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What Terrifies You?
11 years ago
General
In the spirit of Halloween let's have a chat. What terrifies you? What keeps you awake in a cold sweat at night? What is something so dark, so wrong, so scary that the mere thought of it makes you want to shudder and curl up in a blanket?
Personally there is 1 thing that absolutely makes me lose my shit
Lobotomies. (warning, there is some graphic shit to come)
Seriously, there is no possible combination of words in the English language to fully express the ice cold terror that grips my heart when I even think of a lobotomy. I am willing to accept qualia as it is the only possible method to explain the sheer magnitude of my dread at the very concept much less the history involved with such a procedure. My consternation is metaphysical, a sum greater than its parts. Simply put it makes me afraid, a deep primal fear for which there is no true abatement.
For those not in the know, a lobotomy is a surgical procedure which would destroy the frontal lobe, or sever the connection between the frontal lobe and remainder of the brain. Outcomes varied between complacency and vegetative state. The frontal lobe is what makes you...you. It holds your sense of self, identity, autobiographical memory. It is all your personality and what makes you you.
Lobotomies were used as a treatment for psychosis during a time when little was known of the brain, it was controversial due to the great risks faced by the patient, but was admittedly successful as a treatment in a world where the going treatment was more "well...maybe if we leave them in a room they'll get less crazy. " Don't get me wrong, it was effective, it was able to mitigate the symptoms for things like schizophrenia with no apparent reduction in intelligence. The inventor of the procedure won a nobel prize. However the intentions of this treatment had more than a few bricks to pave the road to hell with.
Early lobotomies required surgical settings (what with performing surgery on the brain) which made them largely unavailable to the groups that would particularly need it. Those in psychiatric hospitals which may not have an operating table, anesthetic, etc available. Good intentions strike again and a simpler procedure was invented for those that may not necessarily have the tools for proper brain surgery.
A transorbital lobotomy is a procedure, which rather than drilling into the skull, a small thin blade was pushed up against the upper eyelid and slid around the eyeball to press against the bone at the back of the eye socket. A mallet was then used to break the blade through this thin bone and pierce the brain in several places, going through the connecting areas of the frontal lobes.
Before this procedure between 1940 and 1944 a little over 600 lobotomies had been performed in the US. Transorbital lobotomies made access easier and in the year of 1949, in one year, over 5000 of these procedures had been performed.
Thing is, it was used to treat all kinds of "mental illness" and at the time that was a very broad umbrella. Depression, mood swings, hysteria, rebelleous attitude, and similar issues were at the time considered to be mental defects, and were subject to be treated with lobotomies.
The fact of the matter is, this procedure was considered for a short time to be a boon, and for a time due both to misunderstanding "difficult" people who could have otherwise been what we now would consider healthy, lost themselves. Some died from the operation, some were "calmed" and remained in institutions, and some poor souls lost all ability for independence, their basic capacity for bodily control was destroyed.
This is the sort of thing to keep me up at night. The mere mention of the procedure in a game I played caused me to stop playing for a time. It is the only time I've been too scared to want to play a game again.
Ever see Bender's Big Game? You know the scene where they need to remove a chip from his brain and drill through the eyeball? Such a mild reference almost made me stop watching and otherwise amazing movie.
In all my time studying bioethics and research this is the thing that bugs me. seriously. ugh.
So tell me friends, what scares you?
Personally there is 1 thing that absolutely makes me lose my shit
Lobotomies. (warning, there is some graphic shit to come)
Seriously, there is no possible combination of words in the English language to fully express the ice cold terror that grips my heart when I even think of a lobotomy. I am willing to accept qualia as it is the only possible method to explain the sheer magnitude of my dread at the very concept much less the history involved with such a procedure. My consternation is metaphysical, a sum greater than its parts. Simply put it makes me afraid, a deep primal fear for which there is no true abatement.
For those not in the know, a lobotomy is a surgical procedure which would destroy the frontal lobe, or sever the connection between the frontal lobe and remainder of the brain. Outcomes varied between complacency and vegetative state. The frontal lobe is what makes you...you. It holds your sense of self, identity, autobiographical memory. It is all your personality and what makes you you.
Lobotomies were used as a treatment for psychosis during a time when little was known of the brain, it was controversial due to the great risks faced by the patient, but was admittedly successful as a treatment in a world where the going treatment was more "well...maybe if we leave them in a room they'll get less crazy. " Don't get me wrong, it was effective, it was able to mitigate the symptoms for things like schizophrenia with no apparent reduction in intelligence. The inventor of the procedure won a nobel prize. However the intentions of this treatment had more than a few bricks to pave the road to hell with.
Early lobotomies required surgical settings (what with performing surgery on the brain) which made them largely unavailable to the groups that would particularly need it. Those in psychiatric hospitals which may not have an operating table, anesthetic, etc available. Good intentions strike again and a simpler procedure was invented for those that may not necessarily have the tools for proper brain surgery.
A transorbital lobotomy is a procedure, which rather than drilling into the skull, a small thin blade was pushed up against the upper eyelid and slid around the eyeball to press against the bone at the back of the eye socket. A mallet was then used to break the blade through this thin bone and pierce the brain in several places, going through the connecting areas of the frontal lobes.
Before this procedure between 1940 and 1944 a little over 600 lobotomies had been performed in the US. Transorbital lobotomies made access easier and in the year of 1949, in one year, over 5000 of these procedures had been performed.
Thing is, it was used to treat all kinds of "mental illness" and at the time that was a very broad umbrella. Depression, mood swings, hysteria, rebelleous attitude, and similar issues were at the time considered to be mental defects, and were subject to be treated with lobotomies.
The fact of the matter is, this procedure was considered for a short time to be a boon, and for a time due both to misunderstanding "difficult" people who could have otherwise been what we now would consider healthy, lost themselves. Some died from the operation, some were "calmed" and remained in institutions, and some poor souls lost all ability for independence, their basic capacity for bodily control was destroyed.
This is the sort of thing to keep me up at night. The mere mention of the procedure in a game I played caused me to stop playing for a time. It is the only time I've been too scared to want to play a game again.
Ever see Bender's Big Game? You know the scene where they need to remove a chip from his brain and drill through the eyeball? Such a mild reference almost made me stop watching and otherwise amazing movie.
In all my time studying bioethics and research this is the thing that bugs me. seriously. ugh.
So tell me friends, what scares you?
But it dosent necessarily terrify me.
On the other side I've looked at dead bodies, held brains, and looked at the details of some nasty medical research without flinching. Fear is a weird thing.
But for a more realistic fear, I'm kind of afraid of mental illness, like losing my mind or snapping and losing my self control at times I don't want to. Or losing my capacity for caring for others. Not sure how a fear like that would manifest itself. Maybe meeting an evil twin of myself that was mentally unstable? I dunno.
As for the second, that lost of control, capacity, etc is exactly what screws me up with lobotomies.
Or the scenario that, for some reason, you know yours or humanities days as a whole are numbered. You know the date, and nobody can stop it.
The fact that, maybe as a whole, your existance and that of humanity is meaningless.
That kind of stuff terrifies me, so I will stop thinking about it now. >.<
Cake is the tiny island momentary bliss in a raging sea of terror.
And spiders. Spiders give me the willies.
Death is one thing I'm not afraid of. Guess it's the fact that I've accepted I will run out of time, my memories, emotions, everything that made me human will be inevitably obliterated. That's why I try every day to do something with my life.
Oh yeah. Japanese hornets also terrify me.
This.
That's how I'm feeling right now.
I think I'd rather die. What scares me is being trapped in my body. I got a nice taste of that when I had my stroke a year ago and that was only something partial. If I was unable to move, speak, or communicate it would be a living hell for me. I'm a rather social person so to suddenly get cut off like that with no way to escape would be a terror filled fate.
There is a reason people in that state wish to die.
I can't help but to imagine the brain jiggling in the skull because of the extra space... & that causes me to shudder... ewwwwww...
These things keep me up, though:
-"Wondering whether people actually enjoy my company or secretly dislike me."
-"Do people really accept me for who I am?"
-"If I were to further open up, would my friends still accept me?"
-"Will I get accepted into grad school?"
-"Is this fandom really for me? Or should I jump ship?"
And most importantly...
-"Do I need to get up to go pee?"
I hate thinking about it. Everytime my mind wonders what happens after death I stop myself. It's something I really don't want to contemplate. Nobody knows and it petrifies me.
I will find out eventually though. Hopefully not anytime soon XD
Cheers
I'm also scared of that tiny 0.001% chance that some crazy person will kidnap me, cut off all my limbs, attach me to a surgical bed hooked up to a saline drip and keep me awake with adrenaline as they torture me with push-pins or something.
Other than that... not much phases me :V
I've watched too many family members succumb to cancer, early in life before their time. Which genetically speaking, does not bode well for me. They were either horrible, painful, writhing deaths for those what were brave enough not to endure the last days in a comatose, morphine induced palliative state. Or prolonged comatose rotting in a vegatative, drug induced state.
Other than that, I fear nothing. Yea though I walk through the Valley of the shadow of Death, I fear no evil.....For I am the evilest thing in the Valley.
Also, on that note, I'm afraid of developing or manifesting in mental disorders like schizophrenia or dissociative-identity disorder (multiple personality subset). I've worked with folks with these conditions and they live in a state of fear or irrational "reality" all the time. In that same sense, dementia can be terrifying too. Conversely, paralysis, Parkinsonian, or ALS-esque conditions would be terrifying for feeling trapped.
That and slowly dying by fire. Most cases you suffocate before you burn, but we've had a few nightmare deaths in the past at the place where I work and I do not want too die like that.
Wait, that last part sounded more perverted than it was meant to...
As for me I have tinnitus, which I'm hoping an effective treatment is on its way, but progress seems so SLOW at times. That doesn't help my nerves much either.
Anyways, I am fucking terrified of dying. I'm not a religious person and I don't believe in any kinda afterlife or anything, so the idea of everything that makes me, well me just rotting away into nothing is fucking terrifying. Its kinda crazy how the thing that literally makes us who we are is a squishy lump that is incredibly easy to fuck up.