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When I was young, I thought that:

- I could breathe underwater. I spent a hell of a lot of time in/under water and thought that I had gills.

- the Pledge of Allegiance was "for witches' stands, one nation, under God, invisible".

- I could talk to trees and animals.






I still talk to trees and animals.

bumble wrote:When I was young, I thought that:

- I could breathe underwater. I spent a hell of a lot of time in/under water and thought that I had gills.

I sort of believed this. I thought that if I spent a lot of time underwater I would grow gills.

I thought I was bionic.

I believed that goats and sheep had shorter legs at the back..or the front, i forget now...so that they could stand on hills. my dad told me that and i believed him for YEARS.

I believed that my dad was Chubby Checkers drummer. He told me that and I believed him for YEARS.

I believed that I could walk through a wooded area with my eyes closed having studied it previously. I did it unsuccessfully and left my nose skin on a tree. My mum gave me a hankie and we still went to town. On the bus. With my bloody nose.

MrFood wrote:

I thought words were just names for things.

Or that. They are aren't they?

No. Jonathan Swift actually satirized the "words-stand-for-things" view in Gulliver's Travels, nearly 300 years ago. Regardless, many people since, maybe most, have held the words-are-signs-for-things view. Basically, this view implies a wacky idealism, whereby things and ideas necessarily precede language rather than being produced within it.

Language is a semiotic system and words mediate objects and phenomena within the context (and constraints) of that generative system. It's not that language isn't referential--or that there is no extra-linguistic reality--it's that language is not simply or merely referential.

Language organizes (and produces) reality in ways that are much more complex than mere naming.

Catherine Besley wrote:Language is experienced as a nomenclature because its existence precedes our "understanding" of the world. Words seem to be symbols for things because things are inconceivable outside the system of differences which constitutes the language. Similarly, these very things seem to be represented in the mind, in an autonomous realm of thought, because thought is in essence symbolic, dependent on the differences brought about by the symbolic order. And so language is 'overlooked', suppressed in favour of a quest for meaning in experience and/or in the mind. The world of things and subjectivity then become the twin guarantors of truth.

Good overview of this here.

I like Burrough's theory that verbal language is a virus. Hence the need for forums.

Yay! 1400! I'm an Alien.

I thought that "getting high" meant that drugs filled your lungs with helium and you'd float to the ceiling. This thought was quite appealing so much so that the first thing I told my ma after school was that I couldn't wait to get high.

Jess wrote:I thought that "getting high" meant that drugs filled your lungs with helium and you'd float to the ceiling. This thought was quite appealing so much so that the first thing I told my ma after school was that I couldn't wait to get high.

wanna get hiiiiiiiiiiigh?

nice first post.

burun wrote:I sort of believed this. I thought that if I spent a lot of time underwater I would grow gills.

Andrew. wrote:No. Jonathan Swift actually satirized the "words-stand-for-things" view in Gulliver's Travels, nearly 300 years ago.

...

Language is a semiotic system and words mediate objects and phenomena within the context (and constraints) of that generative system.

Language organizes (and produces) reality in ways that are much more complex than mere naming.

You may have misread the subject. It's supposed to be "beliefs you held before you became an adult," not "beliefs you held before you became a douchebag."


I actually thought your post was interesting, but I like using the word "douchebag."