Like most philosophies of this sort, the ideas are trivially self-refuting. For example, consider the following from the article:
>"Our judgments can only be probabilistic," wrote Allen Walker Read, a Korzybski follower. "Therefore we would do well to avoid finalistic, absolutistic terms. Can we ever find 'perfection' or 'certainty' or 'truth'? No! Then let us stop using such words in our formulations."
This basically amounts to saying that it's certainly true that we can never be certain that anything is true. In any case, avoiding the use of "be" has no real effect on the subjective/objective tone of your language. You can write subjective-sounding sentences using be ("It is in my view a bad idea") and you can express objective-sounding sentences without it ("E-prime sucks"). If for some reason you're concerned not to make objective claims, then don't make objective claims. There aren't any special grammatical tricks required.
I don't know how ideas as bad as this one ever gain any traction. (But then I guess E-Prime never really did.)
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 15.0 ms ] thread>"Our judgments can only be probabilistic," wrote Allen Walker Read, a Korzybski follower. "Therefore we would do well to avoid finalistic, absolutistic terms. Can we ever find 'perfection' or 'certainty' or 'truth'? No! Then let us stop using such words in our formulations."
This basically amounts to saying that it's certainly true that we can never be certain that anything is true. In any case, avoiding the use of "be" has no real effect on the subjective/objective tone of your language. You can write subjective-sounding sentences using be ("It is in my view a bad idea") and you can express objective-sounding sentences without it ("E-prime sucks"). If for some reason you're concerned not to make objective claims, then don't make objective claims. There aren't any special grammatical tricks required.
I don't know how ideas as bad as this one ever gain any traction. (But then I guess E-Prime never really did.)