Mitchell Heisman's Suicide Note

[Zetetic]

I have only just begun pouring over the 1905 page suicide note of 35 year old Mitchell Heisman and I can't help but find many of his points compelling, well researched and extraordinarily unsettling. His thesis holds for me the same terror invoked by the work of Hobbes, a call to an unthinkable conclusion by extraordinarily well composed reasoning. His thesis thus far seems to be effectively that the ideals of Enlightenment rationality presented through the parameters of human psychology leads to the conclusion of willful biological suicide and the creation of a God, by way of technology, that would replace us, and ultimately continue to improve and replace itself.

I justify placing this in the religion/irreligious thread because a large portion of it deals with, through the lenses of sociology and evolutionary psychology; the conception of God in the human mind, the rise of Monotheism, the subsequent rise of Enlightenment values, the God Hypothesis (including a specific address to Dawkin's analysis), and a call to create a technological super being if and when technology permits it.

Though it seems dubious that his most ultimate conclusion will become appealing or compelling after I read his work, I have found numerous subsections and sub-conclusions to be as interesting (even if only for their dialectical ingenuity and generally informed nature) as they are provocative.

I have to add that I don't think I have ever heard of such a case of philosophy in action as I have today, be it wrong or right.

Here is the link to the site that Heisman posted his 1905 page work: http://www.suicidenote.info/

Edit: I realize that the original post may not be conducive to discussion, so I want to make the following addendum:

There are several interesting ideas at play, and it would probably be best to stick with just one section of the work. The deconstruction of the bible in terms of human psychology and historical context and Heisman's conception of 'God' is what is dealt with first in his note. This is a dialectical deconstruction, and this work is ultimately dialectical in form. It still seems suited to being looked at in pieces, due to the density of information and the presence of clearly stand alone sub-arguments.

So, to narrow down the focus of this thread; what do you think of the conception of God as laid out in the section entitled 'God is Technology'? How reasonable does his dialectic seem to you? Does anyone see any immediate flaws in his assumptions or his analysis of any subjects he covers or how they fit together? What do you think of his deconstruction of Dawkin's treatment of the God Hypothesis in terms of his sociological/psychological interpretation of human religious history?
(Also relevant; How much of his writing seems crazy to you? How much of his writing make sense, and how much of the stuff that makes sense also seems interesting and non-trivial?)

I understand that the section will take people a while to read this, and I too am still reading it. I think that people should probably discuss as they read. If you choose to read some of the note, then just comment as you run in to something you find interesting or controversial. I hope that if there are some useful and interesting ideas here that we can distill them.

 

[Zetetic]

Ok, so this seems to be attracting a lot of views but very little discussion. I'm curious about what others first impressions are. Does he seem like he's just a crackpot loon that made too many wrong assumptions and came to the wrong conclusion? Does anyone see any merit in the ideas presented, or do they seem like mad ravings?

What is your initial reaction to the introduction?

Even if the conclusion is that he was simply a crackpot; other crackpot manifestos still had valid points and make for decent discussion. Ted Kaczynski's manifesto, though often over the top and irrational, nonetheless had some interesting ideas related to anarcho-primitivism.

 

[lrkun]

It's a whole lot of words. Maybe, when I'm free, I can read the text. hehe. >.<

Anyway, do you have a shorter version of the article? Like, a couple of pages talking about one issue?

 

[KnowingLaughter]

I have only skimmed it but I did get the impression of rambling.

Looking at the size of the work I decided that as I disliked the style of his writing and didn't follow his train of thought at times, it would be better to either not read it or read it at a later date broken in to digestible chunks.

Sorry that's not much use to you but you seemed curious about why some of us had viewed but not commented.

This was an instant turn off in his logic for me.

"The potentially fatal assumption of this argument is that existence is superior to non-existence."

and

"If, unlike myself, someone were to assume that even human existence is superior to non-existence, then death would be ranked inferior to life."

I would rather conclude that given the presented result of his works that the fatal assumption was exactly the opposite...

 

[Andiferous]

Wow. This is rather... you know... premeditated. It seems different somehow...

Perhaps even that a person who could write so much and want to share those words so desperately, probably didn't commit suicide for the usual reasons. I think. Or was he? Wow. I think he must have liked himself to some rather healthy plus level to do this. Confidence, megalomania, or whatever - I don't think it is likely he did this to end his... self.
Either way, I am sorry he felt this necessary to be heard. And I think he's a bit of a twit too. But I'm kinda immoral to even judge at this point.

 

[DepricatedZero]

I haven't finished reading it all though...I'm reading it small bits. His note is almost twice the size of the Lord of the Rings or Atlas Shrugged. This isn't exactly light reading.

There's certainly some insight, but there's also some clear insanity. I think in the end it all comes down to the want for a god. The meaninglessness of existence seems to have crushed him. He realized that there is no meaning to life, and rather than move on, decided to end it. The rest of the 'note' seems to be what caused him to realize this.

And Andie, why would it be immoral to judge?

 

[Andiferous]

I haven't finished reading it all though...I'm reading it small bits. His note is almost twice the size of the Lord of the Rings or Atlas Shrugged. This isn't exactly light reading.

There's certainly some insight, but there's also some clear insanity. I think in the end it all comes down to the want for a god. The meaninglessness of existence seems to have crushed him. He realized that there is no meaning to life, and rather than move on, decided to end it. The rest of the 'note' seems to be what caused him to realize this.

And Andie, why would it be immoral to judge?

Because at this point there is no point in judging, except to be evil.

I feel a bit dirty looking at what he wrote. Just me?

 

[lrkun]

I'd like to confirm something. Is this person dead?

 

[DepricatedZero]

I haven't finished reading it all though...I'm reading it small bits. His note is almost twice the size of the Lord of the Rings or Atlas Shrugged. This isn't exactly light reading.

There's certainly some insight, but there's also some clear insanity. I think in the end it all comes down to the want for a god. The meaninglessness of existence seems to have crushed him. He realized that there is no meaning to life, and rather than move on, decided to end it. The rest of the 'note' seems to be what caused him to realize this.

And Andie, why would it be immoral to judge?

Because at this point there is no point in judging, except to be evil.

I feel a bit dirty looking at what he wrote. Just me?

Why?

I mean, I think his conclusion was correct but his followup was wrong. There is no meaning to life, but that doesn't mean that non-existence is the preferable state. That conclusion is judgmental, and I don't think judging people is wrong. All we have to go by in life is our own judgment, no one should be immune to it.

Yes, he shot himself on the top step of Harvard's Memorial Church in front of a crowd.

 

[KnowingLaughter]

Because at this point there is no point in judging, except to be evil.

I feel a bit dirty looking at what he wrote. Just me?

I disagree. If he is actually dead then I don't think we will upset him by evaluating his work. That is surely after all why he put it up in the first place. His family clearly have no problem with it being up, so I don't feel I will upset anyone by disagreeing with him.

If on the other hand he didn't want people to evaluate his work then he just wanted people to absorb his words and agree. In that case he is essentially encouraging others to come to the same conclusion and do as he did. Like the people that recruit followers to drink the poisoned punch with them in those death cults. If that was the case then he was immoral in my eyes to do such a thing in the first place and I wouldn't feel bad for calling him out on that, even if he can't hear me.

Or it's a person who is still alive and using this dead pseudonym to publish his work, if so then I find that sickening given the conclusion he seems to want to convey. That is incitement to commit suicide, certainly evil to me and probably illegal - although I don't know.

It would be nice to know which of the above is most likely.

In any situation I personally don't find it any different to evaluating the work of anyone else.


EDIT: According to the above post he is dead so please discount the third of my suggestions.

 

[Andiferous]

It reminds me of balloon boy. Another reality TV stunt. If so, it is so sickening. If that is the cause; I will not endorse it. troubling. If it was, I really hate society too.

 

[DepricatedZero]

It reminds me of balloon boy. Another reality TV stunt. If so, it is so sickening. If that is the cause; I will not endorse it. troubling. If it was, I really hate society too.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/24/mitchell-heisman-suicide_n_738121.html

he was witnessed killing himself

 

[Zetetic]

If he is actually dead then I don't think we will upset him by evaluating his work. That is surely after all why he put it up in the first place. His family clearly have no problem with it being up, so I don't feel I will upset anyone by disagreeing with him.

As you acknowledge, he is in fact very dead. I will say that I am not so sure that his family could have the site taken down if they wanted to.
In any event, there is a passage near the beginning that is relevant to your point:

response, I stress that what is scientifically relevant is
not whether one agrees or disagrees, but why one agrees or
disagrees. What are the reasons a given theory might be
accepted or rejected? If one thinks that I am wrong, then
demonstrate why I am wrong. If one claims to judge this
thesis by its scientific merits rather than unreasoned loyalty
to extra-scientific commitments, then there is no need whatsoever to repress it and one should be able to confront
my arguments point by point. Can the critic offer a better
explanation of the evidence than the ones presented in this
work? Why should anyone be convinced by anything less
than an alternative theory that can better account for all of
the evidence? I challenge anyone to resist public and
political pressures and confront this application of
sociobiology to politics on the basis of its scientific merits.

Aside from the self-aggrandizing and paranoid tone surrounding this passage (he is ranting about how it will be repressed, what mechanisms will cause it's repression and how the public will react to the repression of it), he seems to embrace challenges to his 'theories' (it is still not clear to me if there is a coherent central point to be taken from this).

 

[KnowingLaughter]

As you acknowledge, he is in fact very dead. I will say that I am not so sure that his family could have the site taken down if they wanted to.

From the link that depricated posted.

The note is a "sprawling series of arguments that touch upon historical, religious and nihilist themes," his mother, Lonni Heisman, told the Crimson. She said her son would have wanted people to know about his work.

So it seems she condones the site for what it's worth.

I did skim through the passage you quoted in his note and it is very defensive but it does seem like he invites analysis.

I'm still finding it a rambling read and don't seem to follow his flows of thought but I can't really say until I have properly read a couple of parts rather than skimmed it. I doubt I'll read the whole thing to be honest.

 

[Scripted]

Woo long stuff. About 150 pages in. I'll save my opinions on his... saneness... till im atleast halfway through, but a quick opinion. I think people are misunderstanding his existance vs non-existance statements. He did not say non-existance is a preffered state to existance, but that with an nihilistic worldview, one can find non-existance as appealing as existance. Its not the first time the natural human bias of life > death has been questioned.
It reminds me of plato's : The apology, when socrates says humans are naturally afraid of what they cannot understand, which is the reason why there is a natural human fear of death. He goes on to say that there is no logical reason to believe that death is bad or inferior to life, and that his death sentence is not a punishment, but a contiuation to something better.

 

[mchaplin71]

I am going to post what I had written in the Huffingtonpost comments section. Feel free to pour over the arguments made by Mitchell as I am sure there are many BUT there is a reason it was written.

Mitchell was my cousin and only if you knew him could you find the reason in his taking his own life in these 1905 pages but it is there:

When my father died when I was twelve, I dealt with his
death by interpreting him as a purely material phenomenon.
In other words, I viewed my father as a material thing and
his death as a material process.

There is no great philosophical mystery here. The answer is not the words themselves but why the words were written. I was at his fathers funeral when he was 12 and I saw with my own eyes the spark of life go out in his eyes. He loved his mother and sister very much but there is sometime a bond between father and son that when broken the spark of life dies.

Michael

 

[lrkun]

I am going to post what I had written in the Huffingtonpost comments section. Feel free to pour over the arguments made by Mitchell as I am sure there are many BUT there is a reason it was written.

Mitchell was my cousin and only if you knew him could you find the reason in his taking his own life in these 1905 pages but it is there:

When my father died when I was twelve, I dealt with his
death by interpreting him as a purely material phenomenon.
In other words, I viewed my father as a material thing and
his death as a material process.

There is no great philosophical mystery here. The answer is not the words themselves but why the words were written. I was at his fathers funeral when he was 12 and I saw with my own eyes the spark of life go out in his eyes. He loved his mother and sister very much but there is sometime a bond between father and son that when broken the spark of life dies.

Michael

And what is your basis?

 

[Zetetic]

I'm far from finishing the book, but it seems as though he is arguing that we should begin a process of recursive self improvement and go ahead and make our race obsolete. He even suggests the possibility of altering ourselves to the point of becoming 'God' and perpetually improving ourselves with respect to the next logical step for our form.

He reasonably postulates that the God concept represented the pinnacle of human conception in earlier humans, and in fact by definition outstrips human conception. It points to the super-human and thus super-human AI fulfills the role of God as it may have been conceived of historically. He, seemingly less reasonably, postulates that if we were to achieve a super-human state, that we would develop new ideals for a God that is godlike relative to our improved selves. This seems as though it is highly unlikely to continue on (he postulates that there would be a super-super-God etc.), as we will reach physical limits. Maybe not, but it seems highly speculative and likley flawed.

What seems more plausible to me is that we might improve ourselves dramatically at first and then, limited by physical constraints, we hit a period of diminishing returns. Imagine an S-curve.

So the question is, why not commit to the goal of radical redesigning of our race? Did he feel that he had foreseen the process to it's end, and realize that life not only has no purpose, but ultimately no non-trivial unpredictable developments? If so, this is clearly a product of his depressed imagination, interesting though it may be.

One person had speculated that he reasoned that living is perpetual action towards sustaining life, whereas suicide is a single action that ceases all other action. I have not seen this so far.

I have begun to read the section with the most absurd title (it seems like it might be a nod to psychoanalysis, particularly that of Jaques Lacan; the Seditious Genius of the Spiritual Penis of Jesus). Heisman considers the evidence of Jesus' conception by Roman rape, and concludes that Jesus became the scapegoat of his Jewish community, his mother an outcast and himself effectively fatherless as his father would have cast his mother out for guilt of adultery. He claims that there is a strong impetus for Jesus to claim his kinship with God then, to avoid the nature of his conception. He doesn't seem to have anything more than tenuous evidence for this position, so I'd take it with a grain of salt.

He further claims that, since Jesus would become the human scapegoat for the frustration of many Jews at the oppressive Roman empire, himself being a Jew by the tenets of Judaism, as his mother was Jewish, but half roman and so a physical representation of Roman oppression. He claims the Jewish authorities were guilty of collaboration with Roman authorities, and therefore any political shunning of Jesus due to his Roman connection is fundamentally hypocritical, which Jesus recognizes. He goes on to make a stronger point that appears to have more evidence to it, this point is that Christianity is a radical egalitarianization of traditional Judaism. It is a natural out growth of Judaism and the Roman Judaic conflict. I don't know how tenable this is, but it is an interesting theory.

 

[Zetetic]

I am going to post what I had written in the Huffingtonpost comments section. Feel free to pour over the arguments made by Mitchell as I am sure there are many BUT there is a reason it was written.

Mitchell was my cousin and only if you knew him could you find the reason in his taking his own life in these 1905 pages but it is there:

When my father died when I was twelve, I dealt with his
death by interpreting him as a purely material phenomenon.
In other words, I viewed my father as a material thing and
his death as a material process.

There is no great philosophical mystery here. The answer is not the words themselves but why the words were written. I was at his fathers funeral when he was 12 and I saw with my own eyes the spark of life go out in his eyes. He loved his mother and sister very much but there is sometime a bond between father and son that when broken the spark of life dies.

Michael

I suppose I would be interested in knowing why you make it a point to brush aside his book? Many troubled persons have put out valid works, some in a manner similar to your cousin. I am not looking for answers about why he killed himself, I am looking for what he might have done that is worthwhile in this seemingly reasonably well composed tome of personal study and thought. I am curious as to whether there is something of real value and insight here. I assume that you do not think that this is so? You were in a better position to know him, did he discuss his ideas extensively with you? Do you have reason to believe that he was frittering away his time on this?

Surely you also need to realize that, being that this is the internet and you have posted this in several locations, I have to have at least some degree of suspicion that you are in fact not his cousin but someone who is worried about people romanticizing Mitchell and his work for whatever reason. Maybe you are his cousin and you are worrying about this because you knew he was troubled and you fear that other people might be negatively influenced by an unhealthy interest in his work due to the hype it generated. Only you can elaborate.

 

[lrkun]

I am going to post what I had written in the Huffingtonpost comments section. Feel free to pour over the arguments made by Mitchell as I am sure there are many BUT there is a reason it was written.

Mitchell was my cousin and only if you knew him could you find the reason in his taking his own life in these 1905 pages but it is there:

When my father died when I was twelve, I dealt with his
death by interpreting him as a purely material phenomenon.
In other words, I viewed my father as a material thing and
his death as a material process.

There is no great philosophical mystery here. The answer is not the words themselves but why the words were written. I was at his fathers funeral when he was 12 and I saw with my own eyes the spark of life go out in his eyes. He loved his mother and sister very much but there is sometime a bond between father and son that when broken the spark of life dies.

Michael

I suppose I would be interested in knowing why you make it a point to brush aside his book? Many troubled persons have put out valid works, some in a manner similar to your cousin. I am not looking for answers about why he killed himself, I am looking for what he might have done that is worthwhile in this seemingly reasonably well composed tome of personal study and thought. I am curious as to whether there is something of real value and insight here. I assume that you do not think that this is so? You were in a better position to know him, did he discuss his ideas extensively with you? Do you have reason to believe that he was frittering away his time on this?

Surely you also need to realize that, being that this is the internet and you have posted this in several locations, I have to have at least some degree of suspicion that you are in fact not his cousin but someone who is worried about people romanticizing Mitchell and his work for whatever reason. Maybe you are his cousin and you are worrying about this because you knew he was troubled and you fear that other people might be negatively influenced by an unhealthy interest in his work due to the hype it generated. Only you can elaborate.

How do you know that Michael is the cousin of the deceased? Doubt it for a minute.