Subject: GS: s.p :-)

  I'm in the process of reading and absorbing Stephen Covey's excellent
book _The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People_, and of course various g.s.
principles quite often pop up in my awareness.  The first major "habit"
that Covey recommends is that of being "proactive", rather than "reactive".
All at once, a cute verbal twist occurred to me.  In g.s. we often speak
about "semantic reactions", s.r ... how about the "other side" of the 
coin?  How about "semantic proactions", s.p?  I told you it was cute :-).
In considering the idea further, it occurred to me there is some merit
in it, at least for me, and I thought I'd share with you three forms of
"semantic proaction".


1. "Between stimulus and response, man has the freedom to choose."
		-Covey, 1989

     In a sense, a delayed semantic reaction has a strong measure of
   proactivity in it.  Instead of simply and automatically responding
   to a stimulus, like an animal, humans can proactively delay their
   responses, consciously take more into account, and then choose their
   response appropriately.  This, I believe, is part of what Korzybski
   meant by increasing the conditionality of our responses.  This seems
   to me to be a very basic level of proaction, one that we inject
   into our most basic reactions: see-_evaluate-decide_-respond.  Apropos
   at this point, I am reminded of MacNeal's mapping of decision processes
   and his idea of "alternaquences": that in between the stimulus and
   our response, we (usually) can choose from a variety of alternatives,
   each with its own set of consequences (as we foresee them), and that
   it's probably a good idea to choose among them wisely for what we
   anticipate will be the most effective / desired consequences.

2. The former "s.p", while indeed proactive, still occurs within the
   context of _responding to_ the environment.  The second s.p can also
   be considered as "responding to", but I prefer a shift of focus to the
   kind of proactivity that Covey talks about: "begin with the end in
   mind"; create a 'vision' and act to achieve it.  Using a little
   map-territory talk:

	[                Map_3                  ]
	[ Map_1 of       trans.    Map_2 of     ]
	[ Territory_t1   ----->    Territory_t2 ]

	                                    Map_4 of proactive process


   "Territory_t1" refers to how things are now (time 1), as we see them (Map_1).
   "Territory_t2" to how we'd like them to be later (time 2), as we foresee
      them (Map_2, desired vision / goal-state).
   "trans." refers to the necessary actions we need to perform in order
      to transform Territory_t1 into Territory_t2, as we understand the
      process (Map_3, plan of action, act of creation).

     This model, of course, has its limitations and leaves out myriads of
   details, but perhaps captures something of the structure of "proaction"
   in a korzybskian kind of way.  It also may help to remind us of the
   various limitations of maps in this context (the map is not the territory
   and in fact might not be very accurate / realistic, and might miss factors
   which later will be seen as important, etc.).  Note that effective
   semantic reactions (s.r) will almost surely assist this process of
   proaction (s.p).

3. Two other forms of s.p occur to me, both related to each other:

   a. "taking responsibility for the abstractions we make", I believe first
       put forward by Milton Dawes.  We are always making abstractions,
       whether "on automatic" or through conscious proactive effort, but
       either way it is _we_ who've made them.  By acknowledging and taking
       responsibility for the abstractions we're always making, we're
       proactively increasing our consciousness of our abstracting (CoA).

   b. "using language effectively" -- Here again, instead of simply using
      language "automatically" in the ways most of us have been taught, we
      can consciously, proactively structure our language usage (e.g., in
      writing) to be more in keeping with the facts of 'reality' (things
      change, "identification" has its limitations, there is always more
      that can be said, we can choose to be proactive, etc.).  

4. There surely are several other forms of proaction in a korzybskian 
   context (i.e., "etc." ;-).  In fact, I believe the whole idea behind K's
   system is that of a particular form of neuro-linguistic proaction!


  So there you have it.  I hope some of you will find this idea useful or
at least interesting.  Also, since I haven't been keeping up with all the
posts on this list, I acknowledge that others might already have posted
similar ideas ... in which case I readily admit intellectual credit
to the earlier authors.

--
John McPherson (jmgs@lumina.ucsd.edu)
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