Page 136 of
PDF Version Part 2 Coping With The Exposure That
Understanding Of The Human Condition
Unavoidably Brings

Section 28. The problem of the exposure of our corrupted condition that understanding of the human condition unavoidably brings

While the arrival of the dignifying and thus liberating biological understanding of our human condition is the ultimate breakthrough in the human journey to enlightenment there is an immense problem with its acceptance. While we humans couldn’t explain our corrupted, fallen state we sensibly coped with it by denying it and creating contrived, artificial excuses and forms of reinforcement to sustain our sense of self-worth. However with the arrival of this ameliorating truth about why we became so upset, all these artificial, fabricated denials, delusions and evasions that we have been using to cope are suddenly exposed. The truth destroys the lies, as it must, but we are now so habituated to the lies we find the truth hard to face. Honesty day, truth day, revelation day is also exposure day, transparency day, in fact the ‘judgement day’ many mythologies have long anticipated. While ‘judgement day’ is actually a day of great compassion—as an anonymous Turkish poet once said, it is ‘not the day of judgment but the day of understanding’ (National Geographic, Nov. 1987)—having the truth about our false selves revealed can feel like the foundations of our whole existence are being pulled from under us. When the all-precious reconciling, humanity-saving understanding of the human condition arrives, rather than it feeling like the long sought-after liberating fulfilment and reward for all our species’ accumulated efforts, it feels like a hurtfully exposing, vicious, even punishing attack. Again our mythologies have foreseen this problem. In the Bible the prophet Isaiah spoke of a time when the truth arrives, which ‘gives you relief from suffering and turmoil and cruel bondage…[that it] will come with vengeance; with divine retribution…to save you. Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped…Your nakedness will be exposed’ (14:3; 35:4,5; 47:3). The prophet Mohammed referred to ‘the Day of Reckoning’, describing it thus: ‘when the Trumpet is blown with a single blast and the earth and the mountains are lifted up and crushed with a single blow, Then, on that day, the Terror shall come to pass, and heaven shall be split…On that day you shall be exposed, not one secret of yours concealed’ (Koran, chpts 56, 69).

The essential problem that occurs when understanding of the human condition arrives is that the generation present at that junction are faced with too much change to have to adjust to. Alvin Toffler anticipated this crisis in his book Future Shock, writing, ‘Future shock…[is] the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time’ (1970, p.4).

Not only is the extreme falseness and artificiality of our lives suddenly exposed by the arrival of understanding of the human condition, our whole existing way of living and its world basically becomes a museum overnight, or at least over a very short time. Our escapist, self-distracting, materialistic way of living becomes a thing of the past and our competitive, ego-driven, divisive lifestyle is also obsoleted. People’s way of thinking and their interests change which means businesses will have to adjust. Schools and universities Page 137 of
PDF Version that teach truthless, denial-saturated, meaningless information are made redundant. Every aspect of human life is naturally going to be affected. In fact, as will become clear in the subsequent sections of this book, a whole new civilisation emerges to replace the old one. While so much sudden change is a shock we always knew that when understanding of the human condition comes it was going to change our world completely, end our existing way of living. Despite the initial shock the greater truth is the arrival of the dignifying understanding of ourselves will be a great relief for us all because our world is clearly reaching an end-point in its ability to absorb any more human-condition-induced upset and its suffering.

The problem then boils down to how are we to cope with the initial extreme exposure and change that understanding of the human condition inevitably brings?