Last weekend, I went away to Paradise Beach on the Gippsland coast of Victoria, Australia. I stayed by myself in a friend's holiday house and worked on several things and did some reading. I re-read parts of Korzybski's Science and Sanity and touched upon a part on "Unsanity vs. Sanity" that I am sure many people would find beneficial - I intend to expand upon this finding and deliver it as a talk at the first Australian General Semantics Society National Conference.
Towards a theory of "conservative characteristics." (an abstract)
Conservative characteristics are the tendency of "neurotics" (as described by Korzybski) to confuse the orders of abstraction and revert to Aristotelian "allness" as an infantile, learned behavior.1
In childhood, we make underdeveloped, either-or evaluations. Mother, teddy or television is either positive or negative. We seek to reinforce and seek pleasure and minimize disappointment, anger and frustration. These maladaptive behaviors may persist into adulthood.
According to social anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, humans underwent a process of socialization from their initial self-awareness thousands of years ago to their current state of societal development. Children up until around the age of 14 undergo their own individuation and socialization process. From the ages of 7-14, the child is thought to be in its "narcissistic", "egocentric" stage and through this stage, patterns of evaluation are seen to occur. Real world events and their evaluation could in fact take the form of if/then statements. For example:
"IF I keep quiet and tell no one that I am feeling hurt, THEN I may escape scrutiny and further pain."
This map or method of evaluation may form as the fundamental reasoning process behind most behaviors in the future. In RET or Rogerian therapy this may be called "toxic shame" or irrational thinking. If this becomes a repeated response with no attempt to adjust the behavior, this could be considered a conservative characteristic.
Methods for overcoming conservative characteristics:
1. The consciousness of abstraction.
Using the structural differential or the ABC model in RET. Read more on the ABC model here.
Preparation for a transition to evaluation of probabilities, not absolutes. Asking "If I do this, the outcome will be this" instead moving toward a Hypothesize-Test-Revise model of behavior.
2. Non-attachment to outcome.
Realization the test is more important than the result. Without the real-world test, NO results or data can be gained for later revision. The outcome has no bearing on the efficacy or worth of the tester.
3. Unconditional self-acceptance.
From this, new experiences may be formed. The beliefs of inherent "badness" or "worthlessness" can be safely abandoned and each situation may be seen as a "tabula rasa" for perceiving and evaluating anew. Realizing that situation1 is not situation2.
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References:
Korzybski, A., Science and Sanity (5th Ed.), Institute of General Semantics: Dallas, 1994. p. 495.