The Maps We Make

A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.

— Alfred Korzybski

This is the second article in my exploration of General Semantics, a discipline developed by Alfred Korzybski in the early 20th century. In my first article, I discussed time-binding, which makes us uniquely human through our ability to pass knowledge across generations. This article examines the process of abstracting, which enables us to organize our experience and knowledge. Being conscious of this process can transform how we navigate life.

The Process of Abstracting

I keep a road atlas in my car, though I rarely use it anymore. It shows streets and intersections, but not utility poles or topographic lines. The map abstracts. It includes some details and leaves out others. This selective representation makes it useful for navigation, even though it’s incomplete.

In much the same way, my nervous system operates like a living mapmaker, constantly creating abstractions of the world. Unlike my road atlas, this process happens automatically and continuously. When I look at the chair I’m sitting in, my brain selects certain features and ignores countless others. This particular chair has a small scratch on the armrest, cat fur on the fabric, and a barely perceptible wobble. But when I think chair, these details fade in favor of the characteristics that make it useful for sitting.

The process doesn’t stop there. The word furniture represents an even higher level of abstraction, grouping chairs with tables, sofas, and bookcases while leaving out even more specifics. Household items abstracts further still. Each step up this ladder removes details while emphasizing broader similarities.

General Semantics extends this “ladder of abstraction” both upward and downward. At the base lies the event level—a dynamic world of subatomic particles, atoms, molecules, and fields in constant interaction. We do not experience this level directly, but modern science strongly suggests it underlies everything we perceive.

From this foundation, we move to the object levels (sometimes called the silent levels), where we encounter immediate, non-verbal experience: sensations, feelings, raw perceptions. I feel the chair’s support, sense its temperature, notice its color. These experiences arise before language enters the picture.

Only then do we arrive at the verbal levels, where words and concepts organize and communicate our abstractions. Language helps us share and refine our understanding, but it is always at least one step removed from the processes it describes.

This capacity for multiple levels of abstraction sets humans apart from most animals, though I’m cautious about overgeneralizing. Whales appear to have complex language systems, and chimpanzees can learn sign language. Still, the human ability to abstract indefinitely—to create concepts about concepts—is central to what Korzybski called our time-binding nature.

Similarity of Structure

For abstractions to remain useful, they must maintain structural similarity to what they represent. A road atlas that failed to show cities and towns would not be helpful for navigation, regardless of how accurately it depicted every highway curve. Similarly, when the structure of our language doesn't match the structure of what we're describing, problems arise.

Aristotle developed his system of logic in the context of the Greek language, which organized thought around subject–predicate structures. He did not reflect on how this grammatical framework shaped his thinking; instead, he assumed that the forms of language he used directly mirrored the structure of the world. In other words, the way Greek sentences were built led him to believe that the world was composed of things (substances) that carried fixed properties (predicates).

In English sentences, we join the subject and predicate with the “is of predication.” Examples are “the leaf is green,” and “the air is hot.” Because the words “leaf” and “green” are separate, we might think these words represent separate things. But they do not; “greenness” does not exist independently from the leaf.

Similarly, the sentence “the air is hot” suggests that heat may exist separately from the air. In the 18th and 19th centuries, scientists held this belief. They thought that heat was an invisible, weightless fluid, which they called caloric. We now understand that heat results from the motion of molecules.

These are examples of elementalism, which means dividing things in language that aren't actually divided. Another example of elementalism is how we separate "mind" and "body" linguistically, as if they were independent entities. Korzybski replaced this false division with the term "organism-as-a-whole" or even "organism-as-a-whole-in-an-environment," acknowledging that we can't meaningfully separate a person’s psychological, physical, and environmental contexts.

I've learned to pay special attention to another use of “is”: the "is of identity." When I say "Bruce is a writer," I'm suggesting that writing defines my essential nature, as if "Bruce" and "writer" were identical.

More accurately, I might say "Bruce writes articles about personal growth" or "Bruce spends several hours each week writing." Notice how the noun "writer" is replaced by the verb "writes." This shift acknowledges writing as something I do rather than something I am.

Aristotle's logic also created another problem: it's fundamentally two-valued, promoting either-or thinking. Something is either hot or cold, good or bad, true or false. But reality operates on continuums and degrees. What we call "hot" and "cold" are better understood as degrees of temperature—a range of molecular activity rather than two separate categories.

It’s easy to fall into this either-or thinking in our own mental maps. We might describe a conversation as either productive or unproductive, rather than recognizing degrees of usefulness. We might describe a day as either successful or wasted, rather than seeing it as a combination of various activities and outcomes.

If a Tree Falls in a Forest

The famous question "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" is only puzzling if we don't recognize that the word "sound" operates at different levels of abstraction.

Korzybski called such terms multi-ordinal. These words have different meanings depending on the level, or order, of abstraction we're using. At the non-verbal, object levels, "sound" refers to the subjective experience of hearing. Since no person is present in our forest scenario, there's no subjective experience; therefore, there is no sound in this sense.

At the event level, "sound" refers to inferred physical events: air molecules vibrating in waves, transferring energy from the falling tree through the atmosphere. These processes occur whether anyone is present to experience them or not.

The puzzle disappears when we recognize we're using the same word to describe different levels of abstraction.

The Gentle Way Forward

Recognizing this process of abstracting as mapmaking has profound practical implications. Just as a map is useful only when it accurately represents the territory, my mental abstractions serve me well only when they maintain structural similarity to what they represent.

When I'm aware of how I create these mental maps, I can revise them based on new information. Korzybski referred to this as “consciousness of abstracting” (emphasizing abstracting as a process rather than a finished abstraction). It’s fundamental to the scientific method—in science, theories get updated when evidence contradicts them—but it is equally vital in daily life.

The practice starts with noticing. When I catch myself using absolute language, such as “always," "never," "everyone," or “no one”, I ask whether I’m creating an accurate map. When I find myself identifying with a role, emotion, or situation, I consider whether I’m confusing different levels of abstraction. When I have difficulty communicating, I check whether I and the other person are using the same word at different levels of abstraction.

In my article about the spiritual aspects of the GTD methodology, I mentioned how cognitive behavioral therapy helped improve my mood by changing my language. Replacing "I'm a failure" with "I failed at this specific task" exemplifies consciousness of abstracting in action. The first statement confuses different levels of abstraction, identifying myself with a particular outcome. The second creates a more accurate map that distinguishes between my identity and my actions.

As a side note, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy was influenced by the work of Albert Ellis, who developed Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) in the 1950s. Ellis explicitly credited Korzybski for influencing the development of REBT.

Consciousness of abstracting relates to other approaches I'll explore in future articles. Nonviolent Communication, for instance, involves shifting awareness from interpretations and judgments to observations, feelings, and needs. A change in language facilitates these shifts.

This is an ongoing practice, and my maps still drift away from the territory they're supposed to represent. But I've discovered that consciousness of abstracting creates space between stimulus and response, between experience and interpretation. In that space lies the possibility of choice, the chance to create more accurate and useful maps for navigating the complexity of human experience.