Excerpts from Etc

(ProQuest Information and Learning: ... denotes formula omitted.) Between 1989 and 2006 Johns ton wrote more than 50 articles and short stories for ETC. The following excerpts were selected by Nora Miller in recognition of Johnston s retirement Editor. From: ESCAPE FROM A FROZEN UNIVERSE: Discovering General Semantics ... The problem of conflicting realities had long troubled me. In this article, I use term realities, rather than value-system, to suggest that most people possess little awareness of their immersion in a particular system. To them (and to me) there appears no choice of viewpoint, values or fact; it is way it is. My early reality I learned from my family. I valued certain abstractions: nature, taste, self-control, thrift, work, individualism, literature, art, etc., and distrusted others: artificiality, vulgarity, materialism, hedonism, waste, laziness, conformity, crowds, the system, etc. In Nassau, in my late teens, I had found new rules. People took pride in their ability to have a good time. A few years later, when I moved to England, I saw another set of realities, conflicting rules between classes and within classes. The middle class valued abstractions of refinement, proper behavior, good character, honor, justice, fair play, respectability. The working class seemed to hold in contempt many middle-class ideals, and to value, on one hand, independence and being clever rather than education or infrastructure, and, on other hand, security through loyalty to their betters. I heard working-class people use a vocabulary of absolutes, often spoken with great conviction, a vocabulary of it is. By contrast, middle-class speakers often used relativistic terms rather, perhaps, as it were, etc. Nevertheless, correct middle-class attitudes and behavior had importance of a moral imperative: It isn't done, It's not proper, etc. Not thoroughly schooled in reality of either class, I sometimes did not what to think or do. I felt trapped by absolutisms of my upbringing and by those of my new environment, and I could imagine no escape. One profound difference between my reality and British reality lay in attitude toward individual potential. In an American elementary school I had learned democratic ideal; I recall my first-grade teacher telling us, Anyone can grow up to be president. My ancestors left Britain and Ireland to escape personal and economic oppression of a stratified society. In Canada, my grandfather took his family west to homestead virgin territory. The pioneering spirit permeated my own experience of our family's move to isolated islands in Bahamas. With my North-American belief in individuality, I could not accept English view that a person should never try to rise above his station. Thus, general semantics theory that we abstract what we think we explained to me source of conflicting realities and removed many doubts about my own ability to perceive social world. As I studied, I sought to remain aware that my own perceptions come from abstracting. I began using general semantics principles in my daily life, including tools for thought: So far I know, Up to a point, To me, What, When, and Where indices. I saw knowledge an abstraction, no longer a holy grail.... ETC, VOL. 46, NO. 2, SUMMER 1989 From: SUCCESS, GHOSTS, AND THINGS ... Occasionally in life you'll succeed more than you should. Success leaves you feeling uneasy because you you shouldn't surpass your ghosts of judgments past. You don't enjoy your achievements. Compliments embarrass you. You feel it happened by a fluke, not through your ability. You feel guilty and tend to denigrate your success. Just luck, you say. You start thinking superstitiously - you know your good luck won't last. Once we realize that we've held ourselves back because of criticisms of past associates, we may feel an urge to blame them. …

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