Mitchell Heisman's Suicide Note

[Andiferous]

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?

Artistic works maybe. I still won't read it. And why are you guys taking seriously life philosophy of someone who obviously couldn't deal with life?

 

[Zetetic]

Artistic works maybe. I still won't read it. And why are you guys taking seriously life philosophy of someone who obviously couldn't deal with life?

There are some plausibly true interesting points in it if nothing else, so I am better off having read it. I certainly have been spurred in to learning about early christian and pre-christian Judaism and historical analysis of the Christian myth, even though several ideas he presents are pretty much built with flimsy evidence at best.

I suppose I find the work to be entertaining in an odd sort of way as well. Plus, I have an interest in evolutionary psychology and I like to see how people apply it and what conclusions they draw. I can tell that this work is not very polished and it seems to be largely stream of consciousness that was loosely reorganized from many notes. I find it interesting to see the way someone might reason to various strange or horrifying conclusions, especially if I might not have considered that particular mode of self deception.

I have been depressed before, and I can tell that his depression severely affected his thoughts and thus his writing. I can also say that there still may be interesting insights in this piece.

I also note that I find it intriguing that you reject the hypothesis that severe depression is caused by difficult to impossible to control adjustments in the levels of neurotransmitters. Do you suppose he thought his way to suicide from a healthy starting position, and thus endorse the truth of his claim of rational suicide? If so, I can see why you would not advise reading this book any further! It might cause us to choose the same path!

 

[Andiferous]

I have been depressed before, and I can tell that his depression severely affected his thoughts and thus his writing. I can also say that there still may be interesting insights in this piece.

I also note that I find it intriguing that you reject the hypothesis that severe depression is caused by difficult to impossible to control adjustments in the levels of neurotransmitters. Do you suppose he thought his way to suicide from a healthy starting position, and thus endorse the truth of his claim of rational suicide? If so, I can see why you would not advise reading this book any further! It might cause us to choose the same path!

That's silly.

What I am saying is that being fascinated by his situation is a bit sick. I'm not blaming him, just everyone else. It's the balloon boy culture. Schadenfreude.

I am also disturbed that he may have felt a need to kill himself publically to get a point across. And I wonder if the culture is to blame, hence I will not read it.

 

[Zetetic]

That's silly.

What I am saying is that being fascinated by his situation is a bit sick. I'm not blaming him, just everyone else. It's the balloon boy culture. Schadenfreude.

I am also disturbed that he may have felt a need to kill himself publically to get a point across. And I wonder if the culture is to blame, hence I will not read it.

Sick? I suppose, but if it is, then I suppose that I do not care. If anything, it seems that the most common motivating impulse to study his work would come from some sort of romantic notion of the possibility of a troubled genius. Maybe it is an affirmation of the perpetual human romanticization of tragedy in order to cope with something that is difficult to consider, such as someone who might have had a great deal of potential if he had not suffered from an imbalance of neurotransmitters. People have overcome many tragedies. This man was not able to overcome his affliction.

It seems absurd to conflate this with the balloon boy, given that this event actually happened and the only person who might have benefited from the publicity of the event is clearly dead. Perhaps his entire decision to commit suicide was centered around a desire media attention? Call me an optimist, but this does not seem likley to me.

Either way, at this point the matter of his death is immaterial to me (unfortunate though it is). I had decided to investigate whether or not the work was worth reading. I have found it entertaining and informative, though it's informative nature is of an indirect sort as many of his conjectures seem to be ill founded, but the collection of topics and historical facts and theories has piqued my interest in a number of areas of inquiry, and so I would judge that it was worthwhile to read at least certain parts of the piece.

There have been plenty of truly rambling and inane suicide notes, such as Pekka-Eric Auvinen, which did not interest me when they were brought to my attention. This work is much more carefully considered and therefore I will afford it more consideration. I will not delude myself with the idea that I am causing middle aged men to commit suicide so that their two thousand page thesis might be read by random strangers and largely criticized with remarks about how they needed a girlfriend or how much of a fool they were for buying in to sociobiology, or for writing a note that the vast majority of people won't even bother to glimpse beyond the title page. I might be guilty of wasting my time and perhaps should have decided that this sort of interesting piece of human action was not worth investigating, but I will only worry when I see some sort of regularity to the phenomenon of 2000 page suicide notes and men shooting themselves in public to generate a buzz.

 

[mchaplin71]

My name is Michael J. Chaplin and Mitch is the son of my Aunt Lonnie Heisman and his father is Al Heisman who was employed by RCA Labs in southeren NJ. Mitchell's aunt my mother Sharon Gerasch passed away this past December - if you doubt my relationship please feel free to research our family history.

As for pushing the book aside - you miss the point and the simple reality of the origins of his work. The book makes many solid arguments in an academic sense but the fact that a devastated 12 year old boy grew into a lost young man and wrote a 1904 page book to validate his devastation through a series of intellectual arguments justifying his own end is very hard to swallow.

If this forum would like to dissect his work for it's intellectual pros and cons please feel free and please promote, download and share his work because that was his wish and now the wishes of his family.

I only ask that while you do this you keep in mind the human being who wrote it , that you understand why he wrote it and the subtext of a 12 year old boy who lost his father who was so important to him and all the pain in those pages.

Michael j. Chaplin

mchaplin71@verizon.net

 

[lrkun]

My name is Michael J. Chaplin and Mitch is the son of my Aunt Lonnie Heisman and his father is Al Heisman who was employed by RCA Labs in southeren NJ. Mitchell's aunt my mother Sharon Gerasch passed away this past December - if you doubt my relationship please feel free to research our family history.

As for pushing the book aside - you miss the point and the simple reality of the origins of his work. The book makes many solid arguments in an academic sense but the fact that a devastated 12 year old boy grew into a lost young man and wrote a 1904 page book to validate his devastation through a series of intellectual arguments justifying his own end is very hard to swallow.

If this forum would like to dissect his work for it's intellectual pros and cons please feel free and please promote, download and share his work because that was his wish and now the wishes of his family.

I only ask that while you do this you keep in mind the human being who wrote it , that you understand why he wrote it and the subtext of a 12 year old boy who lost his father who was so important to him and all the pain in those pages.

Michael j. Chaplin

mchaplin71@verizon.net

Your opinions are noted. Your reason for saying such is also noted. Your allegation of being his cousin is also noted, however, please understand that there are persons who will interpret Mitchell's work in his or her own understanding.

The problem is the guy is dead, therefore, we will no longer be able to guess what his true reasons are in an absolute sense, but we can infer from his actions or the book. Although the thread starter likes to ponder on the idea with respect to this dead man's thoughts. Maybe to some it is like looking at picasso's art. It has more value when the maker dies.

 

[xemas]

I have read a large portion of this work over the past few days and have been somewhat itching for the opportunity to discuss it (I have joined this forum for that purpose alone).

My approximations of Mitchell as the man behind the curtain pulling the levers are not relevant. I don't believe that we can truly discern what his intentions were in writing this (expression, memetic replication, vanity). There are several possibilities which I have entertained, but they are not what concern me.

The parts of the book that are distinguishable as true, or not true, are fairly clear. He makes well-reasoned arguments about the progression of History and offers extrapolations of human behaviour and sociobiology. Nowhere in the work does he validate his sense of nihilism other than in enshrouding prose. I think that he must have viewed himself somewhat as a tortured genius, and perhaps he was in his own way.

Reading and considering the work should not be considered sick or grotesque; to think so is an expression of cowardice, not compassion or reason. Perhaps Mitchell was sick (I think it is likely that he suffered from depression if not bipolar disorder), but understanding the truths and merits of his work does not by arbitrary inference make the reader "sick" as well; unless the mind is weak enough to accept an ill-reasoned self-destructive conclusion (and perhaps that acceptance would therefore be for the genetic betterment of us all). There are millions of dangerous and "untrue" memes circulating on the internet (swine flu parties, cults, Lady Ga Ga). It takes a rational mind to separate them. If it was in our nature to absorb every infectious meme, good or bad, our civilization would have been destroyed long ago.

Yes, he believed that the society we live in is a construct that is meaningless. I would tend to agree. Do I want to kill myself because of similar realizations? No. Is it because of a biologically-based fear of death (as Mitchell proposes)? No. I genuinely enjoy life, and the many beautiful things that pertain to it (most especially the mysteries that Mitchell, sadly, will never know the answers to).

I myself have struggled with disillusionment with our modern society, for reasons that are too great to number. I have spent the past few years researching and writing on very similar topics that are covered in this note and have to admit that he presented them with insight and eloquence (and often humour - "what good suicide note would not contain a bibliography?").

My conclusions are these:

- Mitchell would like to have believed that the result of his suicide was an intellectualized conclusion. However, this was never really reached throughout the work. The thesis on nihilism is vague and doesn't even pertain to the vast majority of the book. He wanted to kill himself; he did not discover that killing oneself is "logical" or "true." If you're afraid he'll convince you to die, fear not, for I have read it, and am still here. The (second) most unfortunate result of his suicide is the narcissistic overtone that the piece inevitably absorbs.

- Mitchell is more than likely correct about the creation of a God-AI (his understanding of AI and computation is limited and would say that this should be a lower case "g") and the origins that spawned the idea. He calls the bible "a meta-civilizational epic" and the "first work of science fiction" on artificial intelligence. I don't believe that these ideas were specific (or even closely general) pre-conceptions in the construction of monotheism. However, their influence on the trajectory of AI is without dispute. The quest for infinity; a yearning for change, self-improvement, and transcendence of human nature are qualities that are reflected in religious texts.

- The book underplays the value of consciousness. Within it, there is a separation of biology (the machinations of matter; patterns that produce life), and information. The missing piece is that information is not addressed as specifically as it should be. He is eager to separate political structures and memes from biology, but less eager to address the unique properties of consciousness (and how consciousness arises as a 'system of information'). Douglas R. Hofstadter, in Godel, Escher and Bach, for example, writes about how seemingly meaningless patterns can acquire meaning in and of themselves. The human mind is self-referential, which is one of the discernible properties of evolution (a force that Mitchell often makes reference to). This is probably as a result of his own denial of the uniqueness of consciousness - he believed that the importance of individual perception was a religious idea, not a scientific one. He forgets that the brain is merely media that supports the unique patterns of human intelligence, and that the arrangement and organization of that hardware are not necessarily what makes us human, or sentient.

- summary: What has or has not been said? The note made revisions on popular scientific philosophy (Dawkins and otherwise) that were interesting. The thesis on nihilism is invalid, and has nothing to do with most of the work. The extrapolations of Historical forces were very good (I studied History for my undergrad, and perceived similar patterns, but not nearly to the extent that was presented). The value is in the sections on History, Science, and religion.

I would strongly suggest reading some of this; the words are not the ravings of a lunatic, but someone whose lens was blurred by disillusionment, despair, and the realizations (both true and false) that he perceived.

 

[Deleted member 619]

Haven't actually read it yet. Too much reading material, too little time.

 

[theyounghistorian77]

This is What i wrote here:

Well today because i had a bit of spare time on my hands, i decided to read the part titled

"Converse cognates: Why the Norman Conquest was the World-Historical Ass-Kicking that Deflected the English-speaking World from the German Path to Nazism."

whilst asking myself first What does the battle of Hastings have to do with Nazi germany at the same time? Does he make a convincing link? Not really.

I must confess i haven't read it before, and as i type these words i still have only read that part. It's "Interesting" in it's own way, but i think to get the most out of it, one has to denude one's mind from the fact that it is a suicide note, and that the guy killed himself. Different places produce different conservativisms and different societies? *Yawn* Nothing new there. It only really comes out of historical circumstance and the Nazis rose to power out of the circumstances of German politics post ww1. Had Germany say won that war, European History would have been very different. The British Empire, denied acsess to the continents ports would have swiftly died. It's impossible to predict what would have happened to Russia, but it's easier to say Hitler would most likely have been little more than a mediocre painter, perhaps a Beerhall bore, but the way the victorious Kaiser would have been set up, it would have been highly unlikely for his type to get into power. Even though what i just said is nothing more than speculative alternative history. I dont see it that Nazism would have been inevitable in such circumstances of that or say the 8th century or 1066, again Circumstance had to come into play exactly the way it did in the early 20th century for Nazism to arise.

As to german Conservativism itself....

"The crucial sociological determinents of German conservative ideology are to be found in the absence until 1870 of a centralized state; in the lutheran heritage of the reformation, which fostered a submissive attitude towards authority; in the absense of a politicaly conscious middle class, and in the militaristic mentality of the Junker class, produced by it's need to hold down the conquered Slav peoples of eastern europe whose land it posessed. There is in addition, the fact that Napoleon's liberal reforms set the pattern for the whole subsequent history of political and social reform in germany to date. That tradition is a tradition of reform from above. The only system of govt ever created by the germans for themselves, A J P Taylor acidly remarks, Was Hitler's Third Reich. Although that syatem was founded in Terror, and was unworkable without the secret police and the concentration Camps, it was also the only truly national one which Germany had created, since it offered something to every class of the population, whatever reservations paticular groups might have had about the barbarianism it entailed. The old empire 'had been imposed by the armies of France and Austria; the German confederation had been imposed by Russia and Prussia, the Weimar republic by the Victories of the Allies. But the "Third Reich" rested solely on German force and German impulse; it owed nothing to alien forces. It was a tyranny imposed upon the German People by themselves." - Noel O'Sullivan, "Conservativism" p80-81.

This is what Heismann writes

"Traditional Anglo-Saxon conservatism is libertarian; it supports freedom against the government. Traditional German conservatism is authoritarian; its supports obedience towards the government..." - p1182

So perhaps some half agreement maybe if i squint my eyes if i take that quote? I've already stated elsewhere that Conservativism does not equate liberty and that it depends on what you are conserving to begin with in the first place.

I wouldn't agree with him so wholeheartedly on some other claims, let's take two from one page for example...

"America was founded as a republic, not a democracy" - p1169

But this is incorrect, the USA is both, it is a democracy and a republic and before anyone starts crying, a republic traditionaly is a state without an unelected king. In essence a republic can be seen as a type of democracy. The doge in the republic of venice was elected. The "noble republic" of Poland is an interesting case. It was more actualy more democratic than than what the British were in the 1700's for example. They did elect "King's" but they functioned more like CEO's rather than what standard kings do.





And the Ancient Roman republic?




But let's just take another claim, on the same page.

"The Civil war was "a war fought, not over slavery itself ..." - ibid p1169

But you cannot avoid it, the war was about slavery, the reason the South seceded was over slavery, the 'States Right' they were concerned with was slavery. Every issue of the war relates back to slavery, period.

"The war was ABOUT slavery. [Catton's emphasis] Slavery had caused it: If slavery had vanished before 1861, the war simply would not have taken place." - Bruce Catton, (Called on the book's cover page, America's Greatest Civil war Historian) "Reflections on the Civil War" p5

"Within the profession [historians] there's virtually no discussion or debate left of slavery as central to the antebellum south and the fundamental cause of secession and the war. To the extent within the profession there's a debate about this, people will talk about other causal factors such as, economic factors creating secession and the Civil War, but those economic factors always come down to a slave economy" - Dr. Eric Walther, University of Houston.

That being said, It's still "interesting" from a philosophical point of view although some bits of his history may be a little bit off , but from what i've read it doesn't look too much like some Nihlist or Madman's work although i haven't read other sections, and from what i've read it definitely doesn't soud like a madman about to kill himself but more like the work from a deep thinker, which feels weird knowing that it is a suicide note written ultimately by someone who otherwise would be considered mad.

But i have to read other bits when i can. I dont think this review cannot be considered a complete one!

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Still, could be worse :lol:

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Another thing!

Maybe this is just me, or maybe i missed it. But there was not one mention of Oswold Mosley or his British Union of Fascists in that part i reviewed was there? For some reason i find that very odd. But then and again their rise and fall is only to do with historical circumstance and British politics in the 30's. 1066 meant that Fascism could never have arisen here? Really? Oh and there are still Neo-Nazi and other Far right groups in existance both in America and the USA today!