Dr.
Leon James (c) 1975
Topic Glossary
P R E F A C E
The notion of Culture
encompasses the notions of Social Reality and Individual Actuality. In
turn, "social reality" implies Group Membership, Enculturation. Social
Consensus, Standard Reality. Similarly, "individual actuality" implies Standardized
Imaginings, Reifications, Biographical Record, Person
Each of these notions, themselves implicate a whole series of
further notions, which in turn lead one to still others. An Ethnosemantic Topic
Glossary is a specification of these interrelationships. Therefore, ethnosemantic
glossaries characterize a cultural group by cataloguing the standardized
practices (dealings) of its members. We use the term register to refer
to the ambient social system that explicates the dealings of members of an ethnic group.
Sanctioned cataloguing practices in the contemporary North American Register include a
variety of activities of which the most commonly known are the following:
dictionaries: lists the words in a language exhaustively; alphabetical
organization of entries; annotated by definitions and other information (historical,
morphological, syntactic, contextual)
encyclopedias: arranges the sum total of "knowledge" in a group into
fragmentary topic domains that overlap and interlock; lists selectively the historically
accumulated disciplinary curricula, themes, expressions, interpretations and accounts;
alphabetical arrangement of selected topic domains.
indices: specifies a coding system for the systematic retrieval of entries in a
set; the coding system is keyed to a specified algorithmic operation (e.g.
alphabetization, pagination, numbering sections, etc.); since the coding system is a
continuous one-to-one-transformation, no increase in organizational structure is achieved,
though retrieval of, information is facilitated.,
- Almanacs: list factual documentation on a standard set of topics
- bibliographies: the cataloguing of published works; arrangements vary and
include alphabetical listings by author, title of work, and standardized topic domains.
thesaurus: a classification of dictionary entries of a language using some
rational scheme; Roget's "Thesaurus" is a classification system of 1,000 topic
domains; the listings overlap and the categories are open rather than exhaustive.
registers: itemizes exhaustively the relevant topic labels within an
institutional cluster (e.g. telephone books (White and Yellow, Pages), Menus, Address
Files, Table of Contents, Lists, Maps, Directories, Schedules, Forms, Tables, Figures,
Charts, Signals, Codes, Want Ads, Programs, Time Tables, Inventories, Identity Series and
Progressions.
-ethnosemantic topic glossaries: the compilation of cultural taxonomies that
exhaustively catalogue the dealings of members in a particular ethnic configuration.
This First Edition of the Ethnosemantic Topic Glossary of the North American Register
presents our solutions to the problems engendered by the attempt to catalogue cultural
behavior. We hope that these solutions will be found useful by others,
like us, who find analytic explorations coterminous with understanding and adequacy
The clarifying function of ethnosemantic topic glossaries justify
their principal motivation, value, and use. General and specialized applications of the
Glossary are illustrated. These include:
- Ethnosemantic Probes: the intensive analysis of a topic domain and, a
description of its structural parameters;
-Relationship Probes: the investigative exploration of on-going interpersonal
relationships,
- The Geometry of Understanding: the explication of the mathematical,
correspondences between ethnosemantic and geometric systems.
- The Game of Raising Awareness: a practical manual for acquiring the Radicalist
Register --- the register of understanding and, adequacy. (Ethnosemantic Glossaries are
written in the Radicalist Register.)
The Scientific Bible: a practical eschatological foundation for assimilating
organized knowledge; an interdisciplinary, unification of Cultural Knowledge, hence the
organizing rationale for Ethnosemantic Encyclopedias.
In the years of intensive collaboration that preceded the
presentation of this work, we have evolved a perspective on ourselves and our
participatory involvement in our cultural environment that has proven to be radically
liberating. This experience, more than anything else, motivates us to this, effort in
presentation., Our work has led us to the formulation of an, understanding of cultural
behavior that recognizes the modulations of individual seeking and suffering as actualized
reifications of culturally standardized ritual possibilities. Thus, individual
enlightment, adequacy, liberation, sophistication, are contingent possibilities that are
cultural, invariants. In other words, we recognize as inauthentic, exploitative, and,
victimizing to the individual those progressivist political ideologies that preach
inherent limitations upon individuals with particular cultural, histories.
We understand that the individual person is a cultural unit
that is entirely adequate not only at birth, but throughout all stages of life.
The variations in social competencies that we reify in our interactions with each other,
typify and characterize the dramaturgical themes and myths that we topicalize in our daily
actualities. In other words, we are distinguishing between the traditional civilized quest
for an improvement in the material quality of socialized living, and the universal quest
of the individual for personal fulfillment. The technological accumulations that raise the
standard of living of cultural aggregates follows a natural progression that is as
ineluctable in its outcomes as it is challenging in its participatory evolution. The
individual quest for personal fulfillment has also been formulated traditionally in
progressivist terms that have subjugated the individual person to the orthodoxy of an
institution, a tradition, a guide, guru, prophet, and avatar.
However, though we see the progressivism of technology and
standard of living as inherently continuous, and extending across generations of
individuals, the life of a particular individual is, on the other hand, inherently
discontinuous. Technological steps are organized by formal operations that generate a
natural progressivist series. The history of physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, is
marked by the epochal discoveries of natural progressions and series in the
Universe. It Is the systematic conceptualization of these formal relationships that
constitutes the body of knowledge called "the natural sciences."
In our professional life, the history of the "social and
behavioral sciences" documents the massive and intensive effort that has been expended
in the attempt to force the stream of cultural behavior through the filters of
artificially produced progressions and series. These artificial, hypothetical, abstracted
systems of analysis are statistical in character (momothetic) and depend on selected
experimental procedures of collusion between investigator and subject. The result has been
a tremendous accumulation of contradictory fragmentary formulations which the scientific
institutions politicize by rationalizing a euphemistic connection between the scientisms
of research and the craftsmanships of applications.
These artificial systems of formulating understanding has
engendered the various current Myths of Inadequacy particularized in human
concerns that have such orienting themes as spirituality, service, competition, emotions,
survival, subtlety. In the understanding that we have formulated, these Individual Myths
are standardized cultural eventualities. This understanding leads to a witnessing of
individual actuality that is fully adequate at all times. It leads to a mode of
consciousness that is characterized by the unifying principle of personal power, personal
destiny, personal fulfillment, liberation, enlightment, and awakening. The ethnosemantic
glossary explicates the natural progressions and series of cultural functioning. It
evidences the eschatological character of practical understanding. It elevates the
individual person to a position of intelligence that is racially given rather than
culturally indoctrinated.
Beyond awareness, beyond control, beyond responsibility,
loyalty,and truth, there lies only understanding. When the individual person awakens
to this actuality, he only sees that he has always already understood.
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