1 March

[Bill Sharp]

Curious that on this date my mind turns to Korzybski. It was on this date 59 years ago that his life ended. For some reason I get around to remembering it every year.

I don’t hear much on this site and to be honest I’ve been busy too. When I retired I realized that I could answer the question: “What would you do if you could do anything you wanted to?” For the past year I’ve been thinking about an economy going pretty much where AK said it would: out of its mind. For some time before that I’ve been thinking about designing a sustainable economy, actually a local economy and community. More and more people are thinking and talking about it.

The job is not as ambitious as MOH but it is still on the order of designing a colony on another world. It requires a profound structural understanding of human social systems and that alone I find an interesting challenge. It also requires a profound disconnect with thinking as things are and I’ve yet to met anyone except Alfred Korzybski who could frame that problem.

So my questions are two: 1) How are you good folks who represent the living legacy of Alfred Korzybski? And; 2) Got any ideas about building a sane life on planet Earth?

Bill Sharp

[Bruce I. Kodish]

Hey Bill,
Whatever his leanings as a young man, they got modified as he grew older (as I already noted.) Similar to a lot of us.

I'm looking forward to hearing more about your economics book and hope you can get a lot of publicity for whatever you come up with. You have extra-special talent as a writer.

[Bill Sharp]

Hi Bruce,

Good to hear from you and delighted you are busy on that bio.

I got a strong impression that Korzybski had strong socialist leanings and I seem to remember some comments he had about business that had a sharp edge to them.

On 2 March I got into what I plan to be a short book with an economic theme. Saying that it takes on more of a Schumacher tone than anything you are likely to learn at Harvard. It is a way for me to think things through and there may also be an audience for it. I’m seeing a lot of books on sustainable economy—none, I believe, by economist. The introduction says a little about systems theory and Korzybski by way of saying its “an economy in an environment.” Another month and I may know if it will make sense.

Thanks for the insightful comments.

Bill

[Bruce I. Kodish]

Wow, Bill! I've gotten so busy working on finishing Korzybski's biography that I forgot about the anniversary of his death.

No, we haven't had much activity on 'This Is Not That' lately. Glad you posted this.

Korzybski didn't do too much in the way of research on economics. He appears to have had socialist leanings as a young man in Poland, had a great interest in cooperative economic arrangements and social credit after World War I, and eventually just go too involved with developing the non-aristotelian system and its "modus operandi" known as general semantics, to delve too much into economic stuff after Manhood. He seemed generally okay with Roosevelt's policies and the New Deal and seemed fairly okay with a fair amount of government involvement in the economic life of a nation, as many people did who would call themselves moderate and 'liberal' in the Nine-teen Thirties and Forties. He certainly didn't approve of Communism.

It seems to me that the implications of non-additivity in human life and social structurings seem most compatible with what has developed out of Austrian economics, e.g. Hayek, et al. But I suppose economic formulators from other schools could use general-semantics related heuristics in their analysis. What kind of solutions to the current mess? Please analyze away. Maybe you can come up with something good.