TURN ON CNN: THE WORLD IS FLAT

[Sepia]

"the words dont mean anything anymore
they used to be the keepers of sacred knowledge
but there is no meaning to them anymore
there is nothing
a word is a ghost trapped between two worlds
a word is a secret whispered underneath rainheavy umbrellas
a word is a lie, always a lie
a word is a truth, first and foremost a truth
most importantly a lie"

-- The final book of Jihad as interpreted by Olaus Wormius and subsequently included in the Necronomicon

(after much debate in the society of sorcerors upon that time)

What makes a good shepherd?
What makes the best Gordon Gecko and why is greed, why is greed important for america? Why have your eyes seen so much more than the rest and why do we still dream of your faraway lands? Who is america?

Who is any country?
It's you. That final torment. It's you. You're the one chummy. Yeah, is right, you's da one and most people think they understand this so they make campaigns, vote or die, believe in us or be damned for all eternity and everything works, for all of mankind are but tribes, enclaves of humans sharing the same beliefs, the same system that made us rustle-bustle through the caverns, painting and fucking. We're still the same but the old lines work in new ways now, cords between tincans have been upgraded and so has our emotional world, where intuition meets intelligence.

But!

As the goose was trapped in its bottle, it was mere words. A lyrical fata morgana spawned on the brink of your dreams and the horizon of hope.

A man is training martial arts at the invisible college. He is skillful but young. His final test is before him and he walks blindfolded backways up the mountain and meets his totem. The scorpion chooses but how did you choose? What did you put into the basket before selecting? Was it his good looks, his wonderful charm, the part of him that said I CARE NOT and at the same time said BUT REALLY I CARE. Where were your dreams? Why was your dreams so retarded? Wake the fuck up, try to become more than you are. We're dependent upon you. We're dependent that you grow up and teach us things, figure shit out with us, it's teamwork doll and we have no Is in the team just yet.

See the barrier. Did we make a bad choice? Was words a bad choice? This little road we're in, this little cave, painting life with feces and blood upon these here walls. The world is on the outside, it's crackling, there's sounds and noises coming through the radio and we sit here with each and every of our computer tapped into this little well of information, libraries spanning the entire human history and everything we've thought or learned but still we are no closer. The barrier, the word is sword, two edges.

The one edge allows us to communicate. We were cast out of the garden.
The other showed us silence. The black hole which now is filled with communication.

We are the dormant children. Dormant with stupidity, heroin, ignorance, greed, wellmeaning, marijuana, obsession and most importantly belief.

Move those mountains fuckers, get on move.

[LMNO]

That opening bit about the Word is truly awesome.

[Jack of Turnips]

As soon as one writes, one is the words. For an alternative, consider living as a Portobello mushroom (and, subsequently, dying as a Portobello mushroom).

Any non-verbal -- or unspeakable -- object would do for this exercise, of course.

I have read that some autistic persons do not easily learn to think in words. That story is probably false. It is therefore intriguing: do any of you out there not think in words?

Post a message on the forum if you have no words.

Yeah, anyway. We are typing these thoughts, so it is almost certain that we think them in words. Too bad. If we had decent equipment we could just think straight into each other's minds. But we were not provided decent equipment. I look in my pants, and I see the truth: decent equipment was not provided. Indecency as far as the eye can see.

Words are abstractions. But so is reality, really. Cells in my legs are stimulated, and electrical signals mediated by chemical events travel along fatty fibers to my brain. Certain portions of my brain receive the signals, infer their origin, map them onto an abstraction representing my body, and on the basis of past experience create a supposedly "accurate" representation of something I am pleased to pretend is "reality". To wit:

The dog has climbed onto the bed again, and is laying on my feet.

(Yes, this has all the intellectual depth of a saucer of milk for the cat. Sorry.)

What if, what if, what if the words are actually more meaningful than the electrochemical spasming of a peculiarly-designed nervous system lacing the flesh of a rather proposterous mortal ape? Would that mean that -- as far as humans are concerned -- words are more real than reality?

Drop a cinderblock on your bare foot, and try to convince yourself that the word "cinderblock" has more reality than the crushing object. I suppose that's the naive answer. Naiveté is not bad, I guess.

Not as long as it is informed, cynical naiveté.

~~ Jack of Turnips

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Interesting post.

Not all thoughts are words: they must be translated into words in order to verbalize them (obviously).

Are you trying to tell me you do not think in pictures? How, then, can you paint, draw, sculpt, engineer, imagine? How can you describe? In order to do any of these things, you must first use a form of thought that is non-verbal.

[Triple Zero]

some people think in pictures, some think in words, others think in sounds, some even think in touch or smell.

it depends on the person.

personally i think, i think mostly in words and pictures.

[Jack of Turnips]

To attempt to answer Nigel, I think that I can imagine pictures, but when I think -- that is, process chaos in a linear, logical fashion -- I use words. Without words we cannot process Eris' divinely chaotic universe. Words give form to chaos. As the Christian Bible says, "Chaos lay on the face of the deep, and the Word was with Ghourd, and Bird was the Word."

But I'm just playing with concepts, and we might as well argue the other side of the question.

Suppose that the primal mental unit is the true physical perception. The subsequent unit is emotional, visceral reaction. The mental verbalization only comes later, and is sort of an afterthought tacked on just so we can pretend we are rational beings.

Words are nearly superfluous, just a sort of prideful garnish stuck on the hot meat stew of reality. That may explain the Zen experience.

In the immanence of mountains
the crash of a falling boulder
speaks to the bodhisattva:
Did you remember to feed the cat?

Maybe that's part of what Sepia's complex post at the beginning of the thread meant, I dunno. Maybe "reality" is wordless, immutable, immanent, ineffable, and smells of old whitewall tires. We betrayed Reality when we invented words.

But then again...

There was once a fat, ugly dichotomy tramping along the road to Babylon. His feet were sore, he had a sinus headache, and he felt grouchy and mean as hell. He came upon a pretty little Greek girl sitting by the side of the road.

"Alright," he snarled, showing his yellow teeth. "Are you hip or are you square?"

"It doesn't matter," the little girl said. "They say it's hip to be square, but it's awfully square to be hip."

"Grr," said the dichotomy. "Sweet or sour?"

"Both," said the girl, tossing her hair. "And make it sweet-and-sour pork."

"Blast!" shouted the dichotomy. His headache was getting worse. "Pictures or words?"

The little girl stood up. "Don't be silly," she said. "You're nothing but a false dichotomy. False, false false!"

And she was right. There was a blatting sound and the dichotomy disappeared, leaving only a small pile of horsefeathers in the dust.

Pretty silly, eh? But although I can't think just how it works, maybe I am coming at this with the wrong assumptions.

Sepia: "Did we make a bad choice? Was words a bad choice?"

What are the assumptions? Was there a dichotomous choice, either words or something else? I dunno, I really don't.

~~ Jack of Turnips

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I dunno, I think people tend to think in whole concepts and then translate them into words and pictures. But I could be wrong. And maybe that's the false dichotomy of which you speak.

I do know that my thoughts, at their deepest most thinking-ness level, are not words and they are not pictures, exactly; they are sort of 4-dimensional impressions.

[guest7654]

words are metaphors for concepts/ideas...often times I think out-loud, and I catch myself misspeaking, of course I knew what I meant, but if I can't think of the word(s)...then there must be something before the words.  Of course, if I try too long to remember the right words, I will forget the concept entirely.  This occurs usually after intoxication of some sort. 

and yes, the beginning is awesome, also, the last line. 

[LMNO]

When I write music, I think of drumbeats in terms of drumbeats.  I think of basslines in terms of basslines.

When I record music, I think of drumbeats in terms of objects in space, and velocity of sticks.  I think of basslines in terms of frets and strings.


It's only when I have to communicate these things to someone else do I have to use words.

[Epimetheus]

I think when fantasizing or , people think in images and touch, if not all of the senses.

[Cainad (dec.)]

About 99.9% of my thoughts are in words, and I find it an infuriating handicap in certain situations (art and music are utterly foreign to my brain). In other situations, it makes me look like a genius.

My little brother was diagnosed with autism (the diagnosis was later changed to Asperger's, but never mind), and I know he thinks in images. Ever since he was old enough to hold a pen, has has spent his spare time drawing pictures of things that interest him, and no one has ever had to ask him, "what's this a picture of?", because he can represent his thoughts in visual form effortlessly. The only thing he struggles to draw is humans

[LHX]

thought is analog

words are digital


there is always something lost in the transition

or translation


"body language"
"actions speak louder..."
etc


to get the full (or a fuller) understanding and perspective of any posts on this board
it would require observing the lead up and the postscript of the post being composed

[Pope Lecherous]

when i masturbate i visualize dirty words written on college ruled notebook paper 8" x 10-1/2"

So am i thinking in words?  Or am i picturing these words?

[Nast]

Well, I'd believe that you associate the meaning of the words with the shape of the words (as this is how reading works). You brain automatically knows the meaning, and imagines the shape of the words to go along with it.

It's sort of like flash cards.

If you hear the word "cat", you are able to imagine an image of a cat, or visualize the letters of the word "cat" in your brain. They're all just symbols for the meaning that you associate the concept of catness with. Even the phonetic utterance of the word "cat" is a symbol (as this is how spoken language works).

[Pope Lecherous]

i agree.  I'm just glad someone didnt post before you claiming that words are not visual.  words as sounds? na no way