Page 72 of
Print Edition This move to a new human-condition-ameliorated world has no relationship to the New Age Movement, or to a religious movement

It was mentioned at the beginning of this Introduction that the benefit of persevering with the journey into the human condition is to arrive at a state of extraordinary freedom. It was emphasised there that this freedom is not the sort of indoctrinated feel-good freedom that New Age and ‘self-improvement’ gurus achieved with self-affirming mantras and other motivational exercises. There is a fundamental insecurity in humans arising from the human condition and denial has been their main means of coping with it. When this denial began to wear thin, and the underlying insecurity began to re-emerge, people sought to reinforce their denial through the so-called ‘power of positive thought’. Basically they were retreading their denial and adding fresh layers to it. The truth is real freedom from the human condition lay in confronting and solving the human condition, not in trying to further deny and escape it. Humans had to confront and find understanding of their human-condition-tortured, guilt-ridden, God-fearing, insecure, upset angry, egocentric and alienated state. Evading, escaping and transcending the condition was not a real solution. This means that the think-positive, human-potential-and-self-esteem-promoting, self-improvement, motivational, feel-good—basically human-condition-avoiding—pseudo-idealistic and artificially-utopian so-called New Age industry was being led by charlatans—false prophets. Those who proclaimed that the way for people to relieve and even heal their condition was to learn better ways to block-out, escape and transcend it were ultimately only leading humanity to a state of even greater denial/ dishonesty/ alienation. As the philosopher Thomas Nagel said, ‘The capacity for transcendence brings with it a liability to alienation, and the wish to escape this condition…can lead to even greater absurdity’ (The View From Nowhere, 1986).

With regard to indoctrination, some might unfairly say that re-reading suggests that a form of indoctrination is involved in what is being advocated for this book. Such a comment would be unfair Page 73 of
Print Edition because the truth is the complete opposite; repeated reading is necessary to dismantle indoctrination. This is because living in denial of the human condition has been a state of self-indoctrination. As will be explained in the Resignation essay, humans have been indoctrinating themselves with the denial, brainwashing their mind of any form of deeper thinking since the emergence of consciousness and with it the dilemma of the human condition. They trained their mind not to think about certain subjects that they found they could not bear to think about. As Rod Quantock said, ‘Thinking can get you into terrible downwards spirals of doubt.’ What is needed now to free humans from their highly programmed state of denial is a process of de-programming; people have to unlearn or dismantle this self-imposed indoctrination, their mind-controlling practice of living in denial of the human condition. The way to achieve that is to re-read the information until the practiced denial is eroded. As many readers would know, repeated reading is accepted practice for anyone learning a new subject.

It was also emphasised at the beginning of this Introduction that the state of extraordinary freedom that can be arrived at from persevering with this journey into the human condition has no correlation with the limited reinforcement humans have long derived from religious faith and belief. What is being offered is real reinforcement and thus real freedom, achieved through digesting the ameliorating understanding of what it actually is to be human. Unlike the limited reinforcement provided by religion and other forms of dogma, what is possible now is real reinforcement of self because it is first principle-based reconciling and thus dignifying biological explanation of human nature. There is absolutely no dogma, nothing that has to be blindly accepted, no leaps of logic and, most significantly, no leaps to faith. What is being presented is the very opposite of faith and belief; it is rational explanation. In fact, the explanation demystifies dogma and mysticism and religious metaphysics. It actually brings such fundamental freedom to the human situation that it takes humans beyond the state where they need dogmatic forms of reinforcement and religious faith and belief.

Importantly, any ‘hold’ the information has over the mind is due to its accountability, its ability to make sense of experience. What is being presented is first principle, rational, arguable, investigable, testable, verifiable biological explanation. The challenge is to think, question and understand, a process that is the very opposite of Page 74 of
Print Edition abandoning thought and deferring to some form of dogma, faith or belief.

It should also be said that people who have had the patience to persevere until they start to understand the human condition frequently develop an enthusiasm for the explanations—and for life in general. There are two points to make about this enthusiasm. Firstly, it is not a response to some seductive form of artificial ‘idealism’. While understanding of the human condition brings about an idealistic world that is truly inspirational, the liberation is a result of knowledge. This real and enduring freedom is the opposite of the unreal, transitory ‘freedom’ offered by the mindless idealistic dogma that, in the past, has been attractive to some people, especially to some naive young people. Humanity has long held a vision of its ideal potential. This is being achieved now as a result of understanding reality, not from escaping reality and deferring to some dogmatic empty promise of ideality. Secondly, the enthusiasm should not be mistaken for the fervour that is sometimes associated with fanatical religious expression and mindless cυlts. Again the real situation is the complete opposite. What is occurring is not fanatical, mindless fervour, it is the profound satisfaction of mindful understanding. This information is brain nourishment, not brain anaesthetic.

It is not surprising that once people have overcome the deaf effect they hold on to these ideas that explain the human condition and defend them with tenacity and enthusiasm. The human mind has sought understanding of the human condition since the onset of rational thought. It is entirely to be expected that once humans find it they hold on to it dearly. As Plato said in his cave allegory, referring to those who learn to confront the ‘sun’ (that is, overcome the deaf effect and understand the human condition): ‘it won’t be surprising if those who get so far are unwilling to return to mundane affairs, and if their minds long to remain among higher things’ (Plato The Republic, tr. H.D.P. Lee, 1955, p.282 of 405).