Chapter 6:2 The danger of denial becoming so entrenched that it locks humanity onto the path to terminal alienation

As explained in chapters 2 and 4, the truth about the origin of our corrupted human condition and of the integrative meaning or purpose of existence were two extremely obvious truths that, until we found the compassionate explanation and understanding for both, were so unbearably exposing, condemning and confronting that we, the human race, had no choice but to live in complete denial of them. For exactly the same reason, the truth of the importance of nurturing in both the maturation of our species and in the maturation of our own lives—how nurturing created our moral instincts—that was just described in chapter 5 has been another extremely obvious truth that has had to be denied because it too was unbearably condemning of our present unloved and unloving, human-condition-afflicted lives. And as we will see in chapter 7, the nature of consciousness is a further obvious truth that has also been so unbearably condemning that it too has been fiercely denied, to the extent that our conscious mind—nature’s greatest creation—has been deemed an inexplicable mystery.

In light of all this unavoidable denial, it is not surprising that these four great outstanding mysteries in science—of the explanation of the human condition, the meaning of our existence, the origin of our unconditionally selfless moral instincts, and why humans became conscious when other animals haven’t—hadn’t been solved. If you can’t confront the human condition you are in no position to find the explanation for it; and if you can’t admit to Integrative Meaning you obviously can’t explain what the meaning of our lives is; and if you can’t admit to the importance of nurturing you are in no position to explain the origin of humans’ unconditionally selfless moral nature; and if you can’t confront the truth of the nature of consciousness you are in no position to explain how it arose and what has prevented its development in other species. It is not lack of mental cleverness or Einstein-like genius that made all the great missing explanations in science that are presented in this book impossible to find, but alienation, the lack of innocent, soul-guided soundness and security of self. The truths and insights revealed in this book are, in fact, obvious and easy to find—as long as you are not living in a resigned, dishonest, alienated, human-condition-denying state. Cleverness was not the crucial factor in finding all these great breakthroughs in science—what was needed was simple, truthful, soul-guided sound thinking. As Berdyaev recognised in the quote of his that was included in par. 237, ‘the moral reformation of life…[depends on] a revelation of a clear conscience, unclouded by social conventions [the most entrenched and insidious of which is denial]’. That exceptionally honest writer, Simone Weil, saw the problem clearly when she wrote that ‘A new type of sanctity…a fresh Spring…a new revelation of the universe and of human destiny…[requires] the exposure of a large portion of truth and beauty hitherto concealed under a thick layer of dust [denial]. More genius is needed than was needed by Archimedes to invent machines and physics. A new saintliness…The world needs saints who have genius, just as a plague-stricken town needs doctors’ (‘Last thoughts’, 1942; The Simone Weil Reader, ed. G. Panichas, 1977, p.114 of 529). There is certainly truth in the novelist Aldous Huxley’s observation that ‘We [resigned humans] don’t know because we don’t want to know’ (Ends and Means, 1937, p.270).

Yes, a recurring theme running through this book is that the truth cannot be found from an evasive and thus dishonest position. Living in denial of the human condition and of any truths that bring it into focus means your search for truth and understanding is only ever going to end in a completely lost state of confused madness. For instance, as we saw in chapter 2:9, mechanistic science initially tried to deny the existence of the human condition by dishonestly claiming that our selfish and competitive behaviour was a natural consequence of a supposed ‘survival of the fittest’ natural selection process, and that our selfless moral nature was actually a selfish strategy to help relatives or kin reproduce our genes. But that extreme dishonesty was both contrary to and offensive of the fact that we humans do have unconditionally selfless, loving, moral instincts, and so, in response to that backlash, a much cleverer way was concocted to deny our species’ extreme sickness, its psychosis (as has been mentioned, the word psychosis literally means ‘soul-illness’). This contrivance was E.O. Wilson’s Multilevel Selection theory for eusociality, which maintains there is no psychosis involved in the human condition, but that we simply have some unconditionally selfless instincts that exist alongside competitive, ‘survival of the fittest’ selfish ones, and that our human condition is the product of a conflict between those two instinctive states! Yes, this theory renders the human condition inconsequential, virtually benign—with the consequence of this extremely sophisticated denial being that the human race now faces terminal alienation; madness. Indeed, if this extreme dishonesty on the part of mechanistic science had not been exposed, as it is throughout this presentation, then the stage was set for the extinction of our species.

In the case of humanity’s denial of Integrative Meaning, it was explained in chapter 4:3 that the way the upset human race eventually found to eliminate that truth was by making the integrative theme or purpose of existence out to be a supernatural deity we termed ‘God’, a subject or realm that supposedly had no place in science—an outrageous display of dishonesty that has led to all manner of blind, purpose-less, ultimately unaccountable, ridiculous interpretations of the natural selection process. And—as we will see in chapter 7—a similar fate has also befallen the study of consciousness, which has been so characterised by denial and dishonesty that it too has resulted in the human race becoming lost in a completely bewildered state of intellectual confusion about the all-important issues of what consciousness actually is and how it emerged. And, lastly, in the case of that other key issue that is so critical to our understanding of ourselves, namely the origins of our moral nature, what will be revealed throughout this chapter is that the denial of the importance of nurturing in the maturation of our species and in the maturation of our own lives has seen the 140 years that have passed since the American philosopher John Fiske first presented the nurturing explanation for our moral nature squandered through the development of extremely dishonest, alienated, mad biological theories to ‘explain’ our species’ altruistic instincts—a tragic journey that has now culminated in the immensely dangerous Social Ecological Model, and its most recent incarnation, the Self-Domestication Hypothesis.

In short, what has just been outlined illustrates how, even though mechanistic science had no choice other than to practise denial of any truths that brought the issue of the human condition into focus until we found the true explanation of the human condition, such denial was an extremely dangerous practice. Yes, what has been described illustrates the dangerous ‘trap’ that was described in chapter 2:4 where, as necessary as they have been, the longer denials are practised, the more refined they become, so that in the end, after many decades of development, they inevitably become so sophisticated, so cleverly refined and so entrenched they effectively lock humanity onto a path to terminal alienation—to total derangement, death and extinction; the ‘universal ruin to the world’ that Plato said ‘more and more forgetting [denial]’ leads to.