Page 282 of
Print Edition The dysfunction of the resigned mind

I mentioned earlier how many answers I have been able to find by not living in denial of the issue of the human condition. In truth unresigned, denial-free, unevasive thinking adults, or prophets, such as Sir Laurens van der Post, Laing, Winnicott, Schreiner and myself should be viewed the same way as savant syndrome people are viewed. Resigned humans have not compared themselves with savants because they accepted that savants had very different brain ‘wiring’. Once humans resigned their ability to think truthfully and thus effectively was severely impaired, whereas unresigned brains and resigned brains that have learnt to think in a denial free way can investigate and succeed in penetrating all manner of mystery.

It was said of the denial-free thinker or prophet Jesus Christ, ‘How did this man get such learning without having studied?’ (John 7:15). Similarly it is said that the prophet Mohammed ‘was unlettered, having no formal education’ (Eastern Definitions by Edward Rice, 1978, p.261 of 433). Also, in the quote mentioned earlier about the exceptionally denial-free, penetrating thinker, Friedrich Nietzsche, it was said that he was ‘largely unread’. Prophets were able to ‘get such learning’ by being unresigned and thus able to think truthfully and effectively. Christ summed up the futile thinking abilities of the resigned adult mind when he said, ‘you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children’ (Matt 11:25). Elsewhere in the Bible it similarly says, ‘The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile’ (I Cor. 3: 20 & Psalm 94:11).

R.D. Laing described the limitation of the resigned mind when he wrote, ‘Our capacity to think, except in the service of what we are dangerously deluded in supposing is our self-interest, and in conformity with common sense, is pitifully limited: our capacity even to see, hear, touch, taste and smell is so shrouded in veils of mystification that an intensive discipline of un-learning is necessary of anyone before one can begin to experience the world afresh, with innocence, truth and love’ (The Politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise, 1967, p.23 of 156).

The ability of prophets to think penetratingly has seemed astonishing to resigned minds but that has only been because resigned minds have been unaware of their own alienation. It is only natural that a mind that is not coming off a dishonest base can make sense Page 283 of
Print Edition of all manner of ‘mystery’ that false, resigned minds, that are living in denial of so many fundamental truths, cannot get anywhere near making sense of. The ‘deaf effect’, where people find it almost impossible to read about the human condition, arises because the resigned brain is extremely indoctrinated in a particular way of thought that severely limits and prejudices it, so that it only allows itself to hear what it wants to hear. The resigned brain is highly dysfunctional, instead of one truth leading logically to the next, there are blocks or denials that come into play and stop the thought sequences carrying through to their proper conclusion.

Mechanistic science has prided itself on being rigorously objective when in truth it has been coming off an extremely dishonest, evasive, subjective, indoctrinated, prejudiced base and, as a result, could not hope to reach a sound understanding of our world. Winnicott described the situation when he wrote, ‘Can you see the one essential way in which science and intuition contrast with each other? True intuition can reach to a whole truth in a flash (just as faulty intuition can reach to error), whereas in a [mechanistic] science the whole truth is never reached’ (Thinking About Children, 1996, p.5 of 343).

The Hutchinson Dictionary of Science, 1993, defines ‘scientific method’ as ‘the belief that experimentation and observation, properly understood and applied, can avoid the influence of cultural and social values and so build up a picture of a reality independent of the observer.’ In reality mechanistic science has complied with the principle of living in denial of the issue of the human condition until understanding of it could be found. It has been ‘mechanistic’, not ‘holistic’. It studiously avoided the truth of integrative meaning and many other fundamental truths that brought the human condition into focus. It has been rigorously subjective, not rigorously objective, not ‘independent of the observer’, as it has claimed to be. This reality has been recognised in recent times with scientists being labelled as either left or right wing in their scientific orientation. For example, in an article about the dishonesty of genetic determinism, journalist Ziauddin Sardar wrote that, ‘A number of left-leaning scientists, including Steven Rose and Richard Lewontin, have argued for decades that we are much more than the sum of our genes’ (Australian Financial Review, 23 Feb 2001).

The fact is that resignation is a state of extremely prejudiced falseness and thus ‘futility’ when it comes to thinking effectively. It is not interested in the truth, rather it is interested in evading the truth. As philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said, ‘The discovery of Page 284 of
Print Edition truth is prevented most effectively…by prejudice, which…stands in the path of truth and is then like a contrary wind driving a ship away from land’ (Essays and Aphorisms, tr. R.J. Hollingdale, 1970, p.120 of 237). Aldous Huxley also got it right when he said, ‘We don’t know because we don’t want to know’ (Ends and Means, 1937, p.270).

Given the extreme falseness of the resigned state, it is no wonder humans have been sensitive about being called liars. Every resigned adult has been lying, has been denying the truth about integrative meaning and many other critically important truths, including the fact of their own extreme alienation. The truth is, all resigned adults have been ‘lying through their teeth’; lying in the most extreme way while maintaining a broad smile of confident denial of these lies.

It is little wonder that children and young adolescents found the world of resigned adults so upsetting. The blatant denials that resigned adults maintained were extremely offensive to anyone trying to live a life of honesty. For over a decade there has been a campaign of persecution against the World Transformation Movement (the organisation that supports and is developing the understanding of the human condition that is now available) and its Members. One of the main accusations made against me as the organisation’s president and the originator of these ideas is that I suffer from ‘hubris on a large scale’. (We intend to document the campaign of persecution at the conclusion of the court cases in a book provisionally titled The Attempted Assassination of the WTM: The Denial Tries to Reimpose Itself.)

This accusation is an example of the sophisticated tactic of the reverse-of-the-truth lie, where a lie that is the complete opposite of the truth is considered most effective. When unresigned honest-thinking minds have stood up to and railed against the lies of the resigned world they have been accused of being rude. When they strongly maintained what they knew was true against what was so false they were accused of being arrogant. However, the real rudeness and arrogance or ‘hubris’ was the resigned, mechanistic view that its world was authentic. As mentioned earlier, Christ said of the arrogant, self-important, utterly deluded exponents of that world that, ‘They like to walk round in flowing robes and love to be greeted in the market-place and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honour at banquets’ (Luke 20:46).

For its part, mechanistic science masqueraded before the world as a rigorously objective paradigm when the truth was that it was complying fully with the resigned evasive strategy of denying integrative Page 285 of
Print Edition meaning, and many other fundamental truths, such as a cooperative instinctive past for the human race, the significance of nurturing, the occurrence of resignation during adolescence, and the immensely alienated state of humans now. Mechanistic science had to be extremely evasive if it were to avoid leaving everybody suicidally confronted and depressed; however, that necessary evasion did not justify it arrogantly promenading across the world’s stage proclaiming itself to be upholding a rigorous, truthful paradigm. With such arrogance it is no wonder so many religious people have been offended and upset by mechanistic science.

Mechanistic scientists have been immensely evasive, dishonest and subjective, the end result of which has been a form of inquiry that eventually ground to a halt under the weight of its own accumulated dishonesty. As pointed out in the Plato essay, mechanistic science had reached the limits of its meaningfulness. As the Templeton Prize-winning biologist Charles Birch acknowledged in an address given at the 1993 WTM Open Day held in Sydney, ‘science can’t deal with subjectivity…what we were all taught in universities is pretty much a dead end.’ Similarly, biologist Mary E. Clark, in her 1989 book, Ariadne’s Thread: The Search for New Modes of Thinking, said ‘Formal learning has become a meaningless vaccination process, and the information transmitted is next to useless for properly understanding the world.’ In his 1978 book, Janus: A Summing Up, Arthur Koestler described at length how ‘the citadel they [mechanistic scientists] are defending lies in ruins’ (p.192 of 354). The Templeton Prize-winning physicist Paul Davies wrote: ‘For 300 years science has been dominated by extremely mechanistic thinking. According to this view of the world all physical systems are regarded as basically machines…I have little doubt that much of the alienation and demoralisation that people feel in our so-called scientific age stems from the bleak sterility of mechanistic thought…Mechanistic thought has undoubtedly had a stifling effect on the human spirit’ (Living in a non-material world—the new scientific consciousness, The Australian, 9 Oct. 1991).

The New Age proponent Fritjof Capra wrote in 1982: ‘To describe this world appropriately we need a new paradigm, a new vision of reality—a fundamental change in our thoughts, perceptions and values. The beginnings of this change, or the shift from the mechanistic to the holistic conception of reality, are already visible…The gravity and global extent of our crisis indicates that the current changes are likely to result in a transformation of unprecedented dimension, a turning point for the planet as a whole’ (quoted in Ariadne’s Thread: The Search for New Modes of Thinking, Mary E. Clark, 1989).

Page 286 of
Print Edition Capra was right, a new paradigm based on acceptance of integrative meaning or holism had to emerge. Having said this, it is necessary to point out that while there has been acknowledgment of holism in the so-called New Age movement, the movement was in fact part of the most sophisticated form of denial of the issue of the human condition to develop on Earth. It seduced adherents with the belief that they were participating in the creation of an ‘alternative’, integrated, idealistic ‘New Age’; in reality they were making no effort to confront human alienation and the associated issue of the human condition, the source of the disharmony on Earth. A detailed analysis of the extreme delusions and dangers of the New Age and related movements is presented in chapters 8:16H-8:16Q of FREEDOM: The End Of The Human Condition at <www.humancondition.com/freedom>, and also in my 2021 book Death by Dogma at <www.humancondition.com/death-by-dogma>.

The new, honest paradigm that Capra and many others, in fact the whole of humanity, have looked forward to required the emergence of truly unevasive, denial-free thinkers who could confront the human condition and defy all the lies of the alienated world. Friedrich Nietzsche was aware of how strong that defiance of the false, evasive, alienated world had to be when he wrote, ‘we have to await the arrival of a new species of philosopher, one which possesses tastes and inclinations opposite to and different from those of its predecessors—philosophers of the dangerous “perhaps” in every sense’ (Beyond Good and Evil, 1886; tr. R.J. Hollingdale, 1973, p.16 of 237). The central thesis of Nietzsche’s work was the need for the arrival of what he termed ‘overman’ or ‘superman’, people who were secure, independent and highly individualistic; people who could and would defy the evasion/ denial/ alienation that has held the minds of almost all humans in a vice-like grip for some 2 million years. Nietzsche cited, amongst others, Christ and Socrates as models for such defiant thinkers. Such people were ‘supermen’, they were people who were unevasive and, as a result, able, in almost a savant-like capacity, to access the soul’s true world—as all humans will soon be able to, now they no longer have to live in denial.

As the race between self-destruction (from rapidly increasing levels of alienation) and self-discovery (through finding understanding of the human condition) grew more intense, similar myths about superheroes such as Superman proliferated: The Lone Ranger, The Phantom, Batman, Wonderwoman, Spiderman, Luke Skywalker of Starwars, Frodo Baggins of The Lord of the Rings, The X-Men. Such myths were an expression of an intuitive awareness in people of what Page 287 of
Print Edition it would take to solve the human condition. To the resigned mind confronting the human condition seemed impossible, a superhuman undertaking.

Any real progress in understanding our world and our place in it is now dependent upon confronting, rather than avoiding, the issue of the human condition. It is humans’ alienation that has been preventing any real advance in knowledge. Again we can go to the writings of R.D. Laing for an acknowledgment of this truth: ‘Our alienation goes to the roots. The realization of this is the essential springboard for any serious reflection on any aspect of present inter-human life [p.12 of 156]  …We respect the voyager, the explorer, the climber, the space man. It makes far more sense to me as a valid project—indeed, as a desperately urgently required project for our time—to explore the inner space and time of consciousness. Perhaps this is one of the few things that still make sense in our historical context. We are so out of touch with this realm [so in denial of the issue of the human condition] that many people can now argue seriously that it does not exist. It is very small wonder that it is perilous indeed to explore such a lost realm [p.105]  …the direction we have to take is back and in [p.137]’ (The Politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise, 1967).

As Laing says here, most people are now unaware of the issue of the human condition. At the conclusion of his book, Coming to Our Senses (1998), Morris Berman said that ‘Something obvious keeps eluding our civilisation’. That ‘something’ was humans’ alienated state, and the reason it ‘eluded’ humans was because they were acutely aware of the danger of approaching the issue of the human condition and therefore maintained a dedicated denial of anything connected to it. By definition, the resigned mind was unaware it had resigned, it lived in denial of its alienation. This is why it is remarkable that some researchers have suggested that savant-like abilities exist in all of us. It is virtually an acknowledgment that we are a species living in denial and immensely alienated, living with a form of dementia or amnesia—spiritually dead.