Page 232 of
Print Edition The moment of resignation: how humans change from believing in a cooperative, selfless, loving world, to believing in a competitive, selfish, aggressive, egocentric, must-win, power-fame-fortune-and-glory-obsessed world

It is now necessary to take analysis of what happens at resignation to a deeper level.

It has been explained that essentially what happens at resignation is that the attempt to confront ideality without the ability to explain humans’ lack of it meant that corrupted humans had no choice but to live in denial of the soul’s ideal world and the associated issue of the human condition.

The important question remains of how exactly did the transition from belief in cooperative, selfless, loving ideality to belief in a competitive, selfish, aggressive, egocentric way of living take place? How did humans manage to change from believing in selfless cooperation to believing in selfish competition? It is an immense transition to make given they are such opposing positions—and the transition is made in such a short time. In fact, resignation takes place in one particular moment, and the major adjustments involved occur over only a few days.

To recap on the lead up to the moment of resignation. At about 11 or 12 years of age young adolescents become sufficiently able to understand the world to begin to try to explain and thus understand the key question about human life of why humans are not ideally behaved. The first thing they learn in this quest is that the adult world has no answer to this question, indeed, for some reason, adults do not even want to consider it. As a result of this lack of response from the outside world, young adolescents retreat inwards with their thoughts. Finally, at about the age of 14 or 15, their thinking about the human condition begins to focus on the question of their own lack of ideality. They discover the dilemma of the human condition exists within, as well as without. It is this encounter with the question of their own lack of ideality that brings young adolescents into contact with the fearful depression that trying to think about the human condition causes any human who is not entirely sound.

Page 233 of
Print Edition Without the explanation for why corrupted humans are not evil, worthless, meaningless beings, adolescents can only conclude that their non-ideal, corrupted state is an evil, worthless state; that they are a blight on the face of the Earth. As the depression from this thinking deepens, they realise that if they become any more depressed they will be suicidal. At this point they desperately search for a way of saving themselves from their predicament. It is at this point that they realise the only thing they can do is adopt an attitude of denial of the whole issue, find a way to block it from their mind.

Of course adolescents try to resist living a life of denial of this all-important and fundamental question in human life of the human condition because it is such a fraudulent, dishonest, escapist, artificial, deluded position to take up. To re-quote Fiona Miller’s resignation poem, adopting the denial means ‘You will never have a home again…Smiles will never bloom from your heart again, but be fake and you will speak fake words to fake people from your fake soul…you will be fake, you will be a supreme actor of happiness but never be happy / Time, joy and freedom will hardly come your way and never last…You will become like the rest of the world—a divine actor, trying to hide and suppress your fate, pretending it doesn’t exist.’

While the adolescent tries to resist, the fear of depression from thinking they are worthless and meaningless eventually becomes greater than their fear of living an utterly dishonest existence, and the adolescent resigns to living a life of denial of the issue of the human condition.

The question is how exactly is this denial achieved? Essentially, to deny the issue of the human condition involves two actions. Firstly, as has already been stressed in this essay, you have to deny the existence of ideality. If there is no ideal state then there is no dilemma, no conflict, no issue with not being ideal. However, it is not sufficient to merely deny the existence of cooperative ideality, it is also necessary to believe that competitiveness is a valid, meaningful way of behaving. You have to deny cooperative ideality—in particular the integrative meaning of life and the existence of an instinctive expectation within humans of living cooperatively and lovingly—and you have to believe that competitiveness is valid and meaningful. Of course, in order to believe that competitiveness is meaningful, an explanation or justification has eventually to be found for why it is meaningful. Without the true explanation of the human condition, the explanation for why humans are divisively behaved, contrived, false Page 234 of
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Essentially, to deny the issue of the human condition the mind has to make an amazing switch from believing in cooperative ideality to believing in false excuses for humans’ competitive, aggressive and selfish behaviour. Competitiveness has to be embraced and cooperative integrativeness denied. The question is how does the mind make this amazing switch? We need to look at what happens at the actual moment of resignation, and in the hours and days immediately following.

Thinking increasingly deeply about the pertinent issue of their own lack of ideality, the adolescent eventually reaches a moment of perfect clarity on the matter. They reach a moment when, on one hand, they can see perfectly clearly the truth of cooperative ideality, and, on the other hand, just how corrupted or non-ideal they are as individuals. At this moment they are thinking entirely truthfully and profoundly, delving right to the bottom of the dilemma of their condition and seeing the full implication of their apparent worthlessness. At this point, depression reaches its peak; in fact the depression at this moment must be incredibly intense, as though their whole body is going to dissolve, disintegrate with agony and pain.

When walking through bushland near a school a doctor friend and I came across a lone student sitting huddled on a track with his head resting on his arms. He looked to be about 13 or 14 years old. He wasn’t crying, or looking to be emotionally distressed by some particular event at school, it was something entirely different. When I asked him if he was alright he raised his head slightly, enough for us to see an expression of overwhelming, unreachable despair. I remember both my friend and I felt very strongly that we were intruding, that no one could reach where he was, and that he wanted to be left alone. It was a depression from another realm that he was wrestling with.

It is at that unprotected moment of clarity about the extent of their lack of ideality and resulting extreme depression that the mind of the adolescent finally becomes receptive to the option of adopting denial of the issue of the human condition, incredibly false as they know it to be. Despite knowing full well at that stage that it is an outrageous lie to believe that there is no such truth as cooperative ideality, or to believe in contrived excuses for competitiveness, their need to escape the depression is so incredibly great that their mind actually welcomes the opportunity to believe in the lies. In fact it Page 235 of
Print Edition does not just welcome the lies, it embraces them as if embracing their mother. Such is their fear of revisiting the depression they have just experienced. The negatives of becoming a false person have no currency at that moment when the need for relief is so desperate.

Once the mind resigns itself to blocking out the truth of cooperative meaning and becomes determined to believe that competitiveness is meaningful, it doesn’t take long to find contrived excuses for competitiveness. The mind sees that, ‘Virtually everyone else is behaving selfishly and competitively, so such behaviour must simply be human nature, an entirely permissible, natural way to behave’, and, ‘Humans are only animals and animals are always competing with, fighting and killing each other, so that’s why we are.’ The adult world of resigned humans, who are past masters at living in denial, readily offer the newly resigned adolescent refinements to these excuses. As was described in the Plato essay, in the section ‘The contrived excuses for humans’ divisive behaviour’, the ‘animals are competitive and that’s why we are’ excuse became greatly refined. Darwin’s idea of natural selection was misrepresented as evolution being concerned with the ‘survival of the fittest’. This misrepresentation is termed Social Darwinism, and it was further developed by Edward O. Wilson with his theory of Sociobiology, which argued that human selfishness is due to their need to perpetuate their genes. The current expression of this excuse that genetics is a selfish process is ‘Evolutionary Psychology’, which maintains that even acts of selflessness in human behaviour—human morality—can be explained in terms of genetic reciprocity, of ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’. Robert Wright expounded this theory of Evolutionary Psychology in his 1994 book, The Moral Animal: Why We Are The Way We Are.

Once the adolescent has finally given in, resigned and allowed themselves to embrace the lies, they do experience some relief. They learn that delusion does work for them. As tentative as the situation is to begin with—because at that stage they are still capable of remembering that they are lies that they are adopting—the new thought process has gained a foothold. It is then only a matter of reinforcing the thought process and the blocking out or denial of the truth of cooperative meaning and belief in a selfish, competitive, survival-of-the-fittest world become inscribed habituated pathways in their brain.

From that moment onwards, maintaining the denial becomes a minute by minute growing preoccupation, until, after only a few days, Page 236 of
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After only a few days it is almost impossible to get people who have become resigned to consider there is such a thing as a cooperative purpose to existence, or to consider humans were once instinctively orientated to living cooperatively. Resigned minds believe with a passion that humans were once brutish and aggressive ‘like other animals’. They will not allow themselves to believe that humans have an instinctive self or soul orientated to cooperative behaviour. And they believe with all their being that the meaning of life is to be competitive, and that succeeding in competition with other humans is the way to achieve a secure sense of self-worth. They actually believe that ‘winning is everything’, that success in the form of power, fame, fortune and glory is meaningful. And it does sustain them, not because competition and winning is meaningful, but because it is keeping their mind away from the few steps of logic it would take to bring them back into contact with the depressing issue of the human condition. Their mind in effect says ‘I am going to believe in, live off, and enjoy this new way of viewing the world; I simply do not care if it is false.’

Once their brain has replaced the truth with the lie of a selfish, competitive meaning to existence then winning in that claimed selfish, competitive battle is reinforcing. Success becomes measured not by how integrative, how cooperative, loving and selfless you are, but by how well you are able to succeed in an alleged competitive, survival-of-the-fittest world. A complete transition occurs; from believing in a cooperative, selfless, loving world, resigned men especially became believers in a competitive, selfish, aggressive, must-win, power-fame-fortune-glory obsessed existence.

In saying that men especially become obsessed with an egocentric, must-win strategy, it needs to be explained that the form of winning Page 237 of
Print Edition or success in a claimed battle of the survival-of-the-fittest has been different for resigned men and resigned women. To understand this difference the roles men and women played in humanity’s recent, 2-million-year heroic journey to find understanding of the human condition first needs to be explained.

The different roles men and women have played is explained in detail in the first section of the next essay, ‘Bringing peace to the war between the sexes’. What follows is a very brief summary of that explanation. Nurturing was the priority activity for humanity during its infancy and childhood stage, which lasted from 10 million years ago, when, as was explained in the Plato essay, our ancestors began to develop love-indoctrination, to 2 million years ago when consciousness emerged. With the emergence of consciousness the priority activity changed from nurturing to having to defy and ultimately overthrow the ignorance of our instinctive self or soul. What our instinctive self or soul was ignorant of was our intellect’s need to search for knowledge. Since this threat of ignorance was a challenge to the group, namely humanity, and since men were the group protectors, it was men who had to take on the task of championing the intellect and defeating the ignorance of our soul. With this change in priorities humanity changed from being a matriarchal society to a patriarchal one.

Tragically, the only methods available to men to defy the soul’s implication that the intellect was wrong to search for knowledge was to attack the soul, block out its implied criticism, and try and prove the implied criticism wrong. In doing their job of battling ignorance men became angry, alienated and egocentric. They lost their innocence and became corrupted. Unable to explain their loss of innocence, men began to resent and attack innocence in all its forms because of innocence’s implied criticism of men’s lack of innocence. Since it was not women’s role to overthrow ignorance, and since it was important that women stay relatively free of the battle in order to retain as much innocence as they could to nurture a subsequent generation, women did not directly and actively participate in the fight against ignorance. This meant that women were largely unaware of the cause of the upset in men and therefore tended to be unsympathetic towards it. Being unjustly condemned by the relative innocence and naivety of women, men then retaliated and attacked women. Since women reproduced the species men could not destroy them and instead violated women’s innocence or ‘honour’ by Page 238 of
Print Edition rape; they invented ‘sex’, as in ‘fucking’ or destroying, as distinct from the act of procreation. What was being fucked or destroyed was women’s innocence. In this way women’s innocence was repressed and they came to share men’s upset. While sex was originally for procreation it became ‘perverted’, used to attack the innocence of women. In time the image of innocence in women, the physical beauty that ‘attracted’ sex, also became a means of inspiring the journey to self-understanding. This inspirational aspect meant that while at base sex was rape, on a nobler level, it became an act of love.

It needs to be explained how it was that the image of innocence, women’s physical beauty, became ‘attractive’. As will be summarised in the first section of the next essay, ‘Bringing peace to the war between the sexes’, and as was explained in the Plato essay, during the nurturing phase of humanity’s development, youthfulness was a highly sought after trait with which to mate with because the cooperative training of the love-indoctrination process wore off with age. Youthfulness became associated with cooperativeness and, since cute, neotenous, childlike features of a domed forehead, snub nose and large eyes were the attributes of youthfulness, they became sought after features. Our ape ancestors self-selected for cooperativeness, however as explained when the human condition emerged with consciousness some 2 million years ago men began to resent and attack women, because women’s innocence and naivety about what men were doing was perceived as criticism. Suddenly, instead of the neotenous image of innocence in women being cultivated because it was a sign of cooperativeness, it became a target for sexual destruction.

What this means is that throughout the battle to find understanding of the human condition, women were being forced to suffer the destruction of their soul, their innocence, while at the same time their image of innocence was being cultivated. We evasively described neotenous features as ‘attractive’ to avoid saying that what was being attracted was destruction, through sex, of women’s innocence. It can be seen that since all other forms of innocence were being destroyed, this image of innocence—‘the beauty of woman’—was the only form of innocence to be actively cultivated during humanity’s adolescence. Women’s beauty became men’s only equivalent for, and measure of, the beauty of their lost pure world. Consequently, women are now highly adapted to their role of supporting men in their battle against ignorance and inspiring them with their beauty. Stark evidence of Page 239 of
Print Edition this adaption is the countless number of women’s magazines, almost entirely dedicated to making women ‘more attractive’; they are sex-object manuals. It was little wonder men fell in love with women. The ‘mystery of women’ was that it was only the physical image or object of innocence that men were falling in love with; the illusion was that women were psychologically as well as physically innocent.

Understanding the different roles men and women played in humanity’s journey to enlightenment, and the effects of those roles, it is possible to explain the different effects resignation had on young men and women. The form of winning or success in the claimed competitive battle of the survival-of-the-fittest that resigned humans participated in was different for men and women.

Since it is men who took up the task of championing the ego, defying and defeating the ignorance of the instinctive world of our soul, when men resigned they became ego-centric; they became preoccupied with winning affirmation through power, fame, fortune and glory. Young pre-resigned men are not egocentric. They have a conscious thinking self or ego that needs reinforcement but it is not centred or focussed or preoccupied with gaining adulation and admiration for self. It is not self-centred and selfish; quite the opposite, it is focused on the issue of why humans are not concerned for others and selflessly behaved.

In comparison, women have been responsible for helping men and inspiring them with their beauty. It can now be explained that it is only resigned women who live off the reinforcement from men’s attention to their sex-object self. Young pre-resigned women are not preoccupied with being a successful sex-object; quite the opposite, they are preoccupied with such questions as why humans mis-use one another sexually. I remember talking to a group of 16-year-old school girls, almost all of whom were dressed in a way that showed they were preoccupied with gaining boys’ attention. There were two or three however that were dressed in simple, functional clothes and were not wearing make-up; girls who were not yet preoccupied with their sex-object self. These girls were still interested in questions about the extreme imperfections of the human situation (such as the glaring inequalities between humans) and, in general, still deeply interested in discussing the human condition. In fact the other girls tried to discourage these girls from their line of thinking and questioning, making comments such as, ‘Don’t you know there is no answer to those questions’, ‘Why don’t you get real and enjoy yourself; there Page 240 of
Print Edition is a spunk in Year 12 and he’s coming to the party on Saturday night.’ Once girls resign they are so intent on deriving reinforcement from men’s attention to their sex-object self that many who become anorexic and/or bulimic do so in an effort to make themselves more attractive. Women’s reinforcement from men has been their escape from the agony of the human condition.

It can be seen that resignation brought about a complete reorientation of a person’s life. The pre-resigned mind and the resigned mind are a world apart. Thankfully resignation and with it male egocentricity and female sex-object preoccupation can now subside and eventually end. With understanding of the human condition resignation is no longer necessary.

Resigned men and women adopted different ways of winning or succeeding in the claimed competitive battle of the survival-of-the-fittest that resigned humans decided they had to be part of. Of course it helped that nearly every other human around them was believing in, and living off the lies. The universal conspiracy of denial came to their aid; they were initiated into the cυlt of denial, brainwashed by themselves and almost everybody around them to believe in the great lie.

This then is how resigned people came to quickly accept humans’ divisive reality as normal and dismiss the truthful world of their soul. In so doing they lost the ability that unresigned minds have of thinking truthfully.

It should also be explained that after living a false, seemingly meaningless resigned existence for a number of years resigned adults could become so disenchanted with their selfish, aggressive, ugly, and in many ways destructive life that they could decide to abandon that way of living and take up support of some form of idealism. Having resigned and abandoned the world of the soul, they could become, as the revealing term says, ‘born-again’ supporters of the idealistic world of the soul again. They could become ‘born-again’ to religion, to supporting the left wing in politics, to being dedicated environmentalists, feminists, activists for the rights of indigenous people, or animal liberationists. These are pseudo forms of idealism because real idealism depended on defying and ultimately defeating the unjustly condemning idealism of the world of the soul, not on caving in to it. It is true that the battle to defy and defeat ignorance was corrupting and when people became overly corrupt they had to give up fighting ignorance and try and bring some soul and its world of soundness back into their lives. For those who had become overly Page 241 of
Print Edition corrupted, excessively angry and destructive, the adoption of a born-again strategy was a responsible reaction. The problem is, unable to explain and thus confront and admit their extremely corrupted and alienated state, they were using the born-again-to-‘idealism’ lifestyle to delude themselves that what they were doing was actually ideal. They deluded themselves that they held the ‘moral high ground’ when the truth is the opposite. They even used their born-again lifestyle to delude themselves that they were uncorrupted people. There was an extremely deluded, selfish aspect to their behaviour; a desire to, as their critics say, ‘feel-good’ about themselves. The truth is the born-again state is the most dishonest and alienated state humans could adopt.

(Note that much more is said about the immense delusion and danger of pseudo-idealism in chapters 8:15-8:16 of my 2016 book FREEDOM: The End Of The Human Condition which is freely available at <www.humancondition.com/freedom>. Also my 2021 book Death by Dogma provides a powerful exposé of the pseudo-idealistic, left-wing culture and it’s freely available at <www.humancondition.com/death-by-dogma>. Also see Freedom Essays 14, 34, 35 & 36 which are freely available at <www.humancondition.com/freedom-essays>.)

It should be emphasised that the great value of religions, compared to other forms of pseudo-idealism, is that in religion there is a high degree of honesty, a significant acknowledgment of the alienated state. This honesty is contained in the prophet around whom the religion is founded. By acknowledging the prophet and his denial-free thoughts a person’s own lack of honesty and soundness is indirectly acknowledged. Yet the problem with religions, and why they have in recent times become unpopular, is precisely this honesty. The more alienated people became, the less confronting honesty they could bear. Born-againers wanted more guilt-free forms of idealism to support, as this quote acknowledges: ‘The environment became the last best cause, the ultimate guilt-free issue’ (Time mag. 31 Dec. 1990).

While people who are resigned and not born-again to ‘idealism’ are living a false existence, they are still participating in the battle to defy the soul’s ignorance as to the true goodness or worthiness of humans. Those who are resigned and not born-again are ‘bullshitting’, living dishonestly; however those who have effectively quit the all-important battle and are pretending to be ideal are ‘double bullshitters’.

With understanding of the human condition it is not hard to understand what has been referred to as ‘prejudice’ against ‘idealism’. At a certain point the lies became suffocating, unbearable; especially the lie that humans’ lack of ideality means they are evil, inferior and worthless, and most especially the lie that people practicing born-again ‘idealism’ are themselves ideal.

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A pre-resigned adolescent

The moment of resignation

A bullshitter: a selfish, power-fame-fortune-and-glory seeking resigned adult

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A double bullshitter: a born-again resigned adult