E-Prime - A Tool For Accurate Thinking

Bad thinking derived from faulty logic and inaccurate descriptions of experience and the evidence of the senses, ails most of us. We depend upon language so implicitly that most of the time we don’t even question its effectiveness or its limitations. Yet it does limit us and it does hamper us. An immense amount of confusion and difficulty, even tragedy, occurs due to the limitations of language and the poor use of language. In language we have one of our greatest tools to support problem solving and yet we can think of it like a sharp knife. Used correctly it can give us a power to slice and dice and dissect that would otherwise prove impossible for our bare hands alone. Used incorrectly it can maim us or the people around us.

The Most Dangerous Word

One culprit within the domain of language stands out above all others as the key instigator for turning the knife upon ourselves or upon others; the verb ‘to be’. This word can cause un-ending damage because it so easily corrupts our thinking and it so easily leads us to describe our experiences in a very false and highly inaccurate manner. Sadly, rather than reject the error we instead attempt to adapt to it, to take it into account and to live by it. When we defer to living our lives according to the map of the territory, rather than by letting the territory itself take priority, we start to get cranky and if we don’t take care then we lead ourselves into disaster.

We commonly use of the verb ‘to be’ to mean describe things in an equivalent way. We say that something equals something else. If x equals x we have no problem but predominantly we say that x equals y. If those two things have very distinct differences and yet we attempt to live as though we can replace a y for an x then we will come up with a lot of problems. In the physical domain of the real world we can use our other senses to see the error, foolishness and impracticability of substituting a very different thing for another thing. In the abstract domain of the mind where our other senses play no part in measuring things against the real world these errors and inaccuracies can hold sway and we attempt to live as though they represent factual truths. This can cause untold confusion on a continuous basis.

If young Billy does something foolish and we say to him “Billy, you are so stupid” then we say that Billy equals stupidity. If we repeat this enough times then this becomes a fact for us and for Billy. He takes on that characteristic because we use it to define him. Eventually, he thinks and acts stupid more and more in order to make the inaccurate equation work and what a tragic farce that turns into for poor Billy (or you, or me). We cannot count the number of instances that the use of the verb ‘to be’ creates an inaccuracy of interpretation and a folly of the mind. Such little inaccuracies seem unimportant in isolation but add them up and you end up with billions of perplexed and confused humans continually failing in their attempts to make the territory fit the map and going unsane in the attempt.

E-Prime

We can use e-prime (which stands for English Prime) as a tool for accurate thinking by eliminating all uses of the verb ‘to be’ from our language. Only a very few people do this with their speaking but more and more people do it with their writing. Writing in e-prime forces the writer to describe things with greater accuracy. It can make writing more dynamic as it eliminates passive voice. For technical and business writing it makes writing seem more professional due to the enhanced accuracy and due to cutting out common but nonsensical and hence generally useless aphorisms such as “knowledge is power”  that cause misconceptions. It takes a little bit of practice to start writing in e-prime but you soon get a feel for how to reconstruct sentences so that you can eliminate ‘to be’ and all of its derivatives. I admit that sometimes it can make writing feel a little bit stilted. I have written this article in e-prime and I did the same for a lot of my early writings on the this blog. I stopped doing it because I wanted more of a free and easy conversational style. However, I still use it a lot in my personal life when I want to describe problems accurately, such as in a journal. This accuracy makes the problem easier to understand and thus to solve and this proves very critical when dealing with personal problems of an emotional nature.

Pedantic but Invaluable

When suggesting using this idea some people might say, “Oh don’t be so pedantic. You know what I mean,” but do we? Forcing such blatant inaccuracies upon us forces us to make an untold number of assumptions and interpretations all of which will prove different between individuals and so collectively we all get the wrong idea. In attempting to equate one concept with another in a short and direct fashion we end up encapsulating massive inaccuracies and so our communication becomes imprecise and we either act poorly upon it or discount it as unworkable. Most of us won’t discount a concept as unworkable and will instead discount ourselves as deficient. Language has such unquestioned power over us that we more easily hold ourselves as faulty rather than the description of a concept.

Once you start to question and to take note of the subversive qualities of erroneously equating one concept with another you really do start to interpret things differently. You begin to see the inherent inaccuracy of a lot of descriptive language and the folly caused by people who attempt to make sense of nonsense. Even if you don’t adopt e-prime on a regular basis at least adopt the habit of questioning uses of the verb ‘to be’ and get clear about the inaccuracies that result. Do this regularly and you can gain an advantage in many situations by discerning much more clearly good sense and by avoiding getting nonsense.

What false descriptions involving uses of the verb ‘to be’ do you struggle with? Try a more accurate description and see how you now feel…

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