#ferdinand de saussure

[thoughtkick]

I’m almost never serious, and I’m always too serious. Too deep, too shallow. Too sensitive, too cold hearted. I’m like a collection of paradoxes.

Ferdinand de Saussure

[quotemadness]

I’m almost never serious, and I’m always too serious. Too deep, too shallow. Too sensitive, too cold hearted. I’m like a collection of paradoxes.

Ferdinand de Saussure

[perfectfeelings]

I’m almost never serious, and I’m always too serious. Too deep, too shallow. Too sensitive, too cold hearted. I’m like a collection of paradoxes.

Ferdinand de Saussure

[thehopefulquotes]

I’m almost never serious, and I’m always too serious. Too deep, too shallow. Too sensitive, too cold hearted. I’m like a collection of paradoxes.

Ferdinand de Saussure

[resqectable]

I’m almost never serious, and I’m always too serious. Too deep, too shallow. Too sensitive, too cold hearted. I’m like a collection of paradoxes.

Ferdinand de Saussure

[perfectquote]

I’m almost never serious, and I’m always too serious. Too deep, too shallow. Too sensitive, too cold hearted. I’m like a collection of paradoxes.

Ferdinand de Saussure

[quotefeeling]

I’m almost never serious, and I’m always too serious. Too deep, too shallow. Too sensitive, too cold hearted. I’m like a collection of paradoxes.

Ferdinand de Saussure

[perfeqt]

I’m almost never serious, and I’m always too serious. Too deep, too shallow. Too sensitive, too cold hearted. I’m like a collection of paradoxes.

Ferdinand de Saussure

[ivaspinoza]

What does “metamorphosis” mean to you?

Short answer is rebirth. To be born again.

But I also have a long answer because I really liked this ask:

If I say "tree", we both know what "tree" means, but we see different trees in our minds, right? I love the idea that language is the common ground of understanding. That's why it has rules: it's a convention. Otherwise, we won't understand each other. You say dog, I think tree and answer: soup!, and you bring me a flower. Imagine.

That makes me think of Saussure, who defined a sign as being composed of a signifier (significant) — the form which the sign takes; and the signified (signifi ) — the concept it represents.

But anyway, this was a very long time ago, and it's a crazy subject to do in-depth, I just want to use this idea of two layers: physical (material, visible) x abstract (spiritual, invisible).

So my brief interest in etymology and Latin will tell me the word metamorphosis is composed by the very cool word meta (change) + morpho (form).

To be transfigured? To be changed? But at what levels?

Rebirth fits. It sounds very poetic. It's the old "the caterpillar has to die in order to become a butterfly". But honestly, I think we take this meaning too lightly. In the sense that we might want to change a sign, but we change only its form, and forget its concept — which might be immutable as well. In order for the metamorphosis to happen, I guess both must be changed. It's an all-in game.

If you smash a caterpillar, it will never become a butterfly. If you take a butterfly's wings, it will still be a butterfly. And if we verify the reality that brings the words to life,

"Once a caterpillar has disintegrated all of its tissues except for the imaginal discs, those discs use the protein-rich soup all around them to fuel the rapid cell division required to form the wings, antennae, legs, eyes, genitals and all the other features of an adult butterfly or moth. The imaginal disc for a fruit fly's wing, for example, might begin with only 50 cells and increase to more than 50,000 cells by the end of metamorphosis. Depending on the species, certain caterpillar muscles and sections of the nervous system are largely preserved in the adult butterfly. One study even suggests that moths remember what they learned in later stages of their lives as caterpillars." (Ferris Jabr)

Interesting to point that "imaginal discs" or "sections of the nervous system" will be preserved. In the sense that you can't have something coming out of nothing, ever! A fish can not go through a caterpillar's metamorphosis. So even to disintegrate and be fully transformed, we also need a solid basis.

Sometimes we want to be changed, but we don't want to digest ourselves like the brave caterpillar. We want beautiful wings, but we don't want to die for ourselves. Refusing nature's design that is intrinsic to our core, maybe we will die as silkworms, when we could have been brilliant butterflies.

[soulinkpoetry]

I’m a box of paradoxes.

.

.

[thoughtkick]

I’m almost never serious, and I’m always too serious. Too deep, too shallow. Too sensitive, too cold hearted. I’m like a collection of paradoxes.

Ferdinand de Saussure

[quotemadness]

I’m almost never serious, and I’m always too serious. Too deep, too shallow. Too sensitive, too cold hearted. I’m like a collection of paradoxes.

Ferdinand de Saussure

[perfectfeelings]

I’m almost never serious, and I’m always too serious. Too deep, too shallow. Too sensitive, too cold hearted. I’m like a collection of paradoxes.

Ferdinand de Saussure

[stay-close]

I’m almost never serious, and I’m always too serious. Too deep, too shallow. Too sensitive, too cold hearted. I’m like a collection of paradoxes.

Ferdinand de Saussure

[bocadosdefilosofia]

«Psicológicamente, hecha abstracción de su expresión por medio de palabras, nuestro pensamiento no es más que una masa amorfa e indistinta. Filósofos y lingüistas han estado siempre de acuerdo en reconocer que, sin la ayuda de los signos, seríamos incapaces de distinguir dos ideas de manera clara y constante. Considerado en sí mismo, el pensamiento es como una nebulosa donde nada está necesariamente delimitado. No hay ideas preestablecidas, y nada es distinto antes de la aparición de la lengua.»

Ferdinand de Saussure: Curso de lingüística general. Editorial Losada, pág. 136. Buenos Aires, 1986.

TGO

@bocadosdefilosofia

[perfectquote]

I’m almost never serious, and I’m always too serious. Too deep, too shallow. Too sensitive, too cold hearted. I’m like a collection of paradoxes.

Ferdinand de Saussure