direction, and self-improvement.

Alfred Korzybski

Categorized in : Men Self Stupid

The map is not the territory.

Alfred Korzybski

philosophical journey philosophy

If all people learned to think in the non Aristotelian manner of quantum mechanics, the world would change so radically that most of what we call "stupidity" and even a great deal of what we consider "insanity" might disappear, and the "intractable" problems of war, poverty and injustice would suddenly seem a great deal closer to solution.

Alfred Korzybski

war people thinking

Man's achievements rest upon the use of symbols.... we must consider ourselves as a symbolic, semantic class of life, and those who rule the symbols, rule us.

Alfred Korzybski

use class men

To use words to sense reality is like going with a lamp to search for darkness.

Alfred Korzybski

lamps darkness reality

Words don't mean, people mean.

Alfred Korzybski

mean-people mean people

The map is not the territory, the word is not the thing it describes. Whenever the map is confused with the territory, a 'semantic disturbance' is set up in the organism. The disturbance continues until the limitation of the map is recognized.

Alfred Korzybski

maps territory confused

There are two ways to slice easily thorugh life; to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking.

Alfred Korzybski

education life believe

These 'philosophers', etc., seem unaware, to give a specific example, that by teaching and preaching 'identity', which is empirically non-existent in this actual world, they are neurologically training future generations in the pathological identifications found in the 'mentally' ill or maladjusted.

Alfred Korzybski

self-esteem teaching giving

As words are not the things we speak about, and structure is the only link between them, structure becomes the only content of knowledge. If we gamble on verbal structures that have no observable empirical structures, such gambling can never give us any structural information about the world. Therefore such verbal structures are structurally obsolete, and if we believe in them, they induce delusions or other semantic disturbances.

Alfred Korzybski

gambling faith believe

Who rules our symbols, rules us.

Alfred Korzybski

symbols

If we, who live outside asylums, act as if we lived in a fictitious world- that is to say, if we are consistent with our beliefs- we cannot adjust ourselves to actual conditions, and so fall into many avoidable semantic difficulties. But the so-called normal person practically never abides by his beliefs, and when his beliefs are building for him a fictitious world, he saves his neck by not abiding by them. A so-called "insane" person acts upon his beliefs, and so cannot adjust himself to a world which is quite different from his fancy.

Alfred Korzybski

insane-person faith fall

A person does what he does because he sees the world as he sees it.

Alfred Korzybski

self-improvement doe world

The map is not the territory... The only usefulness of a map depends on similarity of structure between the empirical world and the map.

Alfred Korzybski

maps territory world

If a psychiatric and scientific inquiry were to be made upon our rulers, mankind would be appalled at the disclosures.

Alfred Korzybski

enquiry would-be science

Thus, we see that one of the obvious origins of human disagreement lies in the use of noises for words.

Alfred Korzybski

use science lying

I am the same kind of moron as the rest of you, it's the method that does the work, for me as well as for you.

Alfred Korzybski

method kind doe

We see what we see because we miss all the finer details.

Alfred Korzybski

details missing

If words are not things, or maps are not the actual territory, then, obviously, the only possible link between the objective world and the linguistic world is found in structure, and structure alone.

Alfred Korzybski

maps links world

What we call progress consists in coordinating ideas with realities.

Alfred Korzybski

progress reality ideas

It seems evident that everything which exists in nature, is natural, no matter how simple or complicated a phenomenon it is; and on no occasion can the so-called 'supernatural' be anything else than a completely natural law, though it may, at the moment, be above and beyond the present understanding.

Alfred Korzybski

understanding simple law