Age and the ‘deaf effect’

Age is another important factor in people’s capacity to take in or ‘hear’ description and analysis of the human condition. Alienation, and with it the deaf effect, tends to increase with age. The longer a person lives in the corrupted, alienated world, the more encounters they will inevitably have with that corruption and alienation, and the more they will become corrupted and alienated themselves as a result of those encounters.

Inevitably, the older the person the more they will have become adapted and habituated to living in denial of the issue of the human condition, and thus the more they will find the new human-condition-confronting information difficult to ‘hear’ and thus consider.

Older people have always found it difficult adjusting to a new device or a new way of doing something or a new concept—as the proverb attests, ‘you can’t teach an old dog new tricks’—and no new concept is as revolutionary as the arrival of understanding of the human condition. In fact, what is being introduced is not just a new concept, it is a whole new way of viewing our world—a new paradigm—and one that could not be more different to, and more confronting of the old paradigm. Indeed, what is being introduced brings the real ‘culture shock’, ‘future shock’, ‘sea change’, ‘brave new world’, ‘tectonic paradigm shift’ humanity has long anticipated. The change that the arrival of understanding of the human condition brings is so great most older adults will find it extremely difficult even ‘hearing’ the new understanding, let alone appreciating it and then adjusting to it. In fact, if you cannot ‘hear’ the information it is not possible to appreciate it.

Page 57 of
Print Edition The great Australian educator, Sir James Darling, recognised the extreme difficulty older people have adjusting to a renaissance when he wrote: ‘At every time when there has been great activity and great originality, there has been opposition and tenacity from the old. Those who have grown up in another age…are terribly afraid of newness of life…they cannot adapt themselves to the new life…The mind of most men is not adaptable after a certain age and the onrush of a Renaissance is very rapid’ (The Education of a Civilized Man, 1962, p.53 of 223).

Historically it has always tended to be the young who take up new ideas, and it has to be expected that this will be especially so with a paradigm shift as monumental as the one that is now being introduced. Not being as wedded as older minds to the denial-maintaining paradigm, younger minds are more able to ‘hear’, consider, appreciate and adjust to this new denial-free, human-condition-confronting-and-explaining paradigm.

The difficulty older minds have reading about the human condition is such that it is almost worth putting this notice at the beginning of this book: ‘Warning: unless you are under 21 you will have difficulty reading and understanding the content of this book.’

Significantly, while older adults suffer the most from the deaf effect they are also the most aware of, and on their guard against, any information that brings the human condition into focus. Both the deaf effect and sensitivity to any human-condition-confronting information increases with alienation, the more innocent having less to fear from information that brings the human condition into focus. This combination that accompanies alienation, of loss of ‘hearing’ but an acute ‘radar’ for any information relating to the human condition, is an extremely dangerous mix when understanding of the human condition arrives.

Historically any information and truth that brings the human condition into focus has been rightly feared as dangerous—because the apparent condemnation of humans’ corrupted, divisive nature could lead to suicidal depression. However when the full, dignifying, ameliorating understanding of the human condition arrives it ends the unjust condemnation and thus the danger of depression. The full truth about humans dignifies them, it lifts the ‘burden of guilt’ from humans, it explains and ameliorates human nature. While human-condition-confronting information has historically been dangerous and to be avoided, the human-condition-confronting information that presents the full truth about humans is the direct Page 58 of
Print Edition opposite; it is liberating and to be embraced. The great danger arises from the fact that, as they suffer most from the deaf effect, the more alienated—who tend to be older adults—will not be able to ‘hear’ and thus appreciate that the new human-condition-confronting information is presenting the safe, full truth about humans. Not being able to ‘hear’ and thus discover that the information is the safe liberating truth that humanity has for 2 million years searched for, but being the most aware that the information is bringing the human condition into focus, and the most afraid of that confrontation, older, alienated adults can set out to repress and even destroy the information without realising that they are destroying humanity’s chance of liberation from the human condition.

Democracy, which allows for freedom of expression, is the mechanism that has been established to ward against the dangerous possibility of prejudice shutting down the human journey from ignorance to enlightenment. Tragically however, where information relating to the human condition is concerned, the more alienated can be tempted to abandon the democratic principle of freedom of expression and set out to destroy by any means available what they fear and cannot understand. In so doing they can commit the worst possible crime, that of destroying humanity’s only chance for freedom. For someone to avoid the issue of the human condition is one thing, to seek to stop anyone else looking at it is quite another.

The danger posed by the intolerance of older adults towards human-condition-confronting information will be elaborated upon later in the book.

It should be stressed that no one is precluded from accessing the liberating understanding of the human condition. For the older and/or more alienated it simply requires more patience and perseverance to access it than those who are young and/or less alienated. This important point will be examined shortly.