Gadfly, wouldn't you agree that the above post consists of little more than a series of arguments? It may be possible to observe without arguments, but I'm not sure it's possible to reason without them.
Also, as an abstract idea, is religion really as unique or indefinite as you suggest? Government is an abstraction, so are family, school, game, job, hobby, gang, romance, art, etc. Each of these entities has its own accoutrements, but wouldn't you agree that each is essentially no more or less than a recognizable pattern of human behavior? One can visit a Courthouse, but the Court itself consists of all the roles played by all the parties involved, together with their overarching purpose, i.e., to discover the truth, to exonerate the innocent, to punish the guilty, to avenge the victim, etc. Is a show trial still a court? What about a kangaroo court? Perhaps Scientology could be thought of as a kangaroo religion.
Yes, but what I do is string together a series of ideas, where each idea aims to get the reader to LOOK at the SAME aspect of reality that links to the idea. An honest person strives to get others to LOOK at the things the idea claims to define or represent. Others, not so honest, or not so bright, remain mired in the realm of vague ideas and thought and are happy to sever the link with observation and experience.
The problem comes down to what Korzybski and others have talked about. The realm of observation involves
specifics - always and only. There are no abstractions in observation. Observing provides the most reliable link to the behavior or any aspect of reality. This is as true for science as it is for any person striving to understand life.
Hubbard talks about some of this too, but he alters the ideas of General Semantics to serve his own creation. Many or most conceptual ideas are ideas linked to observations. I am talking about the part of the mind that thinks in terms of words and concepts. But as Korzybski well-explained, and few grasp, the model of ideas contained in the mind is NOT the things and relationships it claims to define and describe. In other words,
the MAP is NOT the TERRAIN. The "map" is the inner world of ideas, and the "terrain" is the physical or mental reality being
modeled. One should never lose sight of the fact that concepts, ideas and even words are MODELS. They function as a sort of blueprint. And, while useful, they are NEVER exact.
In fact, all ideas are MODELS of some aspect of reality. Too often people confuse their ideas with reality. It is common for people at this stage of human evolution. And people like Hubbard who understand such things can and do take great advantage of this fact.
What is fairly easy to see with fanatics is the degree to which IDEAS overcome and take precedence over observations. That is easy to see in Scientology and Scientologists where the beliefs exist as fixed ideas. They actually REFUSE to look at any aspect of reality that may disrupt the belief system. In fact, they are carefully trained to do so.
One needs to study semantics and understand how words exist as general labels. Words ONLY take on a more specific meaning when linking them together in contexts in sentences. Abstractions and generalities, while necessary to conceptual thinking, require modifiers for there to be any sort of communication. For example, "man walks dog" makes no sense. Each of the terms is a vague generality. Each word is an abstraction and NOT a specific. Until things are brought down to the realm of observable reality, as a specific, it is nonsense. To make this useful, it can become:
This man here walked the dog. or
My father walked his dog Spot.
Abstract ideas exist as general categories that embrace a great many possible specifics. Now, for something like a dog, or a house, or a car, where there is a tangible physical referent, this is fairly straight-forward. But, when we get to terms like "humanity", "religion" or "civilization", things get very murky, wispy and not so clear. A problem here is that the descriptions and definitions change over time. And they can and do mean different things to different people. Academics who get into all of this to a great degree of detail often end up
arguing about definitions, because when one looks into this far enough and deeply enough, one can't help but see that we have differing meanings and definitions for just about everything.
Let me give another example. Science makes up words to define and describe things it observes or studies, Take the "atom". It was once described as "electrons spinning around a nucleus". That MODEL worked in a great many ways. But as science now has shown us there are NO little balls spinning around some central ball. It was ONLY an IDEA, and while that idea was somewhat close, as an approximation, the map (idea model) did NOT accurately describe the terrain (what was actually occurring in the atom). In fact, over the years the model has changed into the notion of electron clouds, and to where now physicists pretty much admit that they have
no idea what is there, or how it is there, and they only use the mathematical equations of Quantum Physics to explain and predict atomic and sub-atomic behavior.
In a sense the meanings, definitions and descriptions of word and things have a
probability of being accurate or not. Too many people think and feel that there is a direct connection and a one-to-one relation between their ideas the the things these ideas claim to define and represent. In a sense this is the same problem as with "certainty". Certainty is an illusion, and again, I tend to view all things in terms of probabilities. It is all a matter of degree, but most people don't see this matter of degree at all - they see a clear and simple YES or NO. The mind likes to think in terms of absolutes, but reality is nothing but shades of grey.
This matters from a psychological perspective, and also from the perspective of becoming fully self-aware. A person who never comes to see just HOW their mind functions in this way cannot ever become truly self-aware. But of course, the world of legalities, lawyers and courts doesn't care about such things. They care about serving the people who set up the legal system in the first place - the rich and powerful.
The law system, just like Scientology, is often not concerned with truth. It is concerned with what can be convinced through argument and depends on agreement. In a certain sense, it is like a debating team, where each side takes turns arguing each others' position. They don't care about "truth", just being able to convince a jury into believing what they want them to believe. I am sure a good lawyer could convince a jury that the atom exists as spinning balls around a central condensed ball - except it doesn't.
Deception is easy on humankind partially because people function with this conceptual mind that is made up of many vague and general abstractions that somehow link together to represent specific events, relationships and "truth". Hubbard was right when he said that truth is the "exact time, place, form and event". Because THAT involves a SPECIFIC. People who are unaware of the degree to which words and ideas function in this regard can appear as "word clowns" at times.
Also, the inner feeling or imagery that reacts to any sentence differs form person to person. People have this delusion that the same words mean the same things to different people. Take this sentence:
My cat is so cute in the morning.
The mental images and relationships, based on ones own personal experiences, will greatly color what that means to any person. The sentence elicits different imagery for different people. This imagery is generally below consciousnesses yet goes on all of the time about ALL IDEAS. No two people connect words and ideas like any other, not in the same exact way.
It is amazing that communication is possible at all!