Corboy dares wonder whether one author that could have given Jack Rosenberg (aka Werner Erhard) some inspiration was Ayn Rand (Objectivism, The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged.) Ayn Rand gave a lot of moral support to ambitious entrepreneurs who regarded themselves as superior beings and were impatient of moral and social restraints.
This is merely a hunch.
Corboy makes another guess that Rosenberg/Erhard read a book that was known and celebrated decades ago but is relatively little known today: Language in Action, later updated to Language in Thought and Action by S.I. Hayakawa.
This book introduced concepts from General Semantics to the general public and made
those concepts accessible. Korcyzbski created General Semantics and published Science and Sanity in 1933. Korcyzbski was convinced that the general public needed to learn how to understand language and communication at a deeper level; Hayakawa's book made Korcybski's work accessible and appealing to the general public.
Language in Action has has 5 successive editions and has never been out of print. With his avid interest in language and social influence, Werner Erhard, who kept a prized copy of Dale Carnegie's book 'How to Make Friends and Influence People' very likely read Hayakawa's book as well. And perhaps made it his business to go further and study Korcyzbski as well.
Now, remember that Werner Erhard called the first version of his LGAT est,
which means "it is" in Latin.
Here is an excerpt from an article on General Semantics. This is quoted at length as it may be helpful for anyone exposed to Werner Erhard's indoctrination system.
THe full text can be read here:
[communication.ucsd.edu]
This is merely a hunch.
Corboy makes another guess that Rosenberg/Erhard read a book that was known and celebrated decades ago but is relatively little known today: Language in Action, later updated to Language in Thought and Action by S.I. Hayakawa.
This book introduced concepts from General Semantics to the general public and made
those concepts accessible. Korcyzbski created General Semantics and published Science and Sanity in 1933. Korcyzbski was convinced that the general public needed to learn how to understand language and communication at a deeper level; Hayakawa's book made Korcybski's work accessible and appealing to the general public.
Language in Action has has 5 successive editions and has never been out of print. With his avid interest in language and social influence, Werner Erhard, who kept a prized copy of Dale Carnegie's book 'How to Make Friends and Influence People' very likely read Hayakawa's book as well. And perhaps made it his business to go further and study Korcyzbski as well.
Now, remember that Werner Erhard called the first version of his LGAT est,
which means "it is" in Latin.
Here is an excerpt from an article on General Semantics. This is quoted at length as it may be helpful for anyone exposed to Werner Erhard's indoctrination system.
THe full text can be read here:
[communication.ucsd.edu]
Quote
E. A reduction of the principal problem: the 'is' of identity.
The central criticism directed by General Semantics against most theories of language and meaning, and in particular against what it terms most metaphysical or Aristotelian epistemological systems, is what it calls the "is" of identity. Metaphysical systems argue that an invisible, immaterial order of forces, essential properties, qualities, and characteristics organize the material world, including human beings, entailing that any scientific system can, if it properly takes hold of this system, describe the material, physical world phenomena and human beings. Against this position, General Semantics argues that there is no singular, essential meaning to these objects. Unlike phenomenology, however, General Semantics does not collapse the distinction into, for example, the reductive method of describing appearances, becoming, etc. Rather, it posits that an objective reality exists in its vast spatial and temporal heterogeneity - the objective world at one particular moment in one particular place is never the same as in another moment or particular space. While the objective world is constantly shifting, the "verbal world" (which we can call the world of cultural production - of the uniquely human world of fabrication, tool use, etc) can shift and remain the same. Humans are "time-binding" creatures insofar as what they produce - "culture" - persists through time. However, to maintain a one-to-one relationship between a somewhat enduring cultural world and a constantly-in-flux objective world can lead, in the parlance of General Semantics, to serious semantic disturbances - that is, a non-alignment between the structure of the world and the structure of our language (or culture).
It is this situation that produces the categorical error of the "is" of identity. General Semantics is not against all uses of the verb 'is'.. However, it is against the subject-predicate form of the verb "is" when its use seeks to ascribe an essential quality to some object, phenomena or thing in reality. More specifically, it is against uses of the verb "is" when it is used to affirm prior inferences about the world to new events, happenings, and phenomena. General Semantics, in other words, is against the facile routinization of thought and the habitual ascription of meanings to novel experiences - and language is a principle medium for such routinization and habitualization. "The 'is' of identity," says Korzybski, "forces us into semantic disturbances of wrong evaluation." (409) Because humans are abstracting creatures - they generate orders and orders of abstractions of things, from the most general to the most specific - the "is" of identity fallacy operates in confusion of orders: "If we are not conscious of abstracting, we must identify - in other words, whenever we confuse the different orders of abstractions, unavoidable if we use the 'is' of identity, we duplicate or copy the animal way of 'thinking,' with similar 'emotional' responses."(410)