Interesting words from Mr McKenna:

Inspiration from Bill Hicks

We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution. Bill Hicks:
Enjoy,

Food for thought, E-prime: english without "to be", "is", "am", "are", "was", "were" etc

Merry Chritmas and a happy new year,

It has been a little while since my last post but I have been ruminating on things. Recently I have been attempting to incorporate the use of E-prime language in my speech.

Why? Well, to me it seems to portray a more honest and accurate way of making statements.
On a basic level E-prime avoids such words such as “to be", "is", "am", "are", "was", "were” which signify an abstraction certainty in a statement. E-prime goes further to improve clarity of the statement when supported by other method in general semantics, by including in a phrase where the perception comes from.

English where description includes reference to itself without presuming dogmatic certainty seems to me a good way to describe E-prime.

For instance a statement such as:
"Spiderman 3 was/is rubbish"
Using E prime sounds something like
"I thought Spiderman 3 seemed rubbish" or "Spiderman 3 seemed rubbish to me"

One benefit of using E-prime for me, I don't seem to get caught up by my own beliefs when I stop making statements that assume perceptional experiences for everyone. The same seems to occur to me when negative feelings arise; using E-prime I tend to realise that a negative state is only relative to how I may feel at that moment.

E-prime seems useful in demonstrating a communication method that expresses individual experience more clearly.

However, using E-Prime on a regular basis seems difficult if not impossible as we are trapped in linguistical constructs and if used to extreme E-prime seems paradoxical as all expression requires some assumptions. As a result I have found that E-prime tends to collapse on itself, as complete expression of experience is impossible and a balance in description usually made instead.

Perhaps the point of E-prime is in realising that all observation is a gamble, we make assumptions constantly. Basically E-prime is a tool in realising the expression signifies concepts only. This may be the case as David Bourland, who came up with the idea of E-Prime, studied under the founder of general semantics Alfred Korzybski who coined the statement:

“The map IS not the territory”

A fascinating statement which, I think, should be seen as a pointer

Using the method of E-prime does seems like a useful tool if you ever find yourself becoming irritated or caught by, your own or others, dogmatic perceptions. But don’t take it too seriously or it may send you nuts!

"There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking." Alfred Kozybski







 To Be or Not: An E-Prime Anthology