amen (non-ironically intended)... i've reached similar conclusions, hepled along by my linguistic adventures, exposure to Korzybski's General Semantics, and many other factors...
also love the usenet quote!
Well, no wonder our smileys and winkies seem to have so joyful an alternating coexistence! :-)
Pretty sure I've mentioned this next quote before in these parts, but it remains a fave:
"All mental is illness."
Context:
The species seems wont to discuss some relatively limited forms of mentality constituting illness. But I've noticed I'm significantly happier and/or more at peace sans thoughts altogether.
Sure, some thoughts are seemingly fun for a season, but have a tendency to invoke their own opposites (e.g. can you think about light without dark, heavy without light, loud without soft, etc., etc.? ), and eventually become infested with a loathsome what-might-be-called "ennui mold".
But sans thoughts altogether... how could their be either a problem or its opposite? There's essentially no modeling of an alleged objective reality in terms of pairs of opposite notions.. not even an infinitely lonely, "free-willed" instantiation of subjectivity relative to said object reality, just <of COURSE it can't be said>.