Australian Society for General Semantics
AGS Monthly Seminar
October 2009
What stops us
applying GS principals?
We reflected on occasions when GS has “failed” us
(or when we have failed to use GS or use it
appropriately)
and how we can improve.
Led by Dion
1.
Catching-up
We “always” allow a little
time for review of our lives and activities.
This month it was (inter
alia),
a moving of home for our hosts Pauline and Gavan (and this
meeting!),
another wedding for Jeanne and Robert’s family,
a moving-home for David,
a renovating of home for Dion,
another new business enterprise for Laurie,
etc etc …
2. Introduction
We like to dwell on the power of
GS theory and our little triumphs in applying it,
But
What about when we DON’T apply it
as we could / should … ?
3. Some Case-Studies
Dion elicited some examples from
us of where we could / should / would have done better, and we considered why /
how / when this occurred.
Someone mentioned how he was satisfied
that “I’ve covered that part of “Science and Sanity”, then realised that really
understanding and applying it was something far more again!
4. Some meaty stuff
Bois (“The Art of Awareness”) has
a diagram with five concentric circles, from the inside labelled:
Perceived
by the senses,
Perceived
with the aid of instruments (eg microscope),
Understood
better with GS methods,
Theories
and doctrines (eg the “isms”),
Then
the *** unknown *** !
Some quotations crept into the
discussion, of whose relevance I’m not quite sure, eg:
LC: “I’d do so much
I’d
be surprised,
If
I could just
get
organised!”
RJ: “All (sic) our problems
would be
solved,
if only we
had
more
thingamajigs (technology)!”
5. Studies from the story “Eragon”
This included some juicy
quotations, like
“Magic must be our last resort”, and
“The thing is the word – Control the word and you control the
thing!”
We considered the significance of
this in our community, credence in magic, power of the media, etc. It was interesting to see the use of Latin
as a means of adding mystery and magic and power to language – What about that
in the (esp. Catholic?) Church?.
LC: “It’s so important that the
symbol represents the reality as closely as possible,”
Discussion on the controlling
function of language to small children, eg:
* How often do we say “No!” to a two-year-old?
* How often does a four-year-old ask “Why ..?” ?
6. Reflections on how / when “popular culture” fails to
support us
Sports, media, entertainment (esp.
fantasy) – how useful/harmful is it?
What about phenomena like Barry
Humphreys / Dame Everidge –
* Quite harmful or
* Just frivolous, or
* Useful social commentary … ?
LC: “But what about
objectification?”
RJ: “Maybe illustrated by the
statement ‘GS failed me on this occasion’.
In
fact, GS is not an entity that can succeed or fail,
Surely
better to say ‘On this occasion, I failed to use GS effectively!’ “
7. Studies from TV
doco on “Luck” etc.
Dion collected and presented some video
material about success and luck and causality etc.
David contributed some detail
here, on the research about lucky people.
Professor Wiseman's research on
perceived luck and success on both people how thought that they were lucky and
those who thought that they were unlucky.
Psychologist Richard Wiseman
tested 1,000 people who described themselves as exceptionally "lucky or
unlucky" to a barrage of psychological tests. From this he found/abstracted four fundamental principles of a
"lucky" life.
Principle 1: Keeping an eye out
for opportunities.
Unlucky people have intentional
blindness. The lucky people tend to be a bit more relaxed, they'll notice
something rather unusual and go wow there's an opportunity there. The unlucky
people tend to be rather anxious and when we become anxious we become even more
tunnel visioned, we focus all our attention into a tiny area and so we miss
these big changes in our environment.
Principle 1b: Keep
your body language open for opportunities from others
As the psychological testing progressed, hundreds of interview tapes revealed
unlucky people had consistently closed body language
Unlucky people’s facial
expressions are actually fairly neutral. They are not smiling as much as
lucky people so they won’t be inducing those smiles/positive attitudes in those
who might provide them with opportunities.
The lucky group on the other hand
gave twice as many open gestures, and smiled 3 times as often.
So not only were "lucky" people better at spotting opportunities, their
body language was subconsciously "attracting" them.
The possibility of a chance
encounter working out well for you, with good body language, is much higher
than the unlucky person who's not getting out and not touching other people's
lives.
Principle 1c: Think that you
are lucky. I.e. have a positive attitude.
The unlucky people thought that
they were unlucky. Lucky people feel they are lucky, so are more
likely to give something a go. I.e. try out an opportunity.
So change the way you think about your life will help you explore more possible
opportunities.
Principle 2 is all about the role
of intuition.
“Lucky” people use intuition as a
skill more often. It is a way of the brain dealing with very complex
environments and saying "yes, look don't worry about consciously thinking
through everything because otherwise you'd be there all day, let's make a
shortcut" and it's about accurate shortcuts,
You’d think it would be the
unlucky people who relied on intuition, but in fact, they were the ones
ignoring their gut instinct.
Principle 3: Have a more
optimistic view of the future.
When the “lucky” people were
surveyed, they were much more optimistic about their future.
How that belief affected people’s actions is shown by a very simple
experiment. We had two metal puzzles. We said one of these is really
difficult; the other one is fairly straightforward, we're not going to tell you
which is which. The lucky people were convinced that they had got the easy
puzzle and because of that they would persevere for hours and hours trying to
solve this puzzle. The unlucky people were convinced they got the difficult
one, and would hand it back after just a few seconds.
And of course in real life the
more you persevere, the more successful/"luckier" you will be!
Luck Principle 4: Lucky people
turn bad luck into good.
When something bad happens,
unlucky people just say " I'm just unlucky, it just happens to me. You
know I'm meant to be kept down. You know, I'm not meant to have anything. You
know so why bother trying" And so they just give up.
But lucky people go out and spot a
new opportunity. The notion that you are unlucky, is one of the most dangerous
beliefs you can hold because there's nothing you can do about it so it just
simply stops you trying. [Like a self fulfilling prophecy.]
So you've want to keep pushing and
pushing your luck.
To summarise:
”Lucky” people generate their own good "luck" via four basic
principles. They are skilled at:
1) creating and noticing chance
opportunities,
2) make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition,
3) create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and
4) adopt a resilient attitude to set backs that transforms bad luck into good.
8. AGS Business
This was our AGM for 2009, with reports from
office-bearers, election for next year and motions for proposals. Minutes of this meeting are available
separately.
9. Close
Next Meeting: Mid-November, to be presented by
Robert:
“Man and His Symbols”
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(Updated 24 October, 2009)