Even after observing the passing scene for over 80 years, I am still amazed at the emotions that are aroused by some words. In his 1933 work, Science and Sanity , Alfred Korzybski coined the phrases, “The word is not the thing” and “The map is not the territory,” indicating that knowing the name of an item does not mean that you know everything about the item itself. He recommended that new entities be observed on the silent level – a time for observing the reality without preconceptions. But it seems that many people fail to appreciate the wisdom of keeping these bits of advice in mind. I live in a church-sponsored retirement community, which is in the process of constructing new facilities: a chapel, theater, gift shop, a small meeting room and a large community meeting room. As explained at a recent residents' meeting, the administration discussed various names for the meeting rooms. For the smaller room, th...
My alarm clock goes off every morning at eight, except for the few times when I have a breakfast date. Usually I wake up about an hour before that, or at least I partly wake up. It is important that I remain in a “not quite awake but not quite asleep” state, because I consider that time as the germination period for whatever seeds happen to have blown into my head.