“Barack Obama is a muslim” says the mass email and cordial whispers being circulated by poor, middle, upper middle class and wealthy Americans. Some, but not all, of the persons that write and verbally repeat the “Obama is a muslim” reframe are conservative; while some are liberal; many profess to be Christians; some are white collar professionals and others are blue collar workers; a few appear to be employed as journalists or have affiliation with the news industry; many are highly educated while others have little or no formal education; a large number appear to be of Caucasian ethnicity but there may be some other ethnic groups that have picked up on the noise and spread the rumor. One thing for sure, a large proportion seem to be native born Americans.
The U.S. with it’s abundance of free schooling and large number of universities prides itself on having a learned and literate populace; however, the recent firestorm of unsubstantiated innuendos and accusations against Barack and Michelle Obama validate the hypotheses developed by mathematician/linguist Alfred Korzybski half a century ago. Namely that “our perceptions/conceptions (called Reality Tunnels by Dr. Timothy Leary) are also shaped by the structure of the language we use.”
Korzybski’s opus on the study of semantically inaccurate word usage is entitled “Science and Sanity”. The proponents of Korzybski and later Richard Bandler (advocate of neuro-linguistic programming) define the aforementioned linguistics work as ‘General Semantics’. As such, advocates and proponents of General Semantics, state great displeasure with Western language (English) mis-use. Korzybski’s followers state the chief culprit of the “Obama is a muslim” hysteria gripping America would be the verb “is” and cognates like “was” and “be”. Essentially these cognates suggest “constant assumption of identity”.
Notice the difference in the following absolute statements: “The photon is a wave. Barack Obama is a Muslim. Hillary Clinton is a racist.” In Korzybski’s system of general semantics these absolutes might be re-stated as: “The photon behaved like a wave when measured with this particular scientific apparatus.” The unsubstantiated, dogmatic, Obama is a Muslim might read: “Many people have assumed Barack Obama is a Muslim because his father was a Muslim and his middle name is common amongst Muslims in Saudi Arabia.” The over-simplified “Hillary is a racist” would become “Hillary came off as being a racist to some because of comments made during the election concerning Obama and white voters.”
Korzybski said that Isness is an illness.
The writing and speaking of English without “is” and other cognates (was, be, will be, etc. “appears as E-Prime. However, E-Prime can prove clunky and stylistically unfeasible.
Worse still, I wonder how much “human anger and violence and wars” have resulted from poor semantics. Imagine if a nationwide ban on “IS” and other guilty cognates had been applied on this year’s presidential campaign?
Now that could prove valuable. Considering “isness” an “illness” might stem from extremist thinking, but could also produce more thought before speech. Absolutism (as a form of “isness”) can foster plenty of unsatisfactory results, in general.