Theos-Talk Archives (October 1996 Message tl00327)

>
>	What I meant is that, in the reading of theosophical topics, one has to
>understand the prejudices that are so ingrained into the author's
>society that the author is not even aware that they have these
>prejudices. And you have to filter these out in order to truly what the
>author is saying. The problem is that the more repugnant these
>prejudices are to you, the harder it is to filter them out.
>
>	Bart Lidofsky

This is what turned my attention to General Semantics as a way of
understanding how this can be avoided.
They say that it is our evaluations of anything outside our 'skin' that gets
us into semantic trouble. We live in our own private worlds and are imbedded
in a Reality that we take for granted and so we abstract from the first idea
or stimulus according to our various emotional needs and blockages and
arrive at some queer conclusions and feel annoyed if others do not share
them. I am still lurking and reading so my understanding is far from complete.
According to my understanding, they recommend taking into account that
Smith1 is not the same as Smith2 e.g John Algeo is an autocrat from Wheaton
so any of his associates from there may be reacted to in a similar way. They
also hold a lot with the fact that Smith2 that got up our nose last week may
not be the same Smith2 today as living is a process and this means all
things change and so Smith2 may have been enlightened since last week and
greet us with loving kindness which we may miss because we remember Smith2
from last week. They say that there is a natural order to the way the
nervous system works and that the way much of humanity abstracts and
identifies with their abstractions and evaluations causes un-sane semantic
reactions to the structure of their world. We do not take into account the
fact that in any event or incident there is a whole lot of things we do not
know and so our evaluations should be provisional and leave the way open for
more information to be added later and then be able to adjust our
evaluations to incorporate the additional info. John Algeo may have very
valid reasons, to himself, for being an 'autocrat'. G-s would say that
without a proper description of meaning, that word 'autocrat' has no meaning
in facts but is an evaluation by us. That is ok as long as we acknowledge
that it is an evaluation we have made according to how we see it and
acknowledge that there may be things we have no knowledge of, influencing
his behaviour.
That is sort of the way to look at it but there is a lot more to it all than
what I have outlined here.
Bee Brown
Member Theosophy NZ, TI.

Success is getting what you want.
Happiness is liking what you get.