The Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture for 2001 was delivered by invitation of the Institute for General Semantics, at the Yale Club, on November 9, 2001: barely weeks after 9/11.

The lecture was subsequently published as Lou Marinoff, “General Semantics and Philosophical Practice: Korzybski’s Contributions to the Global Village,” General Semantics Bulletin 69–70 (2002–2003): 13–26.

It is reprinted here by permission of the Institute for General Semantics.

Preface

I would like to begin by thanking the Institute for General Semantics for extending this generous and prestigious invitation to deliver the Korzybski Memorial Lecture for the year 2001. In particular, I thank Jeff Mordkowitz and Martha Santer for their hard work in organizing this event, and for their hospitality in taking good care of me. I will endeavor to rise to the occasion, by honoring the works and memory of Alfred Korzybski. Yet, I remain awed by your impressive roster of distinguished speakers past—several of whom have been, thanks to time-binding, my mentors-at-a-distance. Some great thinkers who have influenced me—and, it turns out, who have graced this podium—include Ashley Montagu, F. C. Northrop, Buckminster Fuller, Abraham Maslow, Jacob Bronowski, Gregory Bateson, George Steiner, and Albert Ellis, among other luminaries. To be deemed worthy of joining this constellation is truly a privilege.

I have long sustained a philosophical interest in human conflict, its putative causes and possible cures. That interest was thrust upon me as a schoolboy, in the autumn of 1962, during the Cuban missile crisis, when my classmates and I suddenly found ourselves in the front lines of a war about which our ignorance was exceeded only by the dearth of relevant discussion in the classroom and formal study in the academy. In certain salient respects, little has changed in the 39 years since. Last month, we New Yorkers suddenly found ourselves once more in the front lines of a war about which we had been woefully ignorant too, save that now public discussion is plentiful if ineffectual. The Cold War died with a whimper in the collapse of the Soviet Empire, but now a Holy War has been declared on us by foes far more implacable: They have little to lose but their lives and have paradise to gain besides.