It has lately come to Our ears that you frequently and conspicuously pronounce sentences in public having an “is of…

Originally shared by Peter da Silva

It has lately come to Our ears that you frequently and conspicuously

pronounce sentences in public having an “is of identity” followed by a “snarl word”; e.g., “These students are fascists,” “These students are crazed by dope,” etc.

A scientific discipline known as General Semantics teaches that such sentences have detrimental effects on the nervous system of the user, contribute to neurosemantic disorientation, create confusion between the map and the territory, and lead to unsane behavior. A person habitually addicted to such sentences imitates animals in his nervous reactions, becomes dogmatic and categorical, loses the characteristically human consciousness of abstracting, and may even become so impassioned by neurosemantic primitive reactions as to commit crimes against property, such as attacking other people’s trucks, tearing up other people’s wires, etc.

There have been several excellent teachers of General Semantics abroad in the land during recent decades, and one of them, coincidentally, has the same name as you; if We were not aware that “the label is not the thing;” We might even think he was you. By further coincidence, this man when last heard of was also at San Francisco State College. We suggest earnestly that you should attempt to get in touch with him, if he can still be reached, and obtain from him some basic training in General Semantics principles.

He might also teach you something about neurosemantic relaxation. In the last photograph We saw of you confronting the dissidents, your entire face, shoulders, and body showed rigidity, neurosemantic “closedness,” and the general nonverbal message, “Don’t talk to me; my mind is made up.” General Semantics might also teach you how to grow out of this Infantile and primitive attitudinal set and function as a time-binding and open personality. Please get in touch with the other Dr. Hayakawa and give this a try.

 

A lot of political pundits credit Margaret Thatcher and her conservative party policies for turning around the UK’s…

A lot of political pundits credit Margaret Thatcher and her conservative party policies for turning around the UK’s economy starting in the 1980s. She definitely deserves some credit. What is often not mentioned is the discovery and production of the North Sea oil starting in the late 1970s.

The main reason for UK’s turnaround in the 1980s was the revenue generated from oil exports. The same story applies to the US and Ronald Reagan. Only in the US, it was the Prudhoe Bay oil in Alaska.

The UK is no longer an oil exporter today.