Dennis K. Chong and Jennifer K. Smith Chong^©

(In this article, the male pronoun is to apply to either gender. The nominal pronoun is to apply to the first author. The plural pronoun stands for both authors.)

This paper has a critical significance for a psychotherapist. It proposes that there is a driver to human insanity. It argues that this is welded to the question WHY and embedded in Cause and Effect.

In the world today, every human being lives by "why". It is the premier and all pervasive question that is used by politicians, ¹scientists, ²media interviewers, Presidents and CEOs of Corporations, husbands and wives, ³children . . . by everyone.

"Why" is the handmaiden of Cause and Effect. "Why" skids everyone into Cause and Effect.

Cause and Effect was the product of the mind of ⁴Aristotle. It was he who first proposed the logical formats of the system of Cause and Effect. From his time onward, Cause and Effect, and with it "Why," has infected the thinking of all humankind. Today, every human being ⁵sorts and organizes his reality by Cause and Effect. Thus, Cause and Effect is the driver of Religion, Politics, Science, Culture, Economics and Law. In turn, it determines the very fabric of our being for it is said in Holy Writ:

"As thou thinketh in thy heart, so thou art."

It is for this that the language system of Cause and Effect is a pervasive and utterly inescapable part of life. It is the current definitive lingua franca of this world. In turn it is this language system that determines the ⁶semantics of our reality across all domains. How we understand this world is by the word "why" and the other words that are part of the language system of Cause and Effect.

However, over the time span of its ascendency to its current condition of supremacy in the world today, there have been men who have risen to question the well-formedness and accuracy of it. The first person whom we know who rose to question it was ⁷David Hume:

But when one particular species of event has always, in all instances, been conjoined with another, we make no longer any scruple of foretelling one upon the appearance of the other, and of employing that reasoning, which can alone assure us of any matter of fact or existence. We then call the object Cause; the other, Effect. We suppose that there is some connexion [sic] between them; some power in the one, by which it infallibly produces the other, and operates with the greatest certainly and strongest necessity.

It appears, then, that this idea of a necessary connexion among events arises from a number of similar instances which occur of the constant conjunction of these events; nor can that idea ever be suggested by any one of these instances, surveyed in all positions. But there is nothing in a number of instances, different from every single instance, which is supposed to be exactly similar; except only that after a repetition of similar instances, the mind is carried by habit, upon the appearance of one event, to expect its usual attendant, and to believe that it will exist. This connexion, therefore, which we feel in the mind, this customary transition of the imagination from one object to its usual attendant, is the sentiment or impression from which we form the idea of power or necessary connexion. Nothing further is the case.

David Hume: Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals Clarendon Press 1979 page 74 - 75.

Hume raised this concern about Cause and Effect in 1739! Yet, it is clear that its worth and value was lost to people of significance in the higher learning institutions of the civilized world. It was not until 1933 that ⁸Alfred Korzybski emerged to question Cause and Effect. He did so in his book ⁹Science and Sanity, in which he wrote:

We "feel," and try to "think," about "cause and effect" as contiguous in "time." But "contiguous in time" involves the impossible "infinitesimal" of some unit of "time." But, since we have seen that there is no such thing we must accept that the interval between "cause" and "effect" is finite. This structural fact changes the whole situation. If the interval between "cause" and "effect" is finite, then always something might happen between, no matter how small the interval may be. The "same cause" would not produce the "same effect." The expected result would not follow. This means only that in this world, to be sure of some expected effect requires that there must be nothing in the environment which can interfere with the process of passing from conditions labelled "cause" to the condition labelled "effect." In this world, with the structure which it has, we can never suppose that a "cause,"as we know it is alone sufficient to produce the supposed "effect." When we consider the ever-changing environment, the number of possibilities increases enormously. If it were possible to take account the whole of the environment, the probability that some event would be repeated, in all details, thus exhibiting the assumed two-valued relation of "cause" and "effect" which we took for granted in the old days, would practically be nil.

Alfred Korzybski: Science and Sanity The International Non-Aristotelian Library Publishing Company 1958 page 216

In this argument, Korzybski reinforced Hume's concerns. In Science and Sanity, Korzybski was to go on much further than Hume. He was able to show that Cause and Effect is the epistemic driver for ¹⁰human insanity!

He was able to show that the power of the language of system of Cause and Effect configures the ontology of this insanity. The way to this insanity was, in time, to be very clearly mapped out by ¹¹Richard Bandler and John Grinder in their work The Structure of Magic:

We have generalized the notion of semantic ill-formedness to include sentences such as:

My husband makes me mad.

The therapist can identify this sentence as having the form:

Some person causes some person to have some emotion.

When the first person, the one doing the causing, is different from the person experiencing the anger, the sentence is said to be semantically ill-formed and unacceptable. The semantic ill-formedness of sentences of this type arises because, it, literally, is not possible for one human being to create an emotion in another human being (our change in font and bold)- thus, we reject sentences of this form. Sentences of this type, in fact, identify situations in which one person does some act and a second person responds by feeling a certain way. The point here is that, although the two events occur one after the another, there is no necessary connection between the act of one person and the response of the other. Therefore, sentences of this type identify a model in which the client assigns responsibility for his emotion; rather, the emotion is a response generated from the model in which the client takes no responsibility for experiences which he could control.

Richard Bandler & John Grinder: The Structure of Magic Science and Behaviour Books Inc. 1975 pages 51 - 52.

In this context, we knew that it was critical to determine a language system that is more accurate-to-fact than that of Cause and Effect:

Cause/effect thinking creates inconsistencies. It creates misperceptions that become incorporated into the definition of ourselves as individuals and as a society. For by thinking in cause/effect, we perceive in cause/effect and vice versa. Previous attempts to remove cause/effect from language failed as a new language system was necessary.

Dennis K. Chong & Jennifer K. Chong: Don't Ask WHY?! C-Jade Publications Inc. 1991 page 7.

Then, from the world of high Physics, comes the final blow to Cause and Effect:

The causality principle requires that every effect be preceded by a unique cause. This idea had served for over a century as a basic assumption of practically every form of rational research. The French mathematician Laplace is credited with perhaps the simplest definition of causality as applied to Newtonian mechanics: if the position and momentum of a particle are accurately known at a given moment, then, its motion is fully determined by the mechanical equations for all future time.

The uncertainty principle, Heisenberg asserted, denies this: in the strict formulation of the causal law - if we know the present, we can calculate the future - it is not the conclusion that is wrong but the premise.: The initial values of the momentum and position cannot be measured simultaneously with absolute precision. As such one can calculate only a range of possibilities for the position and momentum of the particle at any future time. The causal connection between the present and the future is lost (our bold and font change), and the laws and predictions of quantum mechanics become probabilistic, ir statistical, in nature.

Heisenberg's uncertainty principle was profound and far-reaching in nearly every respect.

David C. Cassidy: Heisenberg, Uncertainty and the Quantum Revolution Scientific American May 1992 pages 110-111.

Yet despite all this, we continue to use Cause Effect language. So even though it is clear that "it, literally, is not possible for one human being to create an emotion in another human being " we continue to live in an artificial reality by actively denying this. We continue to buy into the assertion of another:

He offended me.

He made me so angry.

He hurt my feelings.

He upset me.

He humiliated me.

If it is true that "it, literally, is not possible for one human being to create an emotion in another human being" then no one can make another person feel angry, or make a person feel his hurt feelings or feel upset or feel his emotions of humiliation or feel his feelings of offense. Yet, in asserting this, our linguistic anchors are such that we instinctively fight the idea because the s.r. (see Footnote page 7) is, "Yes, he did hurt my feelings." This is the basis by which we blame, fault and guilt others. This activity can then extend to violence, killing and finally war!

Yet, if it were true, that one human can create an emotion in another, then, a person could also "cause"you to love Jeffrey Dahmer or "make" you hate Mother Theresa. Our implicate warp to this false belief, that one human being can create an emotion in another, has meant that all of us live in the terror of ¹²PC. We are all trapped in an insane mine field in which we are in dread of offending another person. Yet, when a person feels offense, it is his emotion that he has created within himself. The insanity is that he absolves himself from apologizing to himself for doing so; instead he accuses the other of doing it - when he could not possibly have. To add salt to the wound he now wants an apology and in some cases monetary indemnity! Can anything be more insane than this,

Again, it was clear that this insane defect in Cause and Effect was lost upon this world until 1991. It was in that year that we took up this fallen banner and, in our work, Don't Ask WHY?!, we mapped out the entirety of the insanity of "why" and Cause and Effect.

The value of this work was soon to find an echo in Germany when the firm of Junfermann Verlag published it in 1993 under the title, Frag nicht warum . . . On the other hand, it was only, in February 1998, that by chance we stumbled upon its review in the Internet by a designated reviewer from the Institute of General Semantics. It was a very bruising review. For us, it merely confirmed what the Father of General Semantics himself had warned:

We do not realise what tremendous power the structure of an habitual language has. It is not an exaggeration to say that it enslaves us through the mechanism of s.r. and that the structure which a language exhibits, is automatically projected (our font change) upon the world around us. This semantic power is indeed so unbelievable that I do not know anyone, even among well-trained scientists, who, after having admitted some argument as correct, does not the next minute deny or disregard (usually unconsciously) practically every word he had admitted, being carried away again by the structural implications of the old language and his s.r.

Alfred Korzybski: Science and Sanity The International Non-Aristotelian Library Publishing Company 6th Reprint 1980 pages 90 - 91.

The "tremendous power" of "why," anchors the user to worship it as if it was a Hindu sacred cow. Therefore, anyone who questions Cause and Effect or any component of its language system or even Cause and Effect itself, can only look forward to an avalanche of stones.

We now know that Cause and Effect has an inbuilt protective mechanism that is a derivative of this "tremendous power." It was out of the field of Neuro-Linguistic Programming that the nature of this power was unraveled. It is the power that is contingent to the nature of the ¹³linguistic anchors that Korzybski had identified as ¹⁴s.r.

It is for this that we are quite sure that Cause and Effect will continue to hold all of humankind in its thralldom. If we submit to it, then, all humanity will be condemned to its insanity of blame, fault, guilt, violence and war. It will be an insanity that will be all pervasive. It will be the medium in which we live our lives. For this, it is only on very rare occasions when the window of awareness opens that a human being will cry out:

Then, the window of awareness closes and we continue as we were before, merrily and happily insane. This is the terrible truth of Korzybski's concerns for which the struggle against Aristotelian system, in our view, has yet to be truly engaged.

We commend the reader to view the Jerry Springer Show. We only ask that the viewer maintain a high threshold of intellectual and critical acuity and not surrender to its absurd anomalies with laughter. If this is done,, the insanity of Cause and Effect will be seen. The reader will then suddenly realize . . . " . . .but this how everyone carries on . . .!" And when he realizes this, he will know the terrible Korzybskian truth that this whole world is insane.

Footnotes:

1. Scientists describe the reality of this universe by their mathematical equations such as E = mc², S = k log w, c = 2 p r, a² - b² = (a+b) (a-b) and AB² = BC² + AC². These equations are, respectively, the Einstein equation relating energy and matter, the Boltzmann equation for entropy, the equation for the radius of a circle, the famous algebraic quadratic equation and the Pythagorean equation for the value of the hypotenuse of a right angle triangle. NONE of these equations index that any of the variables in these equations have a causal relationship with each other. This is true for ALL mathematic equations. Yet, when scientist talk about their discoveries they do so in Cause and Effect terms. It is, as if, Cause and Effect pulls them out of thinking by mathematical functional inter-relationships into thinking by causal inter-relationships. Such is the power of Cause and Effect.
   
   Media interviewers
   
2. Of all media interviewers, we acknowledge Ted Koppel of NBC Nightline as the one whose questioning style is the least contaminated with "why." The media celebrity whose style is most contaminated by "why" is the redoubtable Jerry Springer.
   
3. Children are known to drive their parents crazy asking "why." Only an instrument that has the property of insanity can do so. This article is about how "why" is such an instrument.
   
4. Aristotle was the pre-eminent philosopher of Western Civilization. His contributions were held in such high esteem by the Christian Church that to question any part of his work could entail the most egregious of consequences. He was the tutor of Alexander the Great.
   
5. sorts and organizes his reality:Reality for a human being is not a given. It has to be created by the individual. It is done unconsciously by the body of life embedded blueprints that he uses to understand his world. Thus, Jerry Falwell, to a very large extent, understands his world via the version of the Christian Faith that he subscribes to. However, Hugh Heffner does not sort his reality as Jerry Falwell. Each creates his reality in his own unique way.
   
6. Semantics is derived from the Greek word samiens, meaning significant. That which has significance to a person has appended to it that which is the most meaningful. From this, the word has come to mean "what has meaning."
   
7. David Hume (1711 - 1779) was a British Philosopher, historian, economist and essayist. He conceived of philosophy as the inductive science of human nature.
   
8. Alfred Korzybski is the father of the field study known as General Semantics. He utterly repudiated Cause and Effect which he also identified as the Aristotelian System. He was to append the cipher A to it. He then proposed a non-Aristotelian system as the counter to Cause and Effect. To this he appended the cipher }. He and his successors, through the Institute of General Semantics have committed themselves to bring about the change, A -- in this world. However, with deep sadness, we are truly most unsure as to their degree of success.
   
9. Science and Sanity is an incredible work with wonderful concepts and insights that touch a very wide scan of human domains, especially Psychotherapy. However, it has been said that it is practically unreadable. It is for this we warn the novice to be sure that he has the mental stamina with which to read it, the intellectual prowess to understand it and the cerebral endowments to grasp what it is saying. Many people claim they have read it, and yet, we remain somewhat shocked that they do not know its true significance. If they did they would betray the kind of deep concern that the work indexes. They do not and seem oblivious of it.
   
10. Human insanity has to be understood against the hubris in all of us that we are absolutely sure that we are sane. An acute Paranoid Schizophrenic is quite sure that he is sane. A man carried away by the wild winds of his Acute Cocaine Intoxication thinks that he is sane. In the insanity of Cause and Effect, we are all sure that WE ARE SANE! And yet, as we are all trapped in it, we will never know that we are insane, except rarely.
    
11. Richard Bandler and John Grinder are the creators of the field of study known as Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). Bandler was a Gestalt Therapist and Grinder had the distinction of being the world's leading authority on English Syntax in the early >70s. Today, we would acknowledge Bandler as the leading authority in human ontology.
    
12. PC stands for Politically Correct or Political Correctness. It is the new demon of absolute rectitude or ZERO TOLERANCE. Zero tolerance, i.e., ABSOLUTE INTOLERANCE, is a thing that would warm the spleen of Tomas Tocquemada, the Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition.
    
13. Linguistic anchors are the invariant bonds between the surface structure sounds of a language and their deep structure meaning. Thus, your inability to understand "Nee how ma?" is because you do not have the linguistic anchors for these three Mandarin words. Yet, because you do possess them, for their English counterparts, you understand, "How are you?"
    
14. s.r. stands for semantic reaction. It is the internal sense of meaning that one has when one hears the language that one is a native speaker of.

Dennis K. Chong and Jennifer K. Smith Chong: Don't Ask WHY?! C-Jade Publications Inc. 1991

Dennis K. Chong and Jennifer K. Smith Chong: The Metalanguage of Paul Watzlawick, John Weakland and Richard Fisch The Meta Model of John Grinder and Richard The NLP Connection Volume XI, No. 1 page 7 - 11

Dennis K. Chong an Jennifer K. Smith Chong: THE METAPROGRAMS and THE EMPs ANCHOR POINT Vol. XI No. 11 page 41 -44 Dennis K. Chong and Jennifer K. Smith Chong: Power and Elegance in Communication C-Jade Publications 1992

Paul Watzlawick, John Weakland and Richard Fisch: CHANGE W. W. Norton & Company Ltd. 1974

John Grinder and Richard Bandler: The Structure of Magic Science and Behaviour Books 1975

Alfred Korzybski: Science and Sanity The International Non-Aristotelian Library Publishing Co. 1980

Jerry A. Fodor: Modularity of Mind MIT Press 1987

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©1999 Dennis K. Chong & Jennifer K. Smith Chong. All rights reserved.