Part 4:3 Since the human condition could be explained once Darwin presented his idea of natural selection in 1859, why did it take well over a century for it to be explained?

The previous Part raised a very obvious question: if, after Darwin introduced his idea of natural selection, there was sufficient knowledge to explain the human condition, why did it take well over a century for someone to actually do so?

The problem was that in order to explain the human condition it had to be confronted, but confronting the issue of the human condition without the explanation for it has been an impossibility for virtually all humans. If you suffered from upset—if you were selfishly self-preoccupied with angers and frustrations, and with hurts to your ideal-world-expecting soul, which virtually all humans have been as a result of their encounters with the upset world during their infancy and childhood—then you could not afford to recognise any truths that exposed and condemned such imperfect behaviour and soul-devastation. You could not afford to reach the conclusion that you were a destructive, corrupted, damaged, worthless, evil being, because if you did you would become so depressed you could very well suicide.

As explained in Part 3:8, it was this depressing confrontation with their apparent imperfection that adolescents encountered prior to deciding that they had no choice but to resign themselves to a life living in denial of the issue of the human condition. I included in that Part a powerful description from Carl Jung to illustrate just how utterly devastating unrestricted self-confrontation has been for upset humans: ‘When it [our ‘shadow’, the negative aspects of ourselves] appears…it is quite within the bounds of possibility for a man to recognize the relative evil of his nature, but it is a rare and shattering experience for him to gaze into the face of absolute evil.’ To avoid the ‘shattering experience’ of having to ‘gaze into the face of absolute evil’ from looking at the ‘shadow’ of your corrupted condition it has been best to avoid any deep, penetrating, truthful thinking, because almost all thinking at a deeper level would bring you into contact with the issue of the human condition: ‘There’s a tree with lovely autumn leaves; isn’t it amazing how beautiful nature can be, I wonder why some things are beautiful while others are not—I wonder why I’m not beautiful inside... aaahhhhh!!!!’ William Wordsworth certainly wasn’t exaggerating when he wrote, ‘To me the meanest flower that blows can give thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears’ (Intimations of Immortality, 1807), for it is true that even the plainest flower can remind us of the unbearably depressing issue of our ‘fallen’ condition. Yes, as Rod Quantock was quoted as saying, ‘Thinking can get you into terrible downwards spirals of doubt’; Albert Camus similarly acknowledged the danger of thinking when he wrote that ‘Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined.’ And Bertrand Russell wasn’t overstating the issue when he observed that ‘Many people would sooner die than think.’ The fact of the matter is only an existence absolutely dedicated to escapism and superficiality has been at all bearable for virtually all humans. Very few minds could afford to go anywhere near the issue of the human condition—hence the century-long lack of any effective work on, and thus progress with, and thus insight into, the all-important issue of the human condition since Darwin made explanation of it possible.

The fundamental problem was that virtually everyone was resigned to not admitting that the issue of the human condition even existed, let alone trying to confront, think about and investigate it. It has been a bizarre case of virtually no one admitting to the existence of the all-important, underlying issue in all human affairs of the human condition—let alone anyone believing that it was a subject that needed to be explained or, more to the point, that it was the subject that science had to solve if there was to be a future for the human race. People’s minds weren’t focused on trying to think about the human condition, quite the reverse—virtually everyone’s mind was focused on trying not to think about it.

Of course if you hadn’t experienced the depressing terror of trying to confront the human condition when you were an adolescent and hadn’t, as a result, become resigned to denying the subject ever existed, the human condition was the one great preoccupation and focus of your mind, as it was for children before they resigned—because it is the stark staring obvious, real question about human behaviour. In the spectrum of upset and resulting alienation that has inevitably existed on Earth there have always been a rare few individuals at the exceptionally upset-free, alienation-free end of the spectrum. Unlike virtually the entire human race, these unresigned, denial-free thinkers, who have historically been referred to as ‘prophets’, were naturally desperately interested in the glaringly important question of why the world was in such a state of chaos and why humans behaved so appallingly. While this was the position of a rare few unresigned, denial-free thinkers, the great majority of humans who were resigned to living in denial of the issue of the human condition didn’t want to know anything about that terrifying issue—which is why there has been so little analysis of the subject, even though it is the most important of subjects.

As we will see shortly, few people have recognised even the two elements involved in the human condition of instinct and intellect, and even fewer have been sound enough—that is, sufficiently free of upset—to confront the subject of the human condition without becoming suicidally depressed.

As Aristotle recognised, even science—humanity’s vehicle for enquiry into the nature of our world—has had to comply with this universal need to live in denial of the potentially suicidally depressing issue of the human condition. Yes, far from being practitioners of an allegedly rigorously objective and impartial ‘scientific method’, scientists have necessarily had to deny/​avoid, by whatever dishonest means possible, any insights that brought the unbearably depressing and thus unconfrontable subject of the human condition into focus. Ideas could only be followed up to the point where they didn’t condemn upset humans, which meant many critically important truths were either avoided or severely misrepresented. In fact, we will see that science, as it has been practiced, was a great castle of lies. Scientists have necessarily been mechanistic not holistic; they have reduced their focus to only looking down at the details about the mechanisms of the workings of our world and avoided the whole view of the issue of the human condition because for almost all humans that whole view has been dangerously depressing. Science has very much been part of Plato’s cave-world of living in denial of the human condition. It follows that since mechanistic science was practicing denial of the issue of the human condition and any truths that brought that issue into focus, it was in no position to explain the human condition. You can’t build the truth from lies.

Finding the explanation of the human condition required a denial-free approach, an approach that progressed from a base that could admit some very important truths that humans living in denial of the human condition could not afford to admit and confront—the most important of which are summarised next.