E-PRIME, abolishing all forms of the verb “to be” has its roots in the field
“Towards and Understanding of E-Prime” Robert Anton Wilson, 1989
4 of general semantics, as presented by Alfred Korzybski in his 1933 book,
Science and Sanity. Korzybski pointed out the pitfalls associated with, and
produced by, two usages of “to be”: identity and predication. His student. D
David Bourland, Jr., observed that even linguistically sensitive people do not
seem able to avoid identity and predication uses of ‘to be” if they continue to
use the verb at all. Bourland pioneered in demonstrating that one can indeed
write and speak without using any form of “to be,” calling this sub-set of the
English language “E-Prime.” Many have urged the use of E-Prime in writing
scientific and technical papers – Dr. Kellogg exemplifies a prime exponent of
this activity. Dr. Albert Ellis has re-written five of his books in E-Prime, in
collaboration with Dr. Robert H. Moore, to improve their clarity and to reap
the epistemological benefits of this language revision. Korzybski felt that all
humans should receive training in general semantics from grade school on,
as “semantic hygiene” against the most prevalent forms of logical error, emo-
tonal distortion, and “demonological thinking.” E-Prime provides a straight-
forward training technique for acquiring such semantic hygiene.
To understand E-Prime, consider the human brain as a computer. (Note that
I did not say the brain “is” a computer.) As the Prime Law of Computers tells
us, GARBAGE IN, GARBAGE OUT. (GIGO, for short.) The wrong soft-
ware guarantees wrong answers. Conversely, finding the right software can
“miraculously” solve problems that previously appeared intractable.
By default, human perception has a muddled quality. Internal perception and language activities run simultaneously while environmental factors are being scanned and perceived. As humans can rarely distinguish between immediate sense perception and mental activities, it can be easy for mental activities to create physical responses. Robert Sapulsky’s work on stress, popularized by his book Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, points out that mental images of stressful events do not get processed differently than real physical threats. An imagined tiger stalking you will have much the same stress responses as a real tiger, with those skilled at mental imagery even more responsive to situations like this.
The practice of E-Prime acts as an exercise in learning to distinguish subjective perceptions from objective data collection. Focusing on forms of the verb “to be” and looking to eliminate them from usage creates a circumstance where someone has to recognize their current perceptions as being rooted in the subjective realm (feelings, impressions, imagery, etc.) or from things that have been subject to measurement and data collection (temperature, location, velocity, etc.).
For better and worse, developing this kind of awareness between subjective impression and objective measurement has the capacity for both increasing your awareness of the distinction between these domains and also make you aware of just how much everyone around you assumes to be “real” result from muddled confusions between the two. In addition, realizing just how much at present qualifies as “unknown” increases considerably. So very little of what likely exists within the Universe has ever been perceived or measured by you or anyone known.
Another outcome of this practice may be an awareness of how many systems of coercion rely upon the substantial confusion between subjective perception and objective measurement. Politics, propaganda, marketing, and more rely upon creating specific perceptions unmoored from evidence to be acted upon as if they were objectively measured data. In seeing this, you may begin to notice the metacommunicative structures and processes active around us but just below or above our general awareness.
Such an awareness of distinction and existing coercion can mark the beginning of becoming a Black Magician.
(Image from https://dribbble.com/george-chi )
Setemheb 