Biological understanding of the human condition is the only real and lasting solution to human atrocities

I remember listening to the radio on the day after the shooting massacre in Connecticut in which 28 people were killed including 20 children and the programme host said something like “I’m finding it hard to be happy today [as a result of the shootings]”. I couldn’t help but think what an insensitive response that was to such an unthinkable tragedy. But it is comments like this that are the absolute norm in our society today. Humans just have to live in so much denial about our lack of sensitivity to others and our lack of any real understanding of why such horror occurs. The way things are currently with the human psychological situation, saying “it’s hard to be happy” is about the closest to expressing our feelings as we can get sometimes. Unless we are directly affected, we (and that’s me included) put such horror out of our minds as quickly as we can and go back to trying to feel ‘happy’—we just go back into a state of denial. I read a news report recently where President Obama ‘urged US lawmakers not to forget those shot to death in Newtown three months ago. “The entire country pledged we would do something about it and that this time would be different. Shame on us if we’ve forgotten”’ (http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/americas/8487184/Connecticut-massacre-over-within-5-minutes). New gun laws have this month been announced by Connecticut lawmakers but we should all be concerned with this at a much deeper level. We should all be screaming WHY???? But we are resigned to living in a world where terrible things happen that we can’t explain. I’m sure the little children who survived the massacre at their school are lying awake night after night asking that question and no one is able to give them a truthful, satisfying answer.

The newsreader on the same radio programme was chatting with the programme host after reading the news and she said “It’s just pure evil and we will never understand pure evil”. This again is a common statement but now that I understand the human condition I can see how irresponsible it is to make such a void-of-hope, utterly beaten-down-by-the-human-condition statement. How is anyone supposed to cope with life if we think we can’t ever ultimately understand it, and therefore can’t ever change it?  

Following the tragedy, the madness continued, with news websites reporting that an extreme religious group was planning to picket at the funeral of the murdered children (something to do with God punishing us for accepting homosexuality) and some people on social media claiming to have been the gunman. How mad have we all become? Of course our natural response should be to want to immediately get to the bottom of what would drive someone to act in this way, but the human race has reached such a state of madness and confusion that it’s just one crazy, human-condition-riddled reaction or excuse after another and then, after a while, most of us will get on with our lives and mostly forget that it ever happened at all. When I read the quote in Sally’s recent blog about “the horror feeding on itself” (Jeremy Griffith, 2009) I thought yes, that’s exactly where we as a species have got to. Something like this happens and then it’s onto talking about ‘Best Bikini Bodies’ and spending obscene amounts of money on Christmas presents or Easter eggs.

Of course there is the great sense of banding together to support one another that comes to life in the wake of a tragedy such as this one and I find it so relieving that there is still some representation of our true, selfless and loving nature, but day to day as we’ve become increasingly upset, those natural responses are buried again, our lives have become so devoid of real meaning and purpose—we are a punch drunk species that’s for sure. As R.D. Laing said ‘“We are dead, but think we are alive. We are asleep, but think we are awake. We are dreaming, but take our dreams to be reality. We are the halt, lame, blind, deaf, the sick. But we are doubly unconscious. We are so ill that we no longer feel ill, as in many terminal illnesses. We are mad, but have no insight [into the fact of our madness]” (Self and Others, 1961, p.38 of 192).’ (Freedom: Expanded Book 2 ‘Section 1:13 Isn't discussion of the human condition going to be unbearably confronting?’).

The understanding of human nature presented in Jeremy’s books is so rational, so true. It just makes me want to throw my shoulder to the great human-race-saving wheel even more and get the world talking about this biological explanation that makes sense of our psychological predicament. The world is in need of understanding so badly. Thank God it’s arrived but it surely is just in the nick of time. The WTM is so precious and real and important in a world gone mad.  Only by supporting this understanding and getting it out to the world can we save the human race and then humans can all finally be free of this horror and our children can grow up truly secure and loved with all the fully-explained, simple-to-understand answers they will ever need—happy and content all day every day.