Christopher Columbus: The Map is Not the Territory

Whatever I do, I can do it better by understanding that the map is not the territory--being more objective and clearer about how I’m thinking about things. You, too. Where are our biases, prejudices and other tendencies not to see things as they are but as we expect or want them to be? Do our values and standards work for the general good now, not in the future, and enable us to contribute to a world that works for everyone and everything, not just some special group? If not, am I willing to take responsibility for my thinking, values, biases and prejudices and change them?  Here is another example General Semantics debunking a cherished American myth written by Martin H. Levinson: The Map: Christopher Columbus Discovered America. A review of the territory: A national American holiday and two centuries of school-history lessons have led many to believe as true that Christopher Columbus was the first to reach America. But most scholars thing Columbus actually landed in Cuba, Hispaniola and on an island in the Bahamas during his 1492 voyage. Archaeological evidence suggests that Norse sailors led by Leif Erickson reached North America five hundred years before Columbus, establishing a colony in Newfoundland around 1000 AD.

 

It is interesting to note that Columbus’s bravery, persistence, and seamanship have earned him a prominent place in American history. But many school-books gloss over the fact that in his obsessive quest for gold he enslave the local population. With other Spanish adventurers, as well as later European colonizers, Columbus opened as era of genocide that decimated the Native American population through warfare, forced labor and European diseases to which the Indians, a name Columbus bestowed on Native Americans, had no natural immunities.

 

Considering Columbus’s prominence in our nation’s history, one might ask, why don’t we live in the United States of Columbus? The answer is that Amerigo Vespucci, and Italian who captained four voyages to the ‘New World’ beginning in 1499, recognized that the New World, a term that he coined, was a landmass separate from Asia. To honor his revelation, Vespucci’s give name was placed on the first map of the region. While Columbus may have found the new world first, Vespucci understood that is was a new world. Columbus went to his grave thinking he had reached Asia.

Betsy Ross - The Map is Not the Territory

 

General Semantics involves thinking about thinking—a self-awareness and realization that most of the time we mis-take the map—our words, for the territory—the thing itself. It’s about moments of conscious awareness during which I am aware that my words and language involve selective perception—taking things out of context, isolating them and acting as if, if I could just do this one thing, everything would be OK.  General Semantics helps me take responsibility for this kind of abstracting and enables me, and you, to see the interdependence, interrelatedness and complexity that is really there. It enables us to take responsibility for our over simplifying stinkin’ thinkin’ and change it.

 

 

Here is an example General Semantics debunking a cherished American myth written by Martin H. Levinson: The Map: Betsy Ross Sewed the First American Flag. A review of the territory: The legend of Betsy Ross as the first embroiderer of the American flag was originally brought to light in 1870, when one of her grandson, William J. Canby, reported a story his grandmother had told him. According to Canby, George Washington and several others visited Betsy’s upholstery shop in Philadelphia and showed her a crude drawing of the flag, which she then produced. After Canby’s death, a book called The Evolution of the American Flag, published in 1909, presented the claims for Betsy Ross made by Canby in 1870.

 

While Betsy Ross did make some flags in the late eighteenth century, it is known that she made ‘ship’s colors’ for which she was paid, no one has been able to verify that the Canby story is true. Furthermore, some evidence exist that a Philadelphia poet named Francis Hopkinson designed the Stars and Stripes in 1780. However, Betsy Ross is still thought of by most as the sewer of the first American flag, and her house in Philadelphia has become a historical site. There is even doubt among historians that she even lived in that house.

 

 

 

The Map is Not the Territory

We believe that what we say about things is the Truth about them. That is, that there is a one to one relationship between the words and the phenomena—that a ‘tree’ = a tree. Yet no two trees, even those of the same species, are the same. We know this yet we act as if what we say about things is the Truth about them. Words are symbols of symbols twice removed from reality. Words are maps and the map is not the territory. Again, we know this, but think and act as if our maps DO represent the territory – that Republican is this and Democrat is that. Words are a fine starting place, the ball park if you will. But then if we really want to communicate and get things done we’ve got to know the section, row and seat number.

 

Today I’m beginning a series on words and language inspired by the science of General Semantics, a science that sounds more academic and useless than it is. Here is an example General Semantics debunking a cherished American myth written by Martin H. Levinson: The Map: The Pilgrims Landed on Plymouth Rock. A Review of the Territory: On December 16, 1620, the Pilgrims on the Mayflower reached their new home in America. Nearly all scholars put the Pilgrims’ landing about 10 miles north of the lumpy scrap of stone known as Plymouth Rock. There is no mention in any historical account of that rock, a large boulder located in Plymouth MA, into which, in 1880, the Pilgrim Society carved the year 1620.

 

The legend of Plymouth Rock was started in 1741 by 95 year old man who said his father told him about it. Twenty-eight years later, celebrating the Pilgrims’ landing a Plymouth Rock became an annual event in New England. By 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville reported pieces of the rock were being venerated in different American cities, and it was established as an American icon.

 

Offers for chunks of Plymouth Rock have occasionally popped up on eBay, where asking prices have been as much as $900. However, while it is true that lots of souvenir hunters did carve off parts of the Rock during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, there is no way to differentiate a real hunk of Plymouth Rock from a fake one. For those interested in seeing what is left of Plymouth Rock (it is estimated to be only about one-third to one-half of its original size), it is preserved today in a state park near the mouth of Plymouth harbor.

Friday Funnies

These are kind of retro and sexist, but hey….

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Side of Life 



1. 

Good: Your wife is pregnant. 

Bad: it's triplets. 

Ugly: You had a vasectomy five years ago.

2. 

Good: Your wife's not talking to you. 

Bad: She wants a divorce.

Ugly: She's a lawyer.



3. 

Good: Your youngest son is finally maturing. 

Bad: He's involved with the woman next door. 

Ugly: So are you.



4. 

Good: Your wife and you agree, no more kids. 

Bad: Your wife can't find her birth control pills. 

Ugly: Your 13 year old daughter borrowed them.



5. 

Good: Your oldest son understands fashion. 

Bad: He's a cross-dresser. 

Ugly: He looks better than your wife.



6. 

Good: You give the 'birds and bees' talk to your 10 year old daughter. 

Bad: She keeps interrupting. 

Ugly: With corrections.

7. 

Good: Your son is dating someone new. 

Bad: It's another man.

Ugly: He's your best friend.



8. 

Good: Your 15 year old daughter got a new job 

Bad: As a hooker.

Ugly: Your co-workers are her best clients. 

Very Ugly: She makes more money than you do.

 

Merely

In yesterday’s post, I used the word ‘merely’. Merely implies only, simply, just – a kind of effortlessness. But the ‘merely’ involved in undoing the ego and giving over to spirit is not effortless when I’m myself and identified with ego. Yes, I have only, simply, just and merely to give myself to mySelf. But to myself, this entails a great risk and even sacrifice. When ‘merely’ giving myself to mySelf, I need to expect resistance and remember to be compassionate with myself.

 

The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. As Lee Lipscomb Hanahan wrote in the February issue of Science of Mind magazine:  “Continuous surrender is required and our culture is basically anti-surrender. We miss the monumental strength and courage it requires. To trust, most especially that which we can [barely] experience with the five sense, is to risk. We put ourselves on the line. We open ourselves to hurt and shame and loss. Who wants all that vulnerability? Only those who need it [and we all need it]. Surrender is such a relief!

 

“I cannot have a compassionate heart toward others until I have one toward myself. I know I [the ego] am not in charge. What a release that truth is! I just [merely] have to lift the second foot off the bottom of the pool and float, giving in to The Benevolent. When I do that, I can walk in compassion. I can be compassionate with myself and with you,” and give myself to mySelf.

mySelf

MySelf always knows what’s best. Spirit plans for my safety and joy better than I can. I can know this anytime I choose. I need be neither careful nor careless. I simply need to cast my cares upon Spirit and receive Its guidance. I merely have to undo the blocks to the love that is my natural inheritance as spirit, and return to God the mind It gave me. Whenever I am not wholly joyous, it is because I have forgotten my Identity and reacted with lack of love. This is not a sin, simply a mistake, and mistakes can be undone.

 

The first step in the undoing is to recognize that I have made a mistake and decided incorrectly – that I’m not being punished nor is the world or anyone else against me – tho it seems that way, I simply identified with my ego self instead of my God Self. I decided. I take responsibility. I can decide differently, now. My part is to return my thinking to the point where the error was made, and give it over to my God Self.

 

Here are some steps, some spiritual technology, for undoing:

• I must have decided incorrectly, because I am not at peace
• I made the decision, but I can decide otherwise
• I want to decide otherwise, because I want to be at peace
• I do not feel guilty, I made a mistake, not a sin
• Now I give it over and joyously receive the guidance I need.

The Identity Game

When my hernia acts up, which it did a little while ago, or I can’t figure out how to do a screen print or get the dogs to stop barking, it’s clear that I’m identifying with myself, instead of mySelf. The hernia will stop hurting, the dogs will stop barking and I will know how to do a screen print, as soon as I’m ready to turn it all over to mySelf and experience it all differently.

 

The more my ego yells and throws a tantrum like an infant demanding its bottle – I want it! I want it now, now! I need it - the less I’m able to let go. I am literally holding those conditions in place by looking at them the way I do. If I want the conditions to be different, I’ve got to be different. Having to have whatever it is now, is like saying, I of myself can make a better plan for my safety and joy than mySelf can make. MySelf has given me these conditions, not as punishment, but as feedback, feedback about who and what I’ve been identifying with – ego – so that I can choose to identify differently, with spirit, with mySelf.

 

Letting go and giving it all over to spirit, I can see things differently and know what to do. So I gave it over and talked with a physician about next steps for the hernia; realized if I lowered the shade the dogs wouldn’t see out and bark as much and called my computer guy for help with the screen print.

 

God is my Self. It is who I am. The truth of my identity. I am part of It and It is part of me. It is the very principle of being and becoming. It is the creator, and that which It creates – the process by which the creative impulse become the created thing. It is always there, always on, always responsive. If I identify with It, I get experiences of It – peace, joy, optimism. If I identify with ego, I get experiences of ego – hernia, barking dogs, frustration and fear.  Spirituality is about becoming aware of how It works and what I am creating with It – hernia pain or hernia relief; sleeping dogs or barking dogs. Different spiritual paths are simply different methods of becoming aware.