A Note (to all brains) About “Lame Brains”
12/18/12
   
    In letters appearing in 2006, I mention the expression "lamebrains."  I would like to clarify what I mean by that expression and why I use it.  
    As mentioned in my letters, I am writing a book titled "I Can Think About Meaning, Therefore I Am."  The title of the book is related to the title of a presentation that I offered to give at Humboldt State University titled "Metasemantic Death, Metasemantic Numbness and Metasemantic Recovery" (mentioned in the 10/22/03 letter) which describes a process in which my brain became lamed and numbed through the enigmatic effects of radical verbal, mental, emotional and mental abuse during the most critical stages of meaning acquisition and language acquisition.  
    The term "metasemantic" is practically synonymous with the phrase "I can think about meaning, therefore I am" just as the term "metacognition" is synonymous with the phrase "I think, therefore I am."  Unfortunately, my metasemantic self had to shut off at a very early age.  It was the only way that my brain and my sanity could eventually survive.  My brain became numb and lamed.  And I didn't realize it, because I wasn't supposed to realize it.  My brain was in sleep mode to protect itself.  And then I eventually woke up around the age of 28 as mentioned in my letters.  
    The waking up was the "metasemantic recovery."  However, when I woke up I woke up as the child awakening in an adult body, and I had to think about meaning all over again, including the meanings of all the words in the dictionary.  I woke up as a "semantic wild child" without a cultural identity.  My cultural identity became "disintegrated and obliterated" as mentioned in one of my letters.  But what didn't get disintegrated and obliterated was the part of me that could think critically.  Plus there was the part of me that connected thoughts with emotions and feelings, and feelings and emotions with thoughts.  However, when I "woke up" I also woke up the feelings and emotions that had been put to sleep by repression and numbness during the years of dissociation from my real self.  
    I woke up as a person who could think about meaning, and who could question meaning.  And I tried to share this with my fellow human beings, including academics and therapists.  But they only ended up wanting to put my brain back to sleep again by trying to tell me (and define for me) what a "survivor of child abuse" was.  They tried to put my brain back to sleep and define "me" with their preconceptions, theories and images about "child abuse survivors" which I was not supposed to THINK ABOUT and question.  
    I began writing letters in newspapers in 1982 specifically for the purpose of scientifically documenting my journey in metasemantic recovery.  It was, and still is, the journey of a semantic wild child and a victim without a culture.  
    But as stated above, others tried to put my brain back to sleep by trying to tell me what "child abuse recovery" was about when in truth (a truth that presently exists) nobody had ever written about metasemantic death, metasemantic numbness and metasemantic recovery.  I found that academics and professionals had nothing but theories and images of child development and lifespan development.  And I was supposed to become an image from whatever their minds chose (from whatever biased school of thought) "me" to be.  I wasn't supposed to think about anything at all.  I was just supposed to listen to them and become a template of whatever they believed to be a "normal human being."  But of course, a "normal human being" is just a phrase biased by cultural perspectives and also by school-of-thought perspectives in the social and psychological sciences.  
    But most important is that they tried to put my brain back into sleep mode.  My brain was waking up from being lamed, and they just wanted to put it back into lameness.  And my definition of people who try to do that to other people is "LAMEBRAINS."  Their brains were so lame that they didn't realize that their own brains were lame, and that they were trying to lame my brain and the brains of other child abuse victims who had enigmatic problems that they didn't understand.  
    Furthermore, I had to rediscover (from the inside) and re-own the personal connection between cognition and affect.  And that connection is still somewhat mysterious, though major insights have been made by such people as the world famous neuroscientist Antonio Damasio in his books "The Feeling of What Happens; Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness"; "Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow and the Feeling Brain" and his most recent book "Self Comes to Mind."  
    I had to realize that my feelings had also been lamed and numbed by the traumatic effects of child abuse and years of dissociation.  And I had to realize that the connections between cognition and affect had also been lamed.  
    But nobody could tell me how to put it all back together because that involves science in the future and not science in the past or present.  The reason why Damasio wrote his latest book "Self Comes to Mind" was to point out the latest research in that area, and the research that is needed for science to move forward.  
    So, how and why is this all connected to my ideas for an International University of Religion, Empathy and Science?  
    Years ago in 1987 I wrote a letter in the Del Norte Triplicate in which I stated that I could remember being a child and when I didn't know the differences between "science," "literature," "art" and "religion."  And that was not a dumb child in me.  That was the semantic wild child who had awakened.  And when I woke up I realized that the only reason why those words are separated is because culture separates them.  But when I "woke up" I woke up as the child who had been traumatized and paralyzed before he had any cultural identity.  
    Furthermore, what woke up in me was my giftedness in empathy.  And that was a gift which had to be put to sleep for the sake of self-survival and preservation of sanity and my brain.  
    When I woke up I woke up knowing that I could empathize with anyone in the world who is searching for meaning in life.  But I also realized that most of the people in this world aren't really searching for meaning at all, because they think that they know what this means, and what that means, and how this and that are all put together in a world of meaning.  And they don't question meaning, and they don't think about meaning (metasemantic awareness), and hence they just have a lame brain, lamed by cultural conditioning and/or lamed by images and models projected by schools of thought that they don't question.  
    My idea for an International University of Religion, Empathy and Science really came from my idea for creating a world honor society for adult and adolescent victims and survivors of child abuse because countless victims like myself are recovering from metasemantic death and numbness, and all of those victims should be honored and not discriminated against regardless of their present religious viewpoints or atheistic viewpoints.  And if we survivors can come together and honor each other and empathize with each other, then why not the rest of world doing the same thing by honoring and empathizing with their fellow human beings?  
    Finally, I just have to say that I think it would be shockingly lame-brained for people on the North Coast to not support the creation of the International University of Religion, Empathy and Science and to not think that it could be built here on the North Coast, and to not be inspired by what it could do for the world.  My brain has been shocked too many times, already, by people who don't think about things (including my experiences at Humboldt State University).  And I think that the citizens of the North Coast would suffer traumatic shock in the future if this international university were to be built somewhere else because people here on the North Coast didn't think about this opportunity and want to be part of something beautiful and good. 

Orion Palomar  Eureka California  12/18/12
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