The reality we manage to get into our heads is largely that reality which is abstracted through our symbol systems.
Anon

 

Time-binding:
The uniquely human ability to build on the accumulated knowledge of others, potentially to an exponential degree.

Sun 15 August 2010

Here's Something About GS -
A Primer for Making Sense of Your World

The thoughts of Steve Stockdale', former IGS Director,
advocating an informed, open, and tolerant world view
that’s consistent with what we know, without deference to dogmas, traditions,
or what passes for culturally-dependent "common sense".
And - Preparation for the National Conference
!

Led by Robert

Proceedings

1. Catching Up & Introductions
2. GS Diary Reports - "Our GS Experiences"
3. "Here's Something About GS ... – Presentation and discussion
4. AGS Business
5. Close.

1. Catching-up

We “always” allow a little time for review of our lives and activities.

2. GS Diary Reports - "Our GS Experiences" Some of us experienced events in the month past, which demonstrated the value, and perhaps some limitations, in the applications of GS principles. Sharing of these is a valuable part of our time together.

3. "Here's Something About GS - A Primer for Making Sense of Your World"

The thoughts of Steve Stockdale', former IGS Director, advocating an informed, open, and tolerant world view that’s consistent with what we know, without deference to dogmas, traditions, or what passes for culturally-dependent "common sense".

Overview

We worked through parts of a hard-copy version of Steve's book, considering the historical, biographical and GS subject-matter content.

.......................................

The Source

You can see Steve Stockdale's writings, download the book yourself,
and sample "all manner" of delights at Steve's website:
http://www.thisisnotthat.com/hsgs.html


Exercise

In particular, we made a more detailed study of thechapter on his "ME Model". We considered words such as "anxiety", "envy", "disappointment", "rejection", "guilt", "shame", "embarrassment", "regret" and "stress". It was surprising (to some of us!) how much our personal experience of these "negative emotions" varied among the seminar participants.

Steve's "ME" Model (a little part of the whole book)

The ME Model can be expressed as a four-step process:
..1. Something is going on,
..2. I experience what's going on,
..3. I evaluate my experience of what's going on,
..4. From my evaluation of my experience of what's going on, I respond to and give meaning.

....................
Does this look or sound a little familiar? Yep, it's like Korzybski's "Structural Differential"!
But wait - there's more! You'll need to read the original to get "the full story"! Stockdale's book explores the ME model in great detail, and it's quite a different model that the SD.

For comparison, we revised three other familiar models:

..........a. Korzybski's familiar "Structural Differential":

.............................................
..............We won't elaborate on this famous model here ...
............. there are plenty of explanations elsewhere!

..........b. Hayakawa's "Abstraction Ladder":

....................


..........c. J. Samuel Bois's "Semantic Transactor":

.........................................

The voices

We were privileged by a visitation across space and time and technology, by none other than Steve Stockdale and Alfred Korzybski. Well, not actually "in the flesh", but by means of Pauline's computer retrieving video from the Institute's archives.

Alicia & Matt's Tutorial

This is a web-based Tutorial resource that we examined briefly for comparison. It has quite a simple presentation style, considering basic GS concepts one at a time in a structured format.

This seemed like quite a useful resource that we should know about. We were interested that the authors acknowledged the contribution of Steve Stockdale and Susan and Bruce Kodish, thus reinforcing the reality of collaboration and time-binding in the global GS community!

~ 0 ~

4. ~ AGS Business ~

a. National Conference 27-29 August, and the UN NGO Conference 30 August - 1 September.
....UN Conference 30 August - 2 September: content, promotion, travel arrangements, etc.

b. Pauline succeeded in creating a "Meetup Place" for us,
....relating her experience and knowledge of NLP, RET and GS.
....We've already had a few responses!

c. We did some indexing of the AGS Library - Surely a time-binding endeavour!
....It was exciting to (re-)discover lots of books, CDs etc that we haven't looked at for a while.
...
The Index will be made available on our website.

5. ~ Close ~

Next Meeting: 27 August, 2010 in Melbourne (National Conference!)

(Updated 16 August 2010)

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