Chapter 3:9 The end of politics

Most wonderfully, with this understanding everyone can come in from the cold, from their lonely outposts of bewilderment about what has actually been going on in the world of humans. The result is that immense—and urgently needed—fundamental change can now occur for the human race. Conflict from misunderstanding especially goes. For instance, this explanation obsoletes the conflict between the philosophically opposed left and right wings of politics because we can now understand that while giving in to our ideal-behaviour-demanding instincts—‘flying back on course’ in the Adam Stork analogy—was an immensely guilt-relieving exercise that made us ‘feel good’ (the left-wing approach), it was fundamentally irresponsible because it meant abandoning humanity’s upsetting but necessary search for knowledge (the right-wing approach). The truth was not as it appeared—participating in humanity’s selfish, aggressive and competitive battle to find knowledge was not the ‘bad’ transgression it has been condemned as, rather it was the responsible course of action and thus a ‘good’ thing. The paradox of the situation was marvellously summed-up in the musical Man of La Mancha, when, as mentioned in par. 68, it says we had to be prepared ‘to march into hell for a heavenly cause’ (Joe Darion, The Impossible Dream, 1965). Yes, we had to, as it were, lose ourselves to find ourselves—suffering upset was the heroic price we had to pay to find understanding, ultimately self-understanding and, with it, freedom from the upset state of the human condition. So while the left-wing has had an absolute field day demonising the right-wing’s support of the non-ideal state—even labelling it ‘evil’, as was proselytised by the left-wing activist Michael Moore (Capitalism: A Love Story, 2009)—we can now see that it was the philosophy of the left that was morally bankrupt, void of meaning in the sense that while siding with idealism made its practitioners ‘feel good’, it ultimately had no relevance in humanity’s critical journey from ignorance to enlightenment. Proponents of the left-wing approach were deluding themselves that they were holding the moral high ground when, in fact, the reverse was true—their stridently pseudo idealistic, dogmatic, condemning, ridiculing, escapist, deluded, arrogant, dishonest culture oppressed progress towards humanity’s liberation from the human condition, stymieing the return of the genuinely peaceful, ideal world. Karl Marx, the political theorist whose mid-nineteenth century ideas gave rise to socialism and communism, was very wrong when he asserted that ‘The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is [not to understand the world but] to change it [just make it cooperative/​social/​communal]’ (Theses on Feuerbach, 1845). The whole ‘point’ and responsibility of being a conscious being is to understand our world and our place in it—ultimately, to find understanding of our seemingly horribly flawed human condition. In short, pseudo idealism demands that we ‘Just be ideal, don’t think about why we are not ideal; in fact, don’t go anywhere near the issue of “self”, namely the issue of the human condition’. Just pretend there is no human condition that has to be understood and that all humans need to do to fix up their world is behave ideally! It is an attitude of total delusion and complete dishonesty.

The immense danger of pseudo idealistic left-wing thinking was that the longer the upsetting search for knowledge went on without the goal of that search of the true, psychologically relieving explanation of the human condition being found, the more people became upset sufferers of the human condition and the more they couldn’t resist the artificial, feel-good relief offered by the left-wing’s dogmatic, anti-knowledge, pseudo idealistic, deluded, dishonest, ‘fly back on course’ way of living. And, in contriving the Multilevel Selection theory for human behaviour, E.O. Wilson furnished the whole dumbing-down process with the ultimate delusion it needed of a ‘biological’, non-explanation nullification of the core, critical, all-important issue of the human condition itself, thereby virtually locking humanity onto a path to terminal dishonesty/​dogma/​‘phon[iness]’/​‘fake[ness]’/​alienation/​darkness/​extinction! As the author George Orwell famously predicted, ‘If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever [stamping forever on the freedom that humans’ extraordinary and unique conscious mind needs to search for knowledge]’ (Nineteen Eighty-Four, 1949, p.267 of 328).

The impact of this pseudo idealistic development on the democratic process is grim indeed, because democracy—in which the proper balance is sought between the need to maintain a degree of selfless, loving, soulful, cooperative ‘ideal’ behaviour for society to function, and the need for there to be sufficient freedom from the imposition of the expectation of such ‘ideal’ behaviour, for people to be able to carry on the corrupting search for knowledge—is destroyed as an effective and meaningful process when people start voting for idealism not because there is too much selfishness in society but simply because it makes them ‘feel good’. We can now at last appreciate that when we vote this way we are not participating in the true democratic process that human advancement has been dependent upon, we are exploiting and subverting it. And while many people think that even if feel-good pseudo idealism is not a real form of idealism it is surely harmless, that is most certainly not the case. No, it is extremely bloody-minded, totally selfish and dangerously destructive behaviour that says, ‘I no longer care about the human race, only about finding personal relief from my human condition.’ Of course, such behaviour was always going to develop when the levels of upset in society reached unbearable heights because at that end play point the need for relief from the agony of the human condition was going to become the only concern amongst an ever-increasing proportion of the population—with the dire consequence that democracy would fail to find the proper balance because the human-race-indifferent, deluded, feel-good, pseudo idealistic, left-wing political attitude would become impossible to defeat in an election, leading to the human race suffering a horrifically alienated death by dogma.

Certainly, the upset behaviour that results from right-wing participation in humanity’s heroic search for knowledge is increasingly bringing about immense human suffering and environmental devastation, but it is the knowledge-oppressing left-wing that poses the real threat to the survival of the human race because only through successfully completing that search for knowledge could humanity be liberated from the upset state of the human condition. So while, as the journalist Geoffrey Wheatcroft recognised, ‘the great twin political problems of the age are the brutality of the right, and the dishonesty of the left’ (‘The year of sexual correctness and double standards’, The Australian Financial Review, 29 Jan. 1999), it is NOT ‘the brutality of the right’ but ‘the dishonesty of the left’ that stands like a colossal ogre over the human race, threatening to destroy it. Yes, we can now appreciate that the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche spoke the truth about the need for humanity to hold its nerve when he wrote that ‘There have always been many sickly people among those who invent fables and long for God [ideality]: they have a raging hate for the enlightened man and for that youngest of virtues which is called honesty…Purer and more honest of speech is the healthy body, perfect and square-built: and it speaks of the meaning of the earth [which is to fight for knowledge, ultimately self-knowledge, understanding of the human condition]…You are not yet free, you still search for freedom. Your search has fatigued you…But, by my love and hope I entreat you: do not reject the hero in your soul! Keep holy your highest hope!…War [against the oppression of dogma] and courage have done more great things than charity. Not your pity but your bravery has saved the unfortunate up to now…What warrior wants to be spared? I do not spare you, I love you from the very heart, my brothers in war!’ (Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for Everyone and No One, 1892; tr. R.J. Hollingdale, 1961, pp.61-75 of 343). Yes, as stated in par. 281, you had to be ‘brave’ to avoid the temptation of giving up the self-corrupting search for knowledge. Nietzsche also spoke the truth about the great danger of pseudo idealism when he said, ‘There comes a time in a culture’s history when it becomes so pathologically soft that it takes the side of its worst enemy [dogma]…​and calls it “progress”’ (common tr. of Beyond Good And Evil, 1886, sec. 201). (Much more is explained about the extreme danger of pseudo idealism in chapter 8:16, ‘The last 200 years’.)

Thankfully, the arrival of the demystifying, exposing and reconciling, true explanation of the human condition has the power to cut short this frightening, death-by-dogma, left-wing threat to humanity—that is, of course, if humanity accepts this lifeline it has been thrown. And, for its part, the right-wing’s need to support the upsetting, often brutal, competition-aggression-and-selfishness-producing battle/​‘war’ to defy the ignorance of our ideal-behaviour-demanding, unjustly condemning, moral instinctive self or soul and find understanding of ourselves, can also come to an end with the acceptance of this liberating insight. Yes, with understanding of the human condition now found, the whole necessary but ugly business of politics can happily come to a close.

The explanation of just how the human race can now ‘put down the sword’, end its egocentric, ‘must-prove-that-we-are-good-and-not-bad’, ‘warrior’ existence, and by so doing transform itself into a peaceful state, is explained in the concluding chapter 9 of this book.