‘Life’ leading up to resignation

While full resignation occurred at about the age of 15, from the moment of birth onwards mini-resignations repeatedly took place as block-outs/ denials/ evasions were progressively implemented to cope with the hurt experienced from the many traumatic encounters with the non-ideal, ‘imperfect’ world associated with the human condition. In House of Cards, a 1993 film based on a screenplay by Michael Lessic, one of the characters makes this intuitive comment about how sensitive and vulnerable innocent children have been to the horror of the alienated state of adults: ‘I used to watch Michael [a character in the film] about two hours after he was born and I thought that at that moment he knew all of the secrets of the universe and every second that was passing he was forgetting them’. As mentioned, humans are born instinctively aware of the truth of cooperative or integrative meaning, and of a world compliant with it, but then the reality of the non-ideal world strikes and they have to begin repressing those truths to cope with that new reality.

As has been explained, most of the adjustments to the reality of the imperfection of life under the duress of the human condition took place in our first few, ‘formative’ years when we had very little ability to cope and when our mind was most ‘impressionable’. Struggling with the imperfections of life at a very young age, young children were aware of the dilemma of the human condition. While Page 212 of
Print Edition resigned adults learnt to deny the existence of this dilemma, the truth is that an unresigned mind needs only a small sample of life to see the truth of it.

To illustrate, the following two conversations took place between a WTM Founding Member who works as a nanny and her young charge, a boy of almost four years. First conversation: ‘Child: I’m Captain Hook and I’m going to kill you with my sword. Nanny: Why? Child: Because you’re a good girl. Nanny: No, I’m Peter Pan and I will get the lost boys and Tinkerbell to save me from you. Child: No, you’re not Peter Pan. You’re Wendy and you’re a good girl. Nanny: Why do you want to kill a good girl? Child: Because I don’t like good girls. Nanny: Why don’t you like them? Child: Because they are good. Nanny: But why don’t you like good girls. Child: I like bad girls. Good girls make me feel bad.’ Second conversation: ‘Child: Do you have a heart? Nanny: Yes, I have a really big heart, really big so I can love lots. Child: Bet it’s not as big as mine! Nanny: Probably not. Children have really really super huge hearts. Child: Well I don’t, and I’m going to cut yours out. Nanny: Ow, why? Child: Because I don’t have a heart any more, so I’m going to cut you in half and rip your heart out. Nanny: Ow, I think that would hurt me a lot. Child: So!’ (personal communication, Dec. 1999).

The existence of child prodigies in the realm of classical music also confirms that children have been aware of the dilemma of the human condition, and of the greater truth that, contrary to appearances, humans were not fundamentally evil beings. Classical music appealed to the shared awareness in humans of the greater truth of humans’ true divinity, that stood above the terrible suffering the human condition inflicted on humans. Indeed if humans really had believed they were evil and not a part of ‘God’s work’ they would have disintegrated with guilt—gone insane or suicided—long ago. While humans could not relieve their condition they could relate to the greater truth that humans are not evil, rather that they are involved in an immensely heroic journey to find the dignifying understanding of their divisive condition. Classical music was, as Charles Hart wrote in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera (1986), ‘the music of the night’, the music humans had to console themselves while having to live in Plato’s dark cave of denial. Children could not empathise with, and express awareness of the subtleties about the human condition if they did not know of it.

Most significantly, while humans were aware of this dilemma from a very young age, by about the age of 11 they had sufficient understanding of the world to try to make sense of the fundamental dilemma Page 213 of
Print Edition of the human condition; to use philosophical thought to try to understand why there was imperfection in the world, and indeed in themselves.

School teachers acknowledge that at around 10 or 11 years of age students change from being boisterous—the so-called ‘noisy nines’—to being sobered and introspective, and until they are about 15 years old they became, as one teacher described it, ‘harder and harder to reach’.

At this latter age young people finally surrendered to the silence of the world and accepted that it was impossible, indeed dangerously depressing to continue trying to confront and understand the problem of the human condition. They finally resigned to a life of evading the issue of the human condition.

Of course after resignation there was an immense change in personality. Adolescents suddenly became outward-looking, self-distracting, escapist, seekers-of-reinforcement-through-sexual-attention and success, extroverted and artificially buoyant. They became superficial young adults, carbon-copies of virtually every other grown-up; they ‘just integrated very nicely’, to quote Fiona Miller. Sadly, under the duress of the human condition, ‘growing up’ has really been all about ‘dying down’ in soul and mind.

As part of my research for a book I am writing that explains and describes all the stages of maturation a human experiences under the duress of the human condition, I asked a school teacher to describe what she and other colleagues consider the stages of childhood and early adolescence. This is her response: ‘Six and seven-year-olds are considered to be very compliant but by eight children are starting to test the waters and challenge the world a little.’ She said ‘the eight-year-olds can be annoying and a little naughty’, while ‘nine and ten-year-olds can be hard to handle as they seem to hit a phase of recklessness’ and ‘they are considered naughty’. She said ‘Teachers love teaching 11 and 12-year-olds because it is during this stage that children become civilised.’ She commented that ‘Teachers consider years nine and ten, when students are 14, 15 and 16 years old, the most difficult to teach. The adolescents seem to be at complete odds with what is expected of them. Most teachers are terrified of these completely uncooperative ages’ (personal communication, 1997). In light of these comments it is interesting to note that the Australian playwright, Richard Tulloch, wrote a popular play titled Year 9 Are Animals (1987).

With the issue of the human condition acknowledged it is not Page 214 of
Print Edition difficult to interpret these stages of childhood and adolescence. By the age of eight, children had begun to wrestle with the agony and frustration of not being able to know why they and the world were not pure and innocent. Within a year or two, at the ages of nine and ten, they had become so frustrated with the problem that they began to physically lash out at the world. This reactionary, ‘noisy nines’, hitting-out stage did not last long because they soon learnt the futility of such a response. By the ages of 11 and 12 they had realised that the only satisfactory way to cope with the problem was to find understanding of why they and the world were not ideal. Behaviourally they changed direction entirely. From being extroverted and reacting against the world, they became sobered, introspective and deeply thoughtful searchers. They tried to understand the human condition. This search for answers about human life lasted only a couple of years before they realised that neither they nor humanity as a whole had any answers to their questions. To make matters worse, they learnt that trying to confront the issue of the human condition led to deep depression. By about the age of 15 they reached the crisis point where any greater depression would make them suicidal, and they finally accepted that they had no responsible alternative but to resign themselves to a life of denial of the human condition, as fraudulent and soul-and-mind-destroying as that was.

The agony of resignation is evident in this quote from a newspaper article titled Who Took Sarah’s Self Away: ‘She turned 13, half woman half child, part of the confusion was that one day everything was fine and then the next day you’re miserable. But you can’t put your finger on what has changed to make everything suddenly so wrong. I went down to my grandparents’ farm with my parents one year and ran around and had a wow of a time. I thought they were all the greatest. Next year I went there again and hated everything and everyone. I looked at them and thought “god they’re so old and folksy I can’t stand it”. It’s almost like doing a complete 360 degrees in a matter of a few years. It was a bizarre time. Why do so many fearless out going girls turn into parent-hating, unhappy insecure ghosts of their former selves during their early teens?’ (Sydney Morning Herald, 25 Apr. 1996).

The agony is also apparent in the explanation Ella Hooper offered for naming her popular Australian band, Killing Heidi: ‘Heidi…being a happy young girl…and killing the Heidi within means growing up’ (interview, Sydney radio 2Day FM, 29 Jan. 2001).

Having to resign to a life of denial and thus death of the world of Page 215 of
Print Edition your soul was a desperately sad decision to make. As will be explained in the later section, ‘The moment of resignation’, when girls resigned they were resigning to a life of having to be to some degree a ‘sex object’, involving destruction of their innocence, their soul. The line in Sarah James’ resignation poem, ‘our promiscuous wanderings into the infinite shall see us lost’, recognises this fate. Young girls are renown for wanting to have a horse and those who are lucky enough to acquire one seem to love it dearly. It was as if horses were young girls last soul-friend before they died; died in soul. For their part, at resignation young boys had to accept the prospect of becoming angry, egocentric and alienated beasts. When young boys sat on the edge of the pond with their little toy sailing boats heading out into the pond dipping through the waves it was as if they were being themselves transported away from the terrible shores that they were having to live on, escaping to another world free of the horrors that this world held for them.

Eventually, all the beauty of the soul’s world just had to be let go. The 1970 Lennon/ McCartney Beatles’ song Let It Be, voted one of the most popular songs of the 20th century, is an anthem to humans’ historic need to resign themselves to ‘letting it [the subject of the human condition] be’ until the time—which has now arrived—when ‘there will be an answer’. It is an anthem to humans’ historic need to resign to a life of leaving the subject of the human condition alone and instead living in hope and faith that at some time in the future understanding of the human condition would be found. Here are the lyrics: ‘When I find myself in times of trouble / Mother Mary comes to me / Speaking words of wisdom / Let it be / And in my hour of darkness / She is standing right in front of me / Speaking words of wisdom / Let it be // [chorus] // And when the broken hearted people / Living in the world agree / There will be an answer / Let it be / For though they may be parted there is / Still a chance that they will see / There will be an answer / Let it be // [extended chorus] // And when the night is cloudy / There is still a light that shines on me / Shine until tomorrow / Let it be / I wake up to the sound of music / Mother Mary comes to me / Speaking words of wisdom / Let it be// [extended chorus].’ The plea to ‘Mother Mary’ for help is the same as the 15-year-old Sarah James’ plea ‘Father why have you forsaken me???’

The symbolism of this song is similar to that of Mark Seymour’s The Holy Grail, Bono’s I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For and John Lennon’s Imagine (as mentioned in the Introduction), in particular the common hope of ‘waking up to the sound of [the] music’ of humanity’s freedom from the human condition. Seymour’s words were, ‘Woke up this morning from the strangest dream / I was in the biggest army the world had ever seen / We were marching as one’, Bono sang Page 216 of
Print Edition of ‘the kingdom come / Then all the colours will bleed into one’, while Lennon referred to a time when ‘the world will be as one’. The words from Let It Be, ‘And when the night is cloudy / There is still a light that shines on me / Shine until tomorrow’, express the hope (‘there is still a light’) that, despite the horror of humanity’s plight, understanding of the human condition will emerge (‘shine until tomorrow’). The same hope appeared in Seymour’s song, where it ends with the words, ‘I’m still here, I’m still a fool for the Holy Grail’, as in Bono’s song, ‘I’m still running [hoping]’ and ‘You know I believe it [believe that the time would come when all the colours will bleed into one]’. Lennon also challenged the listener to ‘imagine’ [humans’ freedom from the human condition].

While school teachers have almost invariably been resigned adults living in denial of both the human condition and the process of resignation that established the denial, they were aware that students were ‘harder and harder’ to reach from the years 12 to 15 years old. An article written by an education reporter describes this tendency: ‘It is known as the “turn-off” syndrome, and it is the sort of problem most teachers and many parents know only too well. Bright and promising students who seem to have the world at their feet, turn 13 or 14 and stop dead in their tracks. They lose interest in schoolwork and start to fail examinations. Many cannot wait until they reach 15 so they can drop out’ (Sydney Morning Herald, 18 May 1985).

Pink Floyd’s 1979 song, Another Brick in the Wall, defiantly expresses the pre-resigned students’ point of view, that they do not want to have to accept the world of lies that adults reside in: ‘We don’t need no education / We don’t need no thought control / No dark sarcasm in the classroom / Teachers leave the kids alone / Hey teacher leave us kids alone / All in all it’s just another brick in the wall / All in all you’re just another brick in the wall.’ Paul Simon’s 1973 song, Kodachrome, expressed similar sentiments with the line, ‘When I think back on all the crap I learnt in high school it’s a wonder I can think at all’. In truth schools have been death camps for children, places where, tragically, adults have inducted each new generation into the adult world of evasion and denial that was necessary for almost all people if they were to cope with the unresolved dilemma of the human condition. Schools provided the platform for adults to pass on ‘The Great or Noble [necessary] Lie’.

Psychiatrist R.D. Laing once wrote that, ‘we are driving our children mad more effectively than we are genuinely educating them’ (The Politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise, 1967, p.87 of 156). This comment recognises that children have been taught alienation, which in truth is a state of Page 217 of
Print Edition madness, a state of extreme disconnection from what is true.

The school system did offer one great kindness however in that it allowed young people to be with others like themselves, and not solely with adults.

While humanity was unable to deal with the subject of the human condition, the adult world was unable to explain what happened in children’s minds as they grew up. However, with the human condition safely explained and humans’ divisive state understood, we can at last honestly explain the very distinct ‘stages with ages’ that a child growing up experiences. In fact we can explain all the stages of maturation humans go through in their life—and indeed all the stages humanity as a whole has been and continue to go through. These stages have been broadly acknowledged as ‘infancy’, ‘childhood’, ‘adolescence’ and ‘adulthood’, but even these broad descriptions have never been clearly articulated. In Beyond, where the biology of the human condition is fully explained, these stages are at last made clear. Essentially, infancy is when consciousness appears and humans discover self. In childhood they play with the power of free will that consciousness brings. In adolescence, the stage humanity has been in for 2 million years, they go in search of their identity, an understanding of who they are, specifically an understanding of why they and humanity have not been ideally behaved. To end humanity’s insecure adolescent state and enter secure adulthood, the intellect had to find understanding of the human condition. With that understanding found, humanity can leave the insecure upset adolescent stage and enter the peaceful maturity of adulthood. Infancy is ‘I am’, childhood is ‘I can’, adolescence is ‘But who am I?’ and adulthood is ‘I know who I am’.

Being a member of a species that had not reached the maturity of adulthood meant that individual humans reaching their own adulthood were psychologically stranded in adolescence; they were adults who were still ignorant to their true identity. In the development of systems, one can progress to subsequent stages without having completed an earlier stage, but the subsequent stages are then severely compromised by the incompleteness of the earlier stage. The actress Mae West articulated this phenomenon of arrested and subsequent corrupted or damaged development as it affected the egocentric male gender, when she said ‘If you want to understand men just remember that they are still little boys searching for approval’.

The lyrics of The Logical Song, from Supertramp’s 1979 album Breakfast Page 218 of
Print Edition in America, bravely acknowledge that humans start their journey happy, all-sensitive and innocent only to become corrupted—as the song describes, as ‘vegetable[s]’. More significantly, in concluding with the repetition of the plea ‘please tell me who I am’, the song emphasises humans’ frustration at not being able to understand themselves. The lyrics are: ‘When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful / a miracle, oh it was beautiful, magical / And all the birds in the trees, well they’d be singing so happily / so joyfully, so playfully watching me / But then they sent me away to teach me how to be sensible / logical, responsible, practical / And they showed me a world where I could be so dependable / clinical, intellectual, cynical // There are times when all the world’s asleep / the questions run too deep / for such a simple man / Won’t you please, please tell me what we’ve learned / I know it sounds absurd / but please tell me who I am // Now watch what you say or they’ll be calling you a radical / a liberal, fanatical, criminal / Won’t you sign up your name, we’d like to feel you’re / acceptable, respectable, presentable, a vegetable! // At night, when all the world’s asleep / the questions run so deep / for such a simple man / Won’t you please, please tell me what we’ve learned / I know it sounds absurd / but please tell me who I am / Oh, won’t you help me and tell me who I am / Who I am, who I am, who I am.’

At last we can now explain what human life is really all about. What emerges is the story of humans, the most fascinating of all stories—because it is our own story. The ‘Great Lie’ can end, which, from an innocent’s point of view, means all the ‘bullshit’, the dishonesty of the world of denial, can finally disappear. Of course from the resigned adults’ perspective, the reason they had to practice such dishonesty can at last also be compassionately explained to all the world. Honesty can come to the world of lies and it will be like the coming of the summer rains to a parched and barren land.