Overcoming the ‘deaf effect’

(Please note, a helpful and more recent essay which describes the problem of the ‘deaf effect’ and how to overcome it is provided at www.humancondition.com/freedom-essays/the-difficulty-of-reading-freedom.)

Of course presentation and analysis of the issue of the human condition produces responses other than the deaf effect. For instance, there is the response of trying to maintain the false arguments that Page 65 of
Print Edition have historically been used to deny and evade the issue of the human condition—such as the arguments used to deny that there is a cooperative, integrative purpose to existence, or that humanity once lived instinctively in a state of cooperation. These and many other historic denials are referred to in subsequent essays in this book, and examined in full in Beyond.

The other significant response has been one of extreme anger towards the exposing information. When confronted with description of the human condition, the human mind, especially the more alienated, cannot help demanding that the denial be restored. It says, in effect, ‘either you present what you have to say in a way that I don’t find confronting, or I will reject it’. That rejection can be extreme. It was mentioned that older, alienated adults, being the most aware that the information is bringing the human condition into focus, and being the most afraid of that confrontation, can be tempted to defy the democratic principle of freedom of expression, and set out to repress and even destroy the information. Indeed, people can have such an angry response to the information that they set out to attack the heresy by any means available, including persecuting its supporters. This response will be examined later in this book. (‘Heresy’ is defined as opinion contrary to orthodox thought, in this case the almost universal practice of denial.)

The two responses of trying to maintain the false arguments that have been used to maintain the denial and of becoming extremely angry towards this information are certainly major problems to be overcome. However, of more serious concern is the problem of the deaf effect. The deaf effect can stop any support for the crucial understanding of the human condition from developing. There is a saying that ‘you can knock on a deaf man’s door forever’, and it is true that unless the deaf effect is overcome people will never be able to understand the human condition. Alienation protected humans from going mad, even suicidal self-destruction, but it also has the potential to deny humans their freedom from their dishonest, corrupted existence, and, with alienation continuing to increase, the potential to eventually bring about the destruction of the human race.

The fact is that when description and analysis of the human condition is presented, the words, as the cancer sufferer described it, ‘just seem to flood over’ the reader and their mind takes in almost nothing. Tragically the minds of most people are initially unable to get past the denial to make the realisation that the subject of the Page 66 of
Print Edition human condition has at last been compassionately explained and that it is now both safe and necessary to confront the subject. The task now is to abandon the historic, immensely dishonest, false world of evasion and denial. Humanity is now able to ‘come out of’ the biggest ‘closet’ of all, that of denial of the human condition. Humans can be honest now and honesty is the only basis for psychological therapy and rehabilitation. As Christ said, ‘the truth [when it comes] will set you free’ (John 8:32).

While it is now safe to look at the human condition, the problem is the reader’s mind has to absorb what is being said for it to discover that it is indeed safe—but how is their mind to take in what is being said when it is effectively ‘deaf’ to any description and analysis of the human condition? How is the mind to learn that it is now safe to look into the human condition? If Genghis Khan’s army has been invading our country for decades, and we have sensibly taken to a life of hiding in the forests, it is going to be a brave person who first ventures into the open when it is announced that the tyrant has finally been vanquished.

The wonderful news is that the Genghis Khan of the human mind, the ‘fire-breathing dragon’ that crops up in all mythologies, is slain. Why humans have been the way they have been, divisively rather than cooperatively behaved, has been biologically explained. With this compassionate understanding of human’s divisive nature the insecurity that produces such behaviour subsides and the behaviour disappears. It is safe to come out of hiding now—and absolutely necessary if we are to end all the terrible destruction caused by humans’ dishonest existence.

With the dignifying, compassionate understanding of the human condition at last found, the need for denial of the subject has been removed, but the problem remains of how are those humans who have been living in deep denial of the subject to discover that it is now safe to look into the human condition? How is the mind to learn that it is now safe when it cannot ‘hear’ what is being explained. The reader is in a catch-22 situation, apparently trapped by alienation.

Firstly, to help the reader trust that it is now safe to confront the issue of the human condition it has to be emphasised again that the human condition could not possibly be being discussed here so openly and freely if the subject had not been successfully penetrated and understood. It was not possible to talk clearly and directly about the human condition while it had not been explained. To be discussing Page 67 of
Print Edition it so openly means it must have been explained. Similarly, people could not be actively supporting and developing these understandings of the human condition, as those associated with the WTM are doing, if the understandings were not enabling them to safely confront the human condition. Humans could not be wandering happily around a minefield if the mines had not been defused. The dilemma of the human condition was such that the subject held its own safeguard that it could not ever, and would not ever, be naively, trivially talked about. Wittgenstein’s comment, mentioned earlier, ‘About that which we cannot speak, we must remain silent’, confirms this point. We can only speak about the subject of the human condition when it has been rendered safe to speak of.

This book is written from the freedom and safety of outside the cave prison of denial where humans have had to live for some 2 million years. Jim Morrison, of the famed musicians, The Doors, sang about having to ‘break on through to the other side’; that has now occurred—humanity has finally broken through the wall of necessary denial to freedom from the human condition.

The strategy that has been used in this Introduction for the problem of the denial blocking the mind from hearing description and analysis of the human condition, has been to as quickly as possible resurrect the issue of the human condition and outline how it can now be coped with—to move from the beginning of the story to the other end and safety before the rejection reaction has time to assert itself.

Once the reader gains at least an intimation that the human condition does exist and that it has been safely explained, then they have gained the foothold needed to begin to overcome their denial of the subject.