the map is not the territory, redux

Revisiting a post from several years ago where I introduced Alfred Korzybiski. In his early 20th century work on general semantics, a system of linguistic philosophy, Korzybiski reasoned:



1.     A map is not the territory.

2.     A map does not represent all of a territory.

3.    A map is self-reflexive in the sense that an 'ideal' map would include a map of the map, etc., indefinitely.

In his work, Korzybski went on to apply this logic to daily life and language:

1.     A word is not what it represents.

2.     A word does not represent all of the 'facts,' etc.

3.    Language is self-reflexive in the sense that we use language to speak about language.

Now, extend this logic to feelings or emotions you may have – reactions in real time to events in real time that may overwhelm you in real time, leading you to believe that everything in that moment is concrete, entire and real.

1.     A feeling is not what it represents.

2.     A feeling does not represent all of the ‘facts,’ etc.

3.    Feelings are self-reflexive in the sense that we have feelings about our feelings, and feelings about that, ad infinitum.

This is worthy of your contemplation, I believe. All of our feelings, not to mention the words we use to express or explain or rationalize them, are not the whole of our reality. Are they valid? Yes. Are they useful? Yes, they certainly can be. Do they feel actual and real when we’re having them? Of course they do.

But they are not the whole – of your life, of your experience, of you.

I invite you to take time to open the space between stimulus and response this week. The space between one footstep and the next. Between breaths. Between heartbeats. There is a space between.

Rest there.

As Jane Hirshfield wrote in The Door, which I read in my Lectio 360 practice last week, it is the “rest-note, unwritten, hinged between worlds, that precedes change and allows it.” 

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5/5/25