(Answer at the end).
LOBOTOMY
By Charles Kocian
A former US Army psychological warfare officer said that “Tucker Carlson was fired by Fox News because of the regime’s agenda to maintain an “uninformed semi lobotomized quasi retarded population.”
Lobotomy is the surgery to disconnect the brain’s prefrontal cortex with the thalamus removing brain tissue. The Soviet Union prohibited it since 1950 because it was “contrary to the principles of humanity” saying that “through lobotomy an insane person is changed into an idiot”. In 1977, the US Congress, created the National Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioural Research and concluded that only in some extremely limited and properly performed psychosurgery could have positive effects.
Torsten Wiesel. Source image: The Rockefeller University.
Torsten Wiesel, a Swedish neurophysiologist, who received the 1981 Nobel Prize, has called lobotomy as a terrible mistake.
Tucker Carlson was acting as the opposite of lobotomy, a kind of a threat to the current collective culture, impelling US citizens to become “researchers and thinkers”, in other words, to think by their own, instead of being the Asch experiment subject.
Ash Experiment. Source Image: Practical Psychology.
A population that doesn’t trust its own senses and logic but what the crowd says, they decide to become irrational-animals when they stay in their comfort irrational zones. Instead to give wings to their independent research and intellectual curiosity, they do not question, do not research and do not use their critical thinking skills, instead, they perceive what the crowd do, as the Asch experiment shows. Although propaganda and censorship are not lobotomy, its effects are similar: stupidity. Stupid derives from the word “stupor”, meaning a state of near-unconsciousness or insensibility.
Frontal Lobotomy. Source image: Literary Hub.
The history of lobotomy is a disturbing one, and it has been linked with propaganda, both religious and governmental. For example, in the United States, lobotomy was promoted as a way to cure mental illness and make patients more manageable, thus making it easier for institutions to care for them. This propaganda was often supported by religious beliefs that portrayed mental illness as a form of sin or demonic possession.
Galileo’s trial by The Inquisition.
Similar situations have occurred in the past, such as during the Renaissance and in ancient Athens. In the Renaissance, the Church often censored works of art and literature that challenged its authority or contradicted its teachings like happened to Galileo, who was punished for life by the Catholic Church, because he observed with its telescope the Earth was moving.
Socrates death.
In ancient Athens, Socrates wanted individuals to think by their own, beyond cultural traditions, to propel their curiosity. Its method of teaching consisted making thought-provoking questions to engage students actively to answer questions by their own and, in the process on repetitive iterations, the student could find truth and its own logical contradictions. Socrates was sentence to death for his philosophical teachings, which were seen as a threat to the established order.
Source image: Napoleon.org.
Censorship and propaganda have always been used by rulers to limit the intellectual and critical thinking of the ruled, because they know they cannot control an independent mind such as Tucker Carlson, Galileo or Socrates. History has shown that this is a dangerous path to follow, because without reason, rulers and ruled both end with Empires and Ages.
Source image: Scene Span. Historical Consulting.
If man is a rational animal, the unique animal with a conceptual faculty, he needs to differentiate real objective concepts from floating concepts. Floating concepts are those that lack perceptual content, and are essentially meaningless. They are pseudo-words a parrot can say, that is, sounds not connected to real things in the material world. On the other hand, real objective concepts, are grounded in our perceptions of the world around us. Pseudo-thinking with pseudo-words is the worst case of intellectual lobotomy, and the most typical ordinary and common any ruler or ruled can do. The solution to cognitive confusion is to study epistemology, that is, how man builds its concepts, as it is explained in Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, by Ayn Rand.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, the relation between lobotomy, censorship and propaganda they all produce the same effect: they end man intellectual critical faculties leading individuals not to adapt to the reality of nature but to the irrational crowd. To avoid that kind of intellectual lobotomy, man must differentiate real objective concepts from floating concepts, and discover the joy of critical thinking and independent inquiry. Also, he must be vigilant to allow anybody to express their thoughts and, at the same time, to allow any reaction to agree or not with other expressions, and in all cases, without initiating force to others. A sign of intellectual maturity is to hear another thought and disagree with it without being mad. The right to say “I don’t agree with you” is enough to sustain human progress. Any kind of religious or government propaganda and censorship erodes the human soul: reason, and if man can imagine the New Renaissance, the path goes through learning objective epistemology.
The New Renaissance and the New Athens are possible, but they can only derive from independent minds who love to give wings to its curiosity and make their own research, being loyal to its own perceptions and logic.
Now answer to question 49.
QUESTION N° 49
In the Allegory of Photo Albums and Folders, what is a 3rd level concept?
a) Photo albums containing 2nd level folders.
b) 3rd level folders containing 2nd level folders.
The answer is: b)
Leave your comments here.
