I've never finished Science and Sanity, by Alfred Korzbski. I've barely made it a third of the way through, actually, having read it as closely as I possibly could, given the constraints of my life at the time. I'd say I made a proper attempt at it.

Science and Sanity is an exposition of a system of thought, or a discipline, called General Semantics, which Korzybski founded. It's a massive book, and not an easy read, which uses language updates of his own making (such as a full stop to mean, roughly, etc.). Why he does this is explained in the book, and he has what he thinks is good reason for it. Since I have not even made it to the middle of the book, please read the below as characterizing what I understood of the book and the system rather than characterizing it.

One of the things the book does is it sets a group of changes in language which Korzybski proposes will make English a more "sane" language, in his use of the term, is synonimous with having the same structure of the world around. That, for him, is the structure of the universe as set out by scientific enquiry. Hence the title "Sience and Sanity". His most famous change is to proscribe the use of the verb to be in its capacity as verb of identity (basically, always, unless it's an auxiliary verb). The reasoning behind this is that verbs define relationships between things, and there's no such thing as an identity relationship, or at least, science hasn't found one in nature.

For William Burroughs, the adoption of this would lead to an end to war. I don't know if we can go that far, but I do recommend trying to rephrase any heated argument without recourse to the verb to be, and you'll feel immediately how much more difficult it is to draw battle lines and be upset. We generally fight for what something is, and, if we teach ourselves to refrain from thinking in those terms, we will be released from a profound burden - though we may have to acquire another burden, which, as the Spiderman would have it, is the responsibility that comes with power. A power to heal, perhaps.

These ideas are worth engaging with, I think, and experimenting with. Noam Chomsky, the famous linguist, said something to the effect of he read all of Korzybski and that it could all be summarised in the sentence "Be careful with what you say." Chomsky, of course, has read much more than me, understands the subject much better than me and meant his comments as a diss, I think. But what I would say is that what Korzbski has shown me is precisely that being careful with language is anything but trivial, and it can have profound, read world-changing, effects.

Something to consider, I think.