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

In this paper, the male pronoun will apply either gender. The nominal pronoun will apply to the first author. The plural pronoun will apply to both authors.

Before Alfred Korzybski came on the scene to challenge the philosophical presuppositions and linguistic formats of the Aristotelian system¹, there was one person who had taken issue with it. He was David Hume a Scottish philosopher and man of letters. He did so in 1777, in his work, Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals:

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.

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

It is clear that no one in Hume's time realized the significance of what he stated. This condition is a reflection of the power of the embedded s.r. of the A system. Indeed Korzybski had warned of this in his work Science and Sanity. It is a warning that bears repeating:

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 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.

There was a hiatus of 156 years before Alfred Korzybski again took up Hume's position. Korzybski's examination was a more extensive and much deeper. He proposed the inverse system of the Aristotelian system. He called it the non-Aristotelian or non-el system². This inverse system was the contrapunctum³. It was his non-Aristotelian system. We now know the Aristotelian system as the Blame Frame⁴ and the non-Aristotelian system as the No-Y-ian Frame⁵.

Alfred Korzybski created the Institute of General Semantics. He did this so that his the succeeding generations of General Semanticists might accomplish the goal of bringing about the change in this world from:

A-system --> Non-A system

or

A --> Non-A

However, their efforts to date has not been truly productive and successful. We dearly wish that they had managed to evince the change in this world from the A system to the Non-A system. We believe this failure is because:

1. they do not have the Non-A language. We now know that the Non-A language is the WWF-metalanguage as delineated in the work Power and Elegance in Communication.
2. they do not know how to collapse out the powerful s.r.⁶ of every logical level of the Aristotelian system in the ontology of a person. Korzybski had warned about them. If the s.rs. are not collapsed out, the ontology of the Aristotelian person will remain moored to the A system.

To achieve the change from A system to Non-A system in Korzybski's own conclusion would be a 'momentous event' for a given individual. For the entire world it would entail incredible consequences. Here we cite again what Korzybski noted:

When all is said and done, one cannot but see, at least as far as the white race is concerned, that a change from A to Non-A would be momentous.

Ibidem page 12

We ourselves are quite sure that Korzybski's conclusion that it would be momentous would, in fact, be the ultimate Gestalt Switch. The scope of the switch and its structure was indexed by Edward Sapir:

To pass from one language to another is psychologically parallel to passing from one geometric system of reference to another. The environing world which is referred to is the same for either language; the world of points is the same in either frame of reference. But the formal method of approach to the expressed item of experience, as to the given point in space, is so different that the resulting feeling of orientation can be the same neither in the two languages nor in the two frames of reference. Entirely distinct or at least measurably distinct, formal adjustments have to be made and these differences have their psychological correlate.

Edited by David G. Mandelbaum: Selected writings of Edward Sapir in Language, Culture, Personality University of California Press 1949 page 153.

The 'formal adjustments' and their 'psychological correlates' are clearly the s.r. of insanity or semantic ill-formedness of the A system to the s.r. of sanity or semantic well-formedness of Non-A system.

Then in 1975, Richard Bandler and John Grinder⁷ condemned the semantics of Cause and Effect as ill-formed. They did this in the work, The Structure of Magic:

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

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

Then in 1991, in our two works, Don't Ask WHY?! and Power and Elegance in Communication we picked up the Korzybskian banner to secure the transformation from:

A system --> Non-A system.

In this process, David Gordon⁸ came to visit us in the winter of 1989/1990. He came to voice his concern about our position that there was no Cause and no Effect. He could not agree with what we were asserting. To prove his point he gave this example, "I have this piece of cut glass. It is here on this table. I push it to the edge and then I push it over. It falls over and it smashes to pieces on the floor. "Dennis," he said. "you cannot say that I did not make that happen."

This was an extra-ordinarily powerful counter-argument, and it took the wind out of my sails.

I had to reflect over what he said and quickly.

Then I put this to him. "I too have a piece of cut glass. It is on the same table and I push it to the edge of the table. I push it over. It falls over and then it floats up in the air!" David Gordon narrowed the focus of his eyes. There was a pause.

I could see David Gordon's mind turning. Then, I could see him grasping what I was saying, i.e. the floating of a object once you push it over a ledge in a space shuttle. I then asked, "You are not telling me I am making this happen too?"

David Gordon never answered my question. He only smiled and what a smile it was!

Then he said, "OK, Dennis! I return to California tomorrow. In ten days you will have my FORWARD to your book Don't Ask WHY?" So, in ten days my fax machine did its noisy thing and it printed out David Gordon's FORWARD to the book. Jennifer and I will always remember David Gordon for coming over 3000 miles in the height of a Canadian winter from his wife and family and his beloved and sunny California to sort this matter with us. It serves as the testament to the high intellectual rigour of the man.

That Y makes X is only one of a list of sensate conclusions that are not true-to-fact. To this list we would add the sensate conclusion that the earth is flat, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, we are stationary, the speed of light is infinite and we are at the centre of the Universe.

The solution, as we indexed above, is laid in part from our discovery of what were the linguistic formats of the Non-A system and their presuppositions. In 1974, in the work CHANGE, Paul Watzlawick, John Weakland and Richard Fisch introduced the concept of the 'metalanguage':

Eventually we realized that this state of affairs was directly linked to the hierarchical structure of all language, communication, learning, etc. As we pointed out in Chapter 1, to express or explain something requires a shift to one logical level above what is to be expressed or explained (our underline). No explaining can be accomplished on the same level; a metalanguage has to be used (our underline), but this metalanguage is not necessarily available (our underline). To effect change is one thing; to communicate about this change is something else: above all, a problem of correct logical typing and of creating an adequate metalanguage. In psychotherapeutic research, it is very common to find that particularly gifted and intuitive therapists think they know why they are doing what they are doing, but their explanations simply do not hold water. Conversely, many gifted writers are astounded and even annoyed at the deeper meanings that others read into their works. Thus, while the former believe they know, but apparently do not, the latter seem to know more than they are willing to acknowledge - which brings us back to Laing: "If I don't know I don't know, I think I know; if I don't know I know, I think I don't know."

Paul Watzlawick, John Weakland and Richard Fisch: CHANGE Principles of Problem Formation and Problem Resolution W. W. Norton & Company Inc. 1974 p79.

In 1975, in The Structure of Magic was delineated the first operational language. As a meta model of language, its originators exercised their right to name their metalanguage, The Meta Model.

By 1993 we did two significant things. We extracted the Meta Model out of Cause and Effect or the Blame Frame. We did this because it was configured in the Aristotelian system. We then re-constructed it in the Non-A system or No-Y-ian Frame.

We augmented and expanded its formats. As a result, we named our metalanguage the Gathering Information Module (GIM). We soon thought that it was more fitting to name it the WWF-metalanguage i.e. Watzlawick-Weakland-Fisch-metalanguage after the very people who first proposed and argued for the need for such an instrument for gathering information.

It was solely in this way that we thought of WWF-metalanguage. It was not until 1998, when we suddenly realized that:

The WWF-metalanguage is the language of the Non-A system.

Once a person is able to use it automatically and proficiently, he will completely unravel the mental gearings of the structure of the A language and all their s.r. In such a contingency, he will then free his mentation of the world of A system in which it is trapped.

If we think by cause and effect, then our language has a commonality of patterns to communicate this. The key to this is why. In changing our external language, our internal experience also changes. "As you speak, so you will think." Upon explaining this to a friend of Dennis, he exclaimed, "What you are telling me is that every human being is trapped in his world of words!" To which Dennis replied, "Yes, indeed we are."

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

The WWF-metalanguage is so powerful that when its formats are inverted, the WWF-metalanguage becomes the language of Hypnosis⁹. For us, this satisfied the Korzybskian test, that the structure of the WWF-metalanguage would have a structure that was the same as the nervous system of a human being. And so with its application we took some 15 patients through various surgical procedures in which they felt no pain and no chemical anaesthetic was used.

It is with an acquired competency in the structure of this language

that one unravels the s.r. of the language of A system in our minds. For our friends and students the witness of this is that dis-empowering consequences of the A system or the Blame Frame is eliminated. They regain the power that was imbued in them when God created them to be free standing, autonomous and sovereign beings.

Then in 1992, a work was published in the Scientific American. It was written by Professor David C. Cassidy of Hofstra University:

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 accurate 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: Ain 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, and the laws and predictions of quantum mechanics become probabilistic, 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.

For us, this input by David Cassidy truly nails down Cause and Effect as effete. It is over!

Now, in Science and Sanity, Korzybski was quite sure that the language of Mathematics was the language of the non-Aristotelian system. His explication of it was, however, incomplete. Thus, at one level, we know that we do not talk to each other in the form of mathematical equations.

However, something very interesting emerges if we examine the implicate nature of mathematical equations. Let us examine a few famous ones, such as:

C = 2 pi r -- equation for a circle

E = m c² -- equation for an atom bomb

S = k log w -- equation for entropy

y = mc + c -- equation for a straight line

a² - b² = (a + b) (a - b ) -- quadratic equation

S.G. = m₁/m₁ -m₂ -- Archimedes' equation for Specific Gravity

AB² = AC² + BC² -- Pythagoras' equation for the hypotenuse of a right angle triangle

1 + 1 = 2 -- the first arithmetic equation of Addition.

These are very famous equations. The first relates the length of the circumference of a circle to its radius, the second is Einstein's famous equation relating mass and energy, the third is Boltzman's equation for entropy, the fourth is the equation for a straight line, the fifth is the famous algebraic quadratic equation, the sixth is Archimedes equation for Specific Gravity. the seventh is Pythagoras' equation for the hypotenuse of a right angle triangle and the eighth is the mother equation of Arithmetic.

What all these equations say is that if the value of a variable on one side of '=' is whatever then the value of the value(s) of the other variable(es) will correspondingly alter. This can be abbreviated to:

If X, then Y.

So if we take the first equation, all it is saying is that if you increase the length of the radius, then¹⁰ the length of the circumference will increase by a factor of 2 pi.

In formal logic this, if X, then Y, is known as a modus ponens. In Neuro-Linguistic Programming it is also known as a Generalization Complex Equivalence. Korzybski also recognized this:

If we abolish the 'is' of identity, then we are left only with a functional, actional., language elaborated in the mathematical language of function. Under such conditions, a descriptive language of ordered happenings on the objective level takes the form of 'if so and so happens, then so and so happens', or briefly, if so, then so'; whish is the proto-type of 'logical' and mathematic processes and languages. We see that such a language is again similar in structure to the external world descriptively; yet it is similar to the 'logical' nervous processes, and so allows us, because of this similarity of structure, predictability and so rationality.

Ibidem page 264

It is very clear that in our daily life, we think in this way; and it is in this way that we speak:

So, we think by modus ponens, and all mathematical equations are metaphors for modus ponens. As Korzybski says, the language of mathematics is something that is natural to us and to our nervous system.

In realizing this, I then realized how it was that I had difficulty in mathematics when I in school. My difficulty was because I tried to understand math by Cause and Effect. This created impossible contradictions and tremendous difficulties in understanding my algebra, trigonometry and so forth. We suspect that this is what is happening with most children in schools today. Their difficulty with mathematics is because they are attempting to understand the inherent structure of modus ponens by Cause and Effect.

This example only shows the price that we pay when we use the Aristotelian system and Cause and Effect to understand anything that is an integral part of the Non-A system. This system is as Korzybski says, multi-ordinal and multi-dimensional and all entities in it are absolutely unique, However, in this universal web of life they are all inter-connected and the inter-connection is by modus ponens. For this there is no place for Cause and Effect.

However, if we continue in Cause and Effect we shall forever be looking for what SHOULD BE and what SHOULD NOT BE. We do this because in Cause and Effect we are driven by our ideas of what is RIGHT or WRONG. From SHOULD spins off our expectations. We have found people whose highest and ultimate priority in any domain is the fulfillment of their expectations¹¹. When they fail to fulfill them, or when others fail them they are consigned to a state of bitter disappointment, sadness, frustration, anger and resentment. One man would blamed his mother and father for everything. Then he felt guilty. And that is the way it is, With Cause and Effect comes BLAME, FAULT and GUILT. In turn it is critical in the reality of Cause and Effect to JUSTIFY. Woe then to those who fail to do so. Those who can will gain whatever they want. Those who fail will be impaled. And the blame will be heaped on the unfortunate who fails to justify because the one who blames is justified to do so. And in this is the basis of his continuing INTOLERANCE. The person who is INTOLERANT is full of his SELF-IMPORTANCE. In turn, such a person will never permit anyone to stain BLAME on him. He in turn will be exceeding skillful in AVOIDING ALL SELF-RESPONSIBILITY. His is life's adventure to append everything onto the X that CAUSEd it all and MADE it happen - not him.

Such a reality is INSANE.

The alternative is to be found in the Non-A system. We also know it as the No-Y-ian Frame.

We have so named it because Cause and Effect is mediated through the question WHY. WHY is the genesis of the Blame Frame and the mother word of the A-system. Therefore, we deemed it appropriate to call its contra-punctal frame the No-Y-ian Frame.

The goal for today₁₉₉₉ is still exactly as what Korzybski stated 66 years ago:

A system -->   Non-A system

or

Blame Frame --> No-Y-ian Frame.

The only other thing left to do to attain the shift is to deal with the s.r. of the A-system in our body language. We now know that it is possible to eliminate a person's ontological moorings to the Blame Frame by collapsing out the semantic meta state anchors or s.r. of the A system. This is by the process that we call De-Imprinting.

The scope of this work is to use the concept of analogical anchors that were developed out of the field of Neuro-Linguistic Programming. However, in this domain, they are now applied for semantic meta state anchors. The application of such anchors, however, requires a very high degree of expertise¹² since they are semantic meta state anchors.

When they are anchored, such semantic meta state anchors of each frame will collapse out its contra-lateral anchor in the opposite frame, i.e. the Non-A system of No-Y-ian Frame.

Once done, there is an immediate change in ontology from turmoil, turbulence and tumult to one of peace, calm and tranquility. These maneuvers are the condition for:

A --> Non-A

Blame Frame --> No-Y-ian Frame.

And this was what Korzybski wanted above all else.

In the Epilogue to this paper we shall discuss how we bring about this gestalt switch.

End Notes:

¹The philosophical presuppositions and linguistic formats of the Aristotelian system is the 1999 paraphrase of Korzybski's terminology. He would have written of them as "the propositional functions and language system" of the Aristotelian system.

²non-el system was so termed by Korzybski because he argued that the Aristotelian system was elementalistic. His inverse system therefore had to be non-elementalistic or non-el.

³Contrapunctum means a natural opposite. Examples are night/day, good/evil, turmoil/calm, war/peace and so forth.

⁴Blame Frame as a term, as far as we know, was first proposed by Richard Bandler and John Grinder. However, it was not until the work Don't Ask WHY? that this phrase explored as a concept and its unique role in human ontology and communication delineated.

⁵No-Y-ian Frame is the contrapunctum of the Blame Frame. All its logical levels are natural inverts of those of the Blame Frame. It was initially delineated in the work Don't Ask WHY?! and the fully explored in the work Power and Elegance in Communication.

⁶s.r. are of two types. There are firstly linguistic s.r. and then secondly there are analogical s.r. In the matter of analogical s.r. there are firstly s.r. for simple and discreet internal states. Secondly there are s.r. for pure semantic states and thirdly there are s.r. for semantic meta states. This last category was a discovery by Michael Hall who wrote his findings in his work, META STATES.

⁷Richard Bandler and John Grinder are the originators of the field study known as Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). When they began they were blessed with a powerful group of students who in time were to co-contribute richly in its development.

⁸David Gordon is for us a very special friend a gentleman as the term truly means. He is also a deeply respected thinker, international trainer and co-developer of Neuro-Linguistic Programming and author. Through his critical work, Therapeutic Metaphors, he showed health professionals how to tell stories in therapeutic work.

⁹Language of Hypnosis as an inversion of a metalanguage was the insight of Richard Bandler and John Grinder. They proposed this powerful concept in their work The Hypnotic Patterns of Milton H. Erickson, M.D. Vol. 1. They were to write a Vol. 2 with Judith DeLozier. However, it is in The Knife Without Pain is the blueprint of how to use the inversion of the WWF-metalanguage.

¹⁰then: In idiomatic usage, >then= is sometimes dropped from the sentence.

¹¹Expectations.
An M.Sc. engineer came to see us. His scan of complaints was lack of confidence, inability to keep a job, recurrent patterns of verbally abusing his mother and father, frustration, anger, sadness, banging his head on the wall, uncontrollable bouts of crying, occasional delusions and hallucinations, verbalizing gibberish and a diagnosis of borderline schizophrenia. If you put yourself in to the mode of an ontology in which your ultimate priority in your life is that all your expectations of self and other MUST be fulfilled, you will find that it will more than satisfy you that such a disposition will entail all the consequences that he complained about. Of course he is well now.

¹²Expertise of high order is a requisite for the application of a semantic meta state anchors. This is inevitable to and consonant with the findings by Michael Hall that the gestalt of the semantic meta state inherently tends to dissipate as a function of Time. Therefore, it requires an operator of high order to be able to configure the semantic meta state and to be able to hold it in its configuration before the anchor is then applied. It not, therefore, as for the other type of anchors where the issue is about being able to adumbrate the state and then at its highest threshold to anchor it.

References:

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

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

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: Power and Elegance in Communication C-Jade Publications Inc. 1991

Dennis K. Chong & Jennifer K. Smith Chong: THE METALANGUAGE of Paul Watzlawick, John Weakland and Richard Fisch, THE META MODEL of John Grinder and Richard Bandler The NLP Connection Volume XI No 1

Michael Hall: META-STATES Empowerment Technologies 1996

Paul Watzlawick, John Weakland and Richard Fisch: CHANGE Principles of Problem Formation and Problem Resolution W. W. Norton & Company Inc. 1974

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