Thursday, January 27, 2011

Am I crazy?

The conversation that goes on in my head seems pretty normal to me.  But if I stop and give it serious thought I have to wonder if I am crazy.  My mind goes from thought to thought and even goes back and forth in time.  I have an image in my mind from long ago and far away, and then I 'see' something in my future.  I remember an incident that happened in my freshman year of college.  I started out without a clue as to what I wanted to study.  (I actually ended that way too.)  One of the classes that I took my first year was Communications 101.  The professor was sort of a celebrity to the education community but I did not know nor did I care that he was a respected scholar.  I remember learning a definition of 'communication' that required a response to any message to qualify as communication.  So a book or a movie or a letter wasn't 'complete' until some kind of a response from the hearer, reader or receiver of a message responded in some form or another.  That is why I place such an importance on the comments that my blog receives.  I see that not only as completing the process, but actually giving it it's value.  I also remember a disagreement that I had with the professor which pretty much lasted the whole semester of the course.  In one of his lectures he was teaching what he thought went on in our minds when a thought or an idea is created or formed.  He felt that 'words' were essential to the process and that we think in words, so the more words that we learn the better we are able to think.  I remember mulling over his idea and I looked at my own' inside of my head process' and I came to disagree with him.  I voiced my idea that my mind did use words, but only to label impressions or even feelings which I felt were the basic tools of the thought process.  It seemed ridiculous to think that a thought could not exist without a word.  I saw them existing as a result of something else and not the 'something' itself.  I remember that our disagreement lasted all the way through the class.  And even to this day I believe that he was wrong.  I know that he was wrong.  I have examined and re-examined my mental process many times in the years since 1964-65 and I still know that he was wrong.  I wondered if maybe I was strange or weird or different.  To this day I see myself as mostly normal, average and typical in that way just like everybody else, and I cannot figure how he could have been so wrong in what he taught.  I guess I can ask you, my friends (family) if I am actually crazy or if you see things the same way that I see them.  It is an interesting experiment which can be fun and beneficial regardless of whether you decide to defend me or not.  Try it and let me know what (I guess 'how') you think.

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