The deadman's tomb (it is ok to make jokes at the author's expense by now) is a long, harrowing adventure across humanity's existence and humanity's collective philosophy. It is, above all, Heisman's personal work, and is truly a suicide note, left to explain why he has chosen to off himself. It was as if he were trying to defend his own suicide, his own depression, by pulling off the ultimate act of human dignity: suicide by reason. He failed in this task, but instead showed us a remarkable vie

The deadman's tomb (it is ok to make jokes at the author's expense by now) is a long, harrowing adventure across humanity's existence and humanity's collective philosophy. It is, above all, Heisman's personal work, and is truly a suicide note, left to explain why he has chosen to off himself. It was as if he were trying to defend his own suicide, his own depression, by pulling off the ultimate act of human dignity: suicide by reason. He failed in this task, but instead showed us a remarkable view of his insecurities while creating a ludicrous synthesis of western thought that is, somehow, implicitly and explicitly, both parody and not parody.



Heisman's stated reason for killing himself are, essentially, that he wants to do an experiment. This experiment is seeing whether or not his book is stopped from being read- truth be told everybody can read it, and this is well-remarked upon in other places. But, that is not the reason he kills himself. The reason he kills himself is this hypothesis: if he wants to do the experiment truly objectively, then, he reasons, he must be dead because the fact that he is alive means he has tendencies to view the data in a subjective way. Furthermore, because he says Western thought is increasingly moving towards the abolishment of anthrocentrism, materialism means that whether or not he is alive does not matter.



Thereby, his suicide is the result of him trying to do this experiment subjectively.



Bullox. He gives, like a bad magician, away most of his secrets at the beginning and the end of the book. The rest is filler material. Heisman shows quickly that he is not psychologically healthy- despite having a degree in psychology. He has a desperate occupation with Judaism, despite being atheist, that stems from the early death of his father and the resulting mental isolation that resulted from the rest of the world. His chapter names, though funny, are meant to be both true and offensive. It speaks to an incredible narcissism- where he essentially states that none but he have been honest with themselves- that he seeks to both find followers and to offend in his death.



The actual content of the tomb is a sort of magnification of history that ultimately results in his experiment as the turning point. Firstly, we begin with his concentration on the battle of the "natural" versus the "unnatural." The natural is the biological, the unnatural is the technological. The first seeks its own survival, its own replenishment, while the latter does neither. It is, ultimately, suicidal. It is Heisman's own repetition of Singularity theory, and it is interlaced with Jewish commentary, which he obsesses over. He says that the Jews developed their own religion, which is inherently unnatural, inherently suicidal. This tendency was spread through mankind by Jesus, who himself was suicidal because of his own internal conflicts about his father. Indeed, Heisman uses psychoanalysis to present and accept, or at least flirt with the idea, that Jesus was the son of a Roman soldier. The technology of religion, morphing into the unnatural sciences, will eventually result into a singularity, AI-God.



He then backs up, and begins tracing the lines of political powers. The Viking, the Saxons, and so on, to show that America, instead of being the battle ground of Whigs versus Tories, is actually the battle ground of Saxons versus Normans. Suicidal tendencies, once more, erupt in this center of the population, as they die for ideals and freedoms.



This summary does not do the Note any justice, however. The book is too large, too repetitive, and too unedited to really make a true dent into what Heisman is trying to say. He has paragraph after paragraph that rambles, repeating the same idea in different ways. His grammar, and, sometimes, his spellings, make no coherent effort in being true. He asks questions many times through the journey, and he never answers them. He makes us ask question, and those are not answered.



It seem that he killed himself so that, while he may not have attention in life, he may get attention in death. Well, I've obliged him.

