Is World Peace Even Possible? part 1

World peace? We’re all for it. 

(In fact, it’s already here....ah, but that part comes later.)

This is a round-up of various technologies --- and we use the term in it’s fullest sense here tonight --- which hold tremendous promise to bring us, as a species, closer to harmony, understanding, and a lot less machetes to the face.  Please take the time to investigate them all, because like any technology, if you understand how it works, you own it for life.

(Finally, if you know more about this than I do, you are probably right.  Feel free to correct me and point me in the right direction, everyone who reads this site will benefit from that.)

From working with troubled people in a lot of capacities, the single unifying symptom of every single kid and adult I have ever dealt with, spoken to, calmed down, and tried to help is this:

Every one of them used language in a way that hurt them, and hurt those around them.  And they did not have the tools --- the language --- to see that, understand it, and change it.

So the most important place to start is with the core, original human technology, the technology that provided the basis for all of our other accomplishments as a species, from pyramids to landing an outer space sattelite onto a spinning asteroid by remote control from a command center that’s 196 million miles away. 

That core technology is our language—precise communication that allows humans to co-ordinate activity on a massive scale.  General Semantics is the science of language, and it’s important enough that not teaching it in schools amounts to a serious handicap.

1. General Semantics and...
The place to begin—and stay for quite some time—is with Count Alfred Korzybski.  Much like Timothy Leary or Crowley, Korzybski is well-known and very seldom understood.  With the exception of Robert Anton Wilson’s essay on E-Prime, I haven’t read a popular treatment of Korzybski that didn’t badly distort what he actually says in his writing.  (It’s worth noting that none of them were simpler or easier to understand than Korzybski’s original work, either.)

Just the same, this was a guy who had to remind his students with a mantra of “I have said what I have said.  I did not say what I did not say.”

Speaking for myself, I am still, five years after setting out to obliterate this sick habit, still catching myself finishing other people’s sentences.  I suspect we generally fill in nearly every gap in the messages other humans send us, and I suspect we generally never consciously know we’re doing that.

So rather than me giving you my mostly hallucenatory take on what this man said, I urge you to read the following four essays and hallucenate your own interpretation of What He Really Means.  (Then, you can email me your theories.)

On Symbolism

Science and Sanity

The Manhood of Humanity

Time-Binding, First Paper

Time-Binding, Second Paper

Now, Korzybski, god bless him and all, is also very dead, and has not been around to see all the advances that have been made with langauge technology.  Almost all of his insights have been rendered more accessable and more effective by a relatively recent tech, which is the logical predecessor to General Semantics, the hands-on, martial art of human language:

....2. Neuro-Linguistic Programming

This is a core skill of living life on Earth.  I think it’s that important, I’ll go on record saying that.  NLP will vastly increase the sensitivity, precision and quality of your communication.  The Brainsturbator Library offers a number of titles on NLP:

Monsters and Magic Sticks—Stephen Heller

Sleight of Mouth—Robert Dilts

User’s Manual for the Brain—Hall & Bodenhammer

I would emphasize that NLP is a technology that works.  It is not something you have to believe in, and NLP theory and procedure is always being revised based on what works, which is a refreshing change of pace.  So it’s not a concept to discuss --- it’s a very real technique you can use in your own life.  Much like ritual magick or meditation, you will find that most practitioners don’t spend a whole lot of time trying to convince you of much --- they just kinda smile and tell you to try it, and see if it works. It does, and that’s why they’re not too concerned over your opinions about it.

(This touches on a core principle of the BIPT: “All Tools, No Beliefs”, as Prof. Memory Serves once put it.  Shovels do not require any theoretical background, and guns operate with or without “having faith” in them.  Beliefs are baggage which handicap thought, tools are simply tools, and so we focus on them.)

3. Mediation.

Nothing could be simpler, which is why nothing could be more powerful: just sit down and talk about it.

Somehow, mediation is a very radical concept.  Rather than resolving conflict with force, have all parties involved clearly state their objectives, their needs, their complaints to each other, and try to find common ground.  This can be exceptionally hard, and it is certainly a tool of inherently limited value, since there are a number of conflicts we could point out off-hand that will not be resolvable by mediation.  (The conflict between Palestine and Israel comes to mind, since Israel has been lying to a truly psychopathic degree for decades now and thus honest communication is impossible.)

But that’s not a refutation of Mediation’s effectiveness --- just an acknowledgement that it’s got limitations.  Mediation still has very rewarding applications, at all levels of conflict, all around the Earth.  More importantly, it must be noted that mediation has a highly successful track record.  On top of that, hgh-level mediatiors are some of the most capable, intelligent and driven folks on the planet and they’re improving the Art every day.

The most useful resources I found, I found through mediate dot com.  There’s really no way I can phrase that without sounding like I got paid to write it, huh?

4. Meditation.

Really, it does work.

As far as instruction, nothing could be simpler.

Sit down in one place until you realize how hard it is to sit down in one place.

Then, don’t move.

And, Up Next...

The next installment will focus on technology in the more common sense.  We of course welcome suggestions, corrections, and occasional personal obsessions.