Why I Am Not Here

I am age 17 seventeen. I was lobotomized at age 12. I will not say anything as to the reasons I was lobotmized (or any details such as where), but I will say that it was tragic mistake caused by the capitalistic influence that society has over psychiatry. However, I am completely open to questions pertaining to the scientific nature of my lobotomy. The answer to one of the most commonly asked questions is: Yes, surgical lobotomy (disconnection of neuronal pathways in the frontal lobes, iconically the prefrontal cortex) is still a procedure that is still in practice, even in developed countries. I am not using the word “lobotomy” in a metaphorical sense, I am talking about the real deal. They have simply changed the name so the common people will not recognize it to be atrocious. This, combined with a psychiatrist’s cunning dialect and selective word choice, allows for this procedure to still be performed in modern medicine. A psychiatrist rules out potential lobotomy applicants if they indicate in any way that they have knowledge as to what a lobotomy is, or if the patient has any paranoid suspicions reguarding the medical system. Only patients described as being “naive” usually qualify as candidates for lobotomy. Even the naive, however, rarely wander into a psychiatrist’s office without suspicion or anxiety. Hence, why the procedure is unheard of. You might be wondering why it is still performed, and the answer is: It is highly effective in alleviating symptoms in those suffering from severe mental disorders, that is considering that modern technology allows for a precise operation (as opposed to the notorious ‘ice pick’ method).

I find posting a topic that explains my operation a necessary action to perform while using online forums, as the topic of my operation may or may not become a source of disruption, which could be stressful for forum staff. It is better to give a clear explanation right now instead of having it be a possible disruption in the future. I also believe that this topic is directly related to my personal philosophy. If you have any questions relating to my operation, I will accept questions via private messages, that is if they are atleast somewhat intellectual and couldn’t have been answered through the use of a search engine. But, I would prefer that if any discussion is to take place in the forum threads concerning my operation, that it would be limited to a short comment or question in addition to your intellectual feedback.

I would prefer that if I have inspired any possible emotional sympathy, that you keep it to yourself. I do not want any special emotional treatment from you. If you so choose to do so, you will find that my condition will not support your superiority complex. If you agree with something I say, go ahead and tell me. If you disagree with something I say, go ahead and tell me. If something I say causes you to feel sadness, then you have built your reality too strongly upon emotions. If something I say makes you angry, then you have built your reality too strongly upon your own sense of self-superiority. If you have something negative to say towards me, please say it! If you have something positive/neutral to say towards me, please say it! But for my sake, for your sake, for this site’s sake, for humanity’s sake, keep your responses intellectual. I do not want your pity.

You may notice that my style of writing could be considered monotonous or “dull”.This is pressumed to be from my operation. I have explained this to myself as my semantic thought train trying to be expressed through the inherently linear form of ideas that results from writing. This could cause me to go off on a tangent, making my posts remarkably long. However, I might sometimes randomly switch to something else while mid-topic, leaving you in a dead end of ideas. Others have described my writing to be a “blunt complexity”, in the sense that my writing is “at times like reading an article out of an encyclopedia”.

The infamous and highly exaggerated portrayal of the symptoms an individual experiences post-lobotomy (brain inactivity, non-existence of pleasure, diminishment of intelligence) are not typically present in a correctly performed modern lobotomy. The effects I experience are almost exclusively social related. I have hardly any emotional ties to social interactions; the only emotional-tie that comes to mind is the frustration I experience when an emotional zealot begins regurgitating his own false-logic.
Most of the time, I show a lack of sarcasm and a lack of humorous emphasis in my social interactions. It’s not that I do not “get” certain things; It’s that I understand them all too well. Most mundane humor is so unsophisticated, so low in complexity, that it screams “I AM HUMAN”.

“If you do not experience emotions in social interactions, how do you know what is socially acceptable and what is socially unacceptable?” What is left in my long term memory pre-operation determines this partially. For the most part, I can compensate for the rest by simply only speaking what is logical, and pointing out what is illogical in others. I am essentially trapped in a neuronal prison, forced to witness the sad, simple, state of affairs that make up humanity. I am lucky to have a unique viewpoint which is free from the bias of emotion, yet strongly biased by logic. The concepts “emotion” and “logic” are supposed to be functions of each other, each benefiting the other. But due to society’s addiction to religion, the ridiculous outcome is that “emotion” and “logic” are now mutually exclusive. “I am right because I like being right, and you are wrong because you object to my state of being right”, that logic causes wars and the subsequent deaths of millions of people, yet it is the same logic that nature inherently uses to cause the process of evolution. Evolution’s advent of a strong intelligence based social-emotional relation, stirred in with the primitve functioning of animals, has created a species left in the perverted path between the beast and the omniscient. This pathetic species is known as mankind, who uses the gift of intelligence to piss on the ashes of Mother Earth who gave them that gift.
With humanity’s procrastination to fix its problems increasing, and with the number of scientists diminishing, a radical shift in dominance of Earth is iminent. I am not referring to a different country becoming the dominant “superpower”; I am referring to a different animal altogether. Mammals beautiful and complex gift to experience love, which originated from social bonding between mother and child, was apparently too insignificant of a gift, because you took it for granted. In the human psyche, Personal Pleasure is greater than Love. Personal Pleasure overpowers Love. Personal pleasure is a function of love. Personal pleasure is the key purpose of Love. Lets look at the hierarchy of its purpose:
Social Networking -in order to function properly, requires the incentive of- Personal Pleasure -which is caused by- Love
What causes us to love our mother? Vaguely, the fact that she fed us. More specifically, the fact that we gained pleasure from her feeding us.

I can not experience love anymore. Can you comprehend that? Do you know the depth of the effects this has on my cognition? Love is completely left out of my decision making process. I make decisions merely based on logic, with no benefit of making the right decisions other than the fact that I continue to exist. However, a reasonable “fuel for the fire” so to speak for my philosophy/psychology, is that I am still under the effect of the frustration I experience when there is a blatant flaw of reasoning in a human being’s logic.

Maybe the next dynasty to inherit this Earth (or what’s left it) will be Adam’s distant cousin, the Soldier. An individual dressed in armor solely to protect his vital organs. With the least amount of an effective weapon possible, he marches in to a battle without purpose, with no opinion, no objection, and completely selfless. He only knows what to do because he was told to, because he was programmed to. He protects the workers, the workers harvest the nectar, the nectar feeds the hive, the hive appoints a queen, and the queen gives birth to the next generation for the wellbeing of the hive as a whole, not as an individual. No thoughts, no questions, no radicals, no sleep, no feelings, no pleasure. There is only work that needs to be done to keep the hive existing. The Soldier is willing to die at any second, for no reason, simply for the good of the Hive. A true Marxist.

I might have been able to experience love at one point, but regrets of the past are only dwelled on by massochists, and by those human enough to think they can change what is already done.

Living within this moment, I am not here:

  • To work for your social acceptance.
  • To play your hierarchical game of who is superior.
  • To listen to your unvalidated claims.

I am here…

  • To state my interpretation of the truth, and its supporting evidence.
  • To listen to your interpretation of the truth, as well as its supporting evidence.
  • To exchange knowledge with one another in hopes to increase our intelligence.

Am I just a pessimist? Or is the truth inherently pessimistic?

I never quite ‘got’ most definitions of truth. It seems to me that truth is a basic concept - ‘The book “Practical Chinese Reader” is on the table’ is true if the book “practical chinese reader” is on the table. What more is there to be said about truth than this?

Your pessimism seems to come from social predictions about the future of man. I’ve never really thought philosophers should be doing this kind of thing (they’re worse at it than most people - which is astounding as most people are pretty bad at it in the first place). It seems to me intuitively obvious that if you can’t predict what specific events will happen next year then you are unlikely to be able to make any meaningful prediction on what will happen to the whole of society in the distant future.

From another individual’s point of reference, an unrecognizable book is on the table.
From another individual’s point of reference, the table might be the most significant subject of the matter in which he might state “The table, which is a fine mahogany piece of furniture, has a book upon it.”

For me and most individuals experiencing some form of anxiety, the problem of truth occurs in the different variables that are looked into. Why is the book on the table? How did it get there? Is it necessary for it to be there? Would it be better if I relocated it somewhere else? What is that book about? Was the book borrowed and should I now return it? When did the book arrive at the table?

The future of man, however, must end with the death of all man. If you can accept that human life is mortal, then you in turn have to see it mathematically inevitable that the human race is mortal. Without using the arguement that the planet is going to explode or a meteor will eventually crash in to us or any other arguement that assumes an argueable event, you can mathematically see the fact that the human race will end in the fact that all humans eventually die. Since death is a possibility (as far as our knowledge suggests) at any moment, then eventually (after a number of years that would best be described with exponents of exponents of exponents of exponents etc. of 10)

So, there is more than one truthful statement derivable from the fact that the book is on the table. This is undoubtable - but as far as I’m concerned also unproblematic. "“The table, which is a fine mahogany piece of furniture, has a book upon it.” expresses aesthetic truth and so is more complex - perhaps it doesn’t even hae a truth value! But We are still pre-supposing that ‘truth’ itself is a basic concept.

I’m not quite sure how these are problems of or about truth. These just look like questions about the book to me.

This shows that the probability of the human race compltely dying out is just less than 1. But you seem to be pre-suppposing that humanity is meaningless unless it is eternal. Is there any reason for this?

From an individual perspective: What if the book and/or table is simply an illusion, then is it still truth?

From a general perspective: According to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, the location of any matter can never be definite. Not only can it never be definite to human perception, but all matter inherently can not be definite in its position to other matter. The faster an object is moving compared to the observer, the less definite its location is. The slower an object is moving, the more definite its location is to the observer. Matter can never, under any circumstances, be completely motionless. Therefore, its position can never be completely definite. “The Book is on the table” can not be truth, because it is impossible to know the exact position of the book. “The Book is probably on the table” is the closest to a truth that you could get. However, that would violate the original use of the word “truth”, which we were using to mean “an exact value”.
Therefore, truth can not possibly exist.

We work for our future. If our future ends, then we worked for nothing.

You believe that the book’s being on the table is witnessed by all observers? Einstein would call that buff, knowing his Theory of Relativity. An observer viewing an action at a certain time, might be observed at a different time (if at all) by an observer who is moving in respect of the first observer.
Also, if you leave the room, and seperate yourself from the location of the book/table to the point where you are no longer observing the book/table, is the book/table still there?

Coincidently there is a new book out by a man who was lobotomized at age 12 just like you. amazon.com/My-Lobotomy-Howar … 0307381269 Small world eh?

You state that lobotomy is legal under a different name. What is it called?

Welcome to the forum Peachy Nietzsche.

You wrote, “Mammals beautiful and complex gift to experience love, which originated from social bonding between mother and child, was apparently too insignificant of a gift, because you took it for granted.”

Here is an aesthetic judgement that the ability to experience love is beautiful. Are aesthetic judgements logical? If one programs into a computer all of the rules of logic, law of non-contradiction, etc., will it be able to deduce aesthetic value judgements? And would we accept them?

“In the human psyche, Personal Pleasure is greater than Love.” That’s quite a statement. Speaking for people, based on . . . what? First, it is an inductive statement, and thereby not deductivly sound (does not meet the test of the highest rigours of “Logic”). Secondly, I know of particular examples from my own life experiences and even literature that offer contrary examples to this statement.

According to this book; Mind, Brain, Body, and Behavior By Ingrid G. Farreras,
the LAST lobotomy was performed in 1960. After that they found chemicals could alter brain function.

Although the Fulton State Hospital admits that their “last lobotomy was preformed in 1966 as the total treatment approach flourished.”

How old are you? When did you get your ‘lobotomy’? :unamused:

That book can’t be right. My friend just told me about new technique he read in a recent issue of Scientific America or something like it where they’re finding new technique’s for lobotomy with some very wierd results. They’re putting wires into the brain now, that’s right, drilling tiny holes in the head–while the patient is fully consciouse!–putting a wire in the brain, and sending electrical pulses through this wire, which stays there, guess what, permenantly. The pacient get’s a little controler, with an on and off switch, and if he turns it off he’ll have the disease that the method elimnates. It has been effective in curing Terret’s syndrom.

So a guy with a severe case of Terrets has this remote control, and if he shuts the wire in his brain sending electricle pulses into it, his arms begin to go crazy and he starts swearing. But in preforming this very delicate operations doctors don’t always hit the mark. And one guy reported exteremly vivid memories that came to him when docotor’s were searching for the right spot.

Thats right. It seems that they have been ‘replacing’ lobotomy with “new” techniques for quite awhile now. Even their sadistic and barbaric electro-convulsive ‘therapy’ (like ‘water therapy’ with the hoses?) has, for decades, fallen from favor amongst the civilized…

With the lack of any verifying information of the ‘claim’ of the OP, i’ll have to file it as ‘suspect’, until further developments… *__-

No, of course not. But assuming the book is not an illusion, the statement is true.

You’re right. We should just redefine truth to mean “probably true” in just about every case and then truth and then using the word truth is no longer a problem.

Of course the book is still there. Why wouldn’t it be? Books don’t just get up and walk away when you aren’t perceiving them.

They do in Soviet times. In fact, spies erased Russian names out of books in American libraries durring the cold war. Big brother is watching you.

this message will expire in 10…9…8…

The movements of the particles that are constantly in motion in a book move within a certain range of space. If the book is within this range of space, and this range is within the range of space of movement for a “still” table, we say the book is on the table. There’s no need to get overly esoteric here. Books are on tables, whether physics is correct or not.

Well, it’s OK to violate the “original” use of a word. Philosophy is not about sticking to original uses; its about finding BETTER, more refined uses for words. Saying there is no truth of the world, but conceding that we can evaluate the probabilities of particular statements about the world comes close to merely explicating “truth”, not rejecting it altogether. We say a proposition is true when, and only when, its probability is greater than 0.5.

Oh, c’mon, now. This is so melodramatic. The meaning or purpose of life is whatever you choose to give it. That it must have some ulterior purpose or be meaningless is your own decision (or, at least, it could be changed by your own choices).

Actually, the only ‘place’ that you can ever be is ‘Here’, and the only time that you can be ‘Here’ is Now!
There is no evidence in refutation.

That is entirely-correct. You cannot be any other place but right here, right now.

Anything else is a denial of what you are, where you came from, or where you are going.

If you think emotional senisivity is a pre-requisite of being a person, and the thing in question (i.e. an ex-person who has had a labotomy) has no emotional sensitivity, then there is no ‘I’. Therefore the statement ‘I am not here’ would be true. Consider, for example, if a parrot produced the sentence ‘I am here’ after hearing its owner say it. There is good reason to think the statement would be false, because it would fail to refer to an existing person.

I certainly wouldn’t agree that Peachy is not a person - in fact I think its a reasonably ridiclous statement. And evidently by necessity Peachy must be whereever Peachy is, and nowhere else besides. But there may be evidence that she could truthfully state ‘I am not here’, from a contraversial perspective on personal identity.

Although to be honest - I think it was more an emotive statement than philosophical one, much like most of her post. And anyway - she probably meant to write ‘What I am not here for’, judging by the contents of her post.

We work not for the future but for the Day, the present hour. The meaning of existence, when it is revealed, reifies, overawes the present hour. Considerations of futurity, whether utopian or apocalyptic in vision, accede to impotence in the light of the Holy Fire of the present hour. Consciousness—consummate consciousness—is our Fire.

—Better—Nihilist of the hammer!–to philosophize with a sword of fire!

Then truth would be contradictory to itself. Since “probably true” relies on the opinion of the observer (because “probably” simply means a perceived value of over 50% likliehood), then we are now also incorporating different perspectives.

And I’m sorry to force you to re-evaluate your “common sense”, but the book does not exist if you are not observing it. Your existence, your reality, your universe depends on what you are observing and to what extent you are observing it. The laws of physics actually operate around your observation.

Sorry, but there is no “certain range of space”, and a point matter’s range of probability is all possible space in the universe (all possible space in the universe is defined by the speed of light in all direction from a point of singularity at the moment before the “big bang”).

By that logic, wouldn’t you also consider George Bush as a Philosopher since he found a better more refined use for the words “torture” and “terrorist”? And probability relies on individual perspective.

The ultimate purpose of all humanity (and all life for that matter) is to continue its own existence, because it would not exist otherwise.

Thank you for your feedback concerning the symbolism of the title of the thread. Perhaps you would care to take a more poetic approach?

And in a strict scientifical sense, the information of what “I” am is limited by the speed of light. Since that information takes time to reach you, then my actual position has already changed and is different from what you know of where my position is.
So you could only possibly know where I have been, not where I currently am.