Page 169 of
PDF Version 39. The Angry Adulthood Stage of Adolescent Humanity

This is our Angry Adolescentman stage, the time when we experience the reality of the frustration and anger from trying but failing to defeat the ignorance of our idealistic instinctive self or soul and have to learn to Self-Discipline and thus civilise our now overly upset state.

The species: Homo sapiens—0.5 to 0.05 million years ago

The individual: 30 to 40 years old

Drawing by Jeremy Griffith © 1991-2011 Fedmex Pty Ltd

Throughout our 20s we individually, or, in the case of humanity, H. erectus, settled into the long, corrupting journey to find understanding, ultimately self-understanding, understanding of why we became corrupted. Tragically the more we searched for knowledge the more upset we became, and, in the case of humanity, the more upset the human race as a whole became and the more new generations had to also contend with existing upset. It was an extremely upset-compounding situation. The development of integration chart at the beginning of this section depicts this rapid, exponential rate of increase in upset during humanity’s adolescence. When looking at the graph of that exponential curve we can see that for the first three-quarters of it (basically to the end of Adventurous Adolescentman, H. erectus’ long 1 million year reign) the rate of increase in upset was not great. However we can see that in the last quarter of that time period (during the half-million years’ or so reign of Angry Adolescentman, H. sapiens) that the graph steepens markedly and then in the final 50,000 years (during the reign of Pseudo Idealistic Adolescentman, H. sapiens sapiens) the graph enters into a nose-dive—upset begins to compound at an extremely rapid rate. The nose-dive ends with the rise of human-condition-understood-and-thus-ameliorated Triumphantman, or Godman. The emergence of Triumphantman signals the end of humanity’s search for its identity, which was its adolescence, and the arrival of humanity’s adulthood where humanity has to implement that identity and knowingly and securely manage the development of order of matter.

A contributing factor to the speeding up of this progression in upset was the hardships and confinement of life during the four great ice ages that occurred in what is known as the Pleistocene epoch—the period from 1.8 million years to 10,000 years ago. The ice ages contributed to the increase in upset because they dramatically accentuated the difficulties Page 170 of
PDF Version encountered by humans coexisting under the strain of the human condition. Isolation from encounter with the battle minimised the spread of exhaustion. If we were each alone with our level of exhaustion we would not be criticised by the fresher souls or corrupted by the more battle-worn. It was because of this truth that we often said we ‘had to make an effort’ if we were to go out and be social. Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre encapsulated the difficulty of coexistence for upset, alienated humans when he said, ‘Hell is other people’ (Closed Doors, 1944). As will be referred to again in more detail later, increasing levels of alienation were also the reason we had to abandon living together in large extended families and develop the concept of individual homes on separate plots of land for each couple. We had to develop a social structure that accommodated our alienation, that allowed us to be alienated or estranged. Our world tended to become as alienated as we were so that we could live in it the way we were. Life towards the bottom of the graph charting the compounding increase in upset was so difficult that even coupling proved unworkable for some with marriage breakdown a common occurrence. The closer humans lived together during humanity’s adolescence and/or the more difficult the living conditions, the greater the occurrence and spread and thus increase in upset. Cold climate winters are particularly confining and testing so when the great ice ages occurred each did, in effect, represent one very long trying winter. It is not surprising then that the next more upset/ soul-exhausted/ embattled/ alienated stage of humans emerged out of the hardship of each of the great ice ages: from the rigours of the first great ice age, called the Günz Ice Age, came the flowering of H. erectus. H. sapiens emerged after the second ice age called the Mindel Ice Age while Neanderthal man, a precursor of H. sapiens sapiens, appeared after the third ice age called the Riss Ice Age. H. sapiens sapiens emerged after the Würm Ice Age, the fourth (and last) ice age. Each ice age contributed significantly to the culling of the human race in terms of humans’ adaption to life under the duress of the human condition. In fact as upset increased throughout humanity’s adolescence many must have, in effect, quit the great battle humanity was waging against the ignorance of our instinctive self or soul through not being able to endure the degree of compromise to their soul that was increasingly being demanded of them, leaving only the most courageous and enduring. Just how toughened the human race has become is now hidden under layer upon layer of self-restraint, or what we call ‘civility’. This restraining, civilising process will be explained shortly but the point being made here is that beneath our facade of restraint and manufactured positiveness, which was needed to cope with the horror of the human condition, lies a highly genetically toughened person.

To take up again where we were with humanity’s journey through its adolescence: by the age of 30 in the case of the individual, or by some half a million years ago in the case of humanity, the exponential increase in upset meant that the levels of upset had passed the graph of upset’s inflection point and entered the stage where upset increased rapidly. Upset, namely anger, egocentricity and alienation, increased dramatically from that time onwards and while all the adjustments that were made during the Adventurous 20s had served us individually—and, in the case of humanity, H. erectus—well there was now a need to take more specific measures to manage the new extreme levels of upset.

If we consider what happened to the 21 year old more closely we can see why management of upset had become such a serious matter. Despite the bravery and courage and sheer optimism of the 21 year old it wasn’t long before the reality of trying to win the battle of proving you were good and not bad started to sour. Gradually he or she came to Page 171 of
PDF Version experience the full extent the difficulty of practicing self-management without an adequate defence for the mistakes that result. The problem was the harder you fought the more criticism you attracted from your idealistic soul and thus the more upset you became. Also you were increasingly encountering the upsetting difficulty of trying to survive and compete with other embattled humans who were also trying to prove their worth. The resulting compounding of upset meant that by the time you were 30 you were becoming very frustrated and angry and by the time you reached your mid-30s you were becoming a seriously upset, embattled person. In the case of those who had resigned, the hope of proving you were good and not bad through winning power, fame, fortune and glory rapidly began to reveal itself as futile. What wins you had achieved soon showed themselves to be hollow wins, empty of any real relief and satisfaction for the underlying insecurity of your human condition. The more you fought to prove your worth through power, fame, fortune and glory the more you seemed only to reveal yourself as a deluded fool. For a while you fought even harder for the relief that you thought being a winner would give you but paradoxically it only made you more frustrated, angry and retaliatory towards cooperative ideality for its increasing condemnation of you. What was happening was that the delusions that you were trying to live off were only fuelling your soul’s criticism of your ego, compounding your sense of guilt, your insecurity of self. By the age of 30 the frustration and upset for the resigned was becoming very great and by their mid-30s, extreme. While 20 year olds were naive about the difficulties of living under the duress of the human condition, 30 year olds had become realists about such an existence. When 1960s social activist Jerry Rubin said, ‘Don’t trust anyone over thirty’, he was speaking the truth in terms of over 30 year olds no longer being youthfully idealistic about what you could hope to achieve living under the duress of the human condition. I Was Only Joking is the name of a song written by Gary Grainger and Rod Stewart, and which Stewart released in 1977. It contains lyrics that describe well the reality check of reaching 30: ‘Me and the boys thought we had it sussed / Valentinos all of us / …running free / Waging war with society / …But nothing ever changed / …What kind of fool was I / I could never win / …Illusions of that grand first prize / are slowly wearing thin / … I guess it had to end’.

Unable to defend corruption it hasn’t been possible to admit it, however this Japanese proverb does in effect acknowledge the stages of its development: ‘At 10 man is an animal, at 20 a lunatic, at 30 a failure, at 40 a fraud and at 50 a criminal’. With understanding of the human condition we can explain these stages. Ten year olds were ‘animals’ in the sense that their instinctive selves were unrepressed. Twenty year old young men in particular were ‘lunatics’ in the sense that they were swashbuckling cavaliers who believed they could take on and overthrow the ignorant world. They deluded themselves that they could actually defeat the oppressive foe of ignorance, or, from the resigned mind’s point of view, that they could actually achieve satisfaction through winning power, fame, fortune and glory. Thirty year old men were ‘failures’ in the sense that, even though they were still determinedly trying to defy the inevitable, they were being forced to accept that the task of defeating ignorance was going to be well and truly beyond them in their lifetime, or, from the resigned mind’s point of view, they were being forced to accept that the corrupting life of seeking power, fame, fortune and glory was not going to be a genuinely meaningful and thus satisfying way of living. As will be described shortly, when the 40 year old stage is explained, 40 year old men in particular were ‘frauds’ in the sense that they had become so corrupted and disenchanted with their efforts to ‘conquer the world’ that they suffered a Page 172 of
PDF Version ‘mid-life crisis’; a crisis of confidence that resulted in them deciding to take up support of some form of ‘idealism’ in order to make themselves feel better about their corrupted state. Having had enough of the critically important, yet horribly corrupting battle to champion the ego over soul, they effectively changed sides to become ‘born-again’ supporters of the soul’s ‘idealistic’ world. The last time they were sympathetic to the soul’s ideal world was when they were children just beginning to experiment in self-management. When they made this ‘born again’ conversion to taking up support of some form of idealism they were ‘fraud[s]’ because they were deluding themselves that they were at last on the side of good when in truth they were working against good in the sense that good depended on defying and defeating—not supporting—the ignorant ‘idealistic’ world of the soul. As will be described when the 50 year old stage is explained, 50 year old men in particular were ‘criminals’ in the sense that they were beaten on every front and had become bitter and vengeful; their attempts to defeat ignorance or, in the case of the resigned, win power, fame, fortune and glory had proved neither effective or satisfying, and nor had the fraudulent, immensely deluded life of being born-again to supporting the soul’s world of ‘ideality’.

Thus we can see that the 30 year old stage or, in the case of humanity, the lives of H. sapiens, was characterised by extreme frustration and anger. While they hadn’t given in and were still determinedly trying to defy the inevitability of becoming completely corrupted, they were being forced to accept that the task of defeating ignorance was going to be beyond them. Thirty year olds/ H. sapiens had entered the rapidly deteriorating stage in the development of upset where they were brought into contact with the destructive and depressing horror of being excessively upset.

Self-Discipline

It was at this point that radical measures had to be taken to contain the upset. The solution was to practice self-restraint of the upset. Still lacking the exonerating explanation of the human condition that could relieve our anger, all we could do was learn to discipline ourselves, contain our rage. Through bitter experience we learnt to rein in the expressions of upset. Fully aware that upset was not desirable we had been trying to, with varying success, practice self-restraint of our upset ever since upset first appeared in our childhood. What happened in our 30s when upset started to become seriously destructive of the social/ integrated fabric of our society was that self-discipline became a critically necessary part of our behaviour, something that everyone had to make sure they practiced. We learnt to manufacture a calm, controlled, even compassionate and considerate exterior and conceal the real extent of our by now inner savage fury from being so unjustly condemned by the Godly ideals. We, as we say, civilised our upset, brought it under control. ‘Civilise’ in the Encyclopedic World Dictionary means ‘to make civil; bring out of a savage state; elevate in social and individual life; enlighten; refine’ (1971). While our forebears were once innocent and free of any anger and savagery it is true that by our 30s/ H. sapiens stage we had become ‘savage’ with anger and if we didn’t restrain that fury it would express itself in an extremely destructive way. (Note, it should be emphasised here that, as was explained in Section 16, in the old evasive, denial-complying, pre-human-condition-understood world, all our early forebears were denigrated as ‘savage’, ‘wild’, ‘fierce’, ‘primitive’, ‘barbarian’ ‘brutes’ and ‘beasts’ as part of the false excuse that our species has a competitive ‘survival of the fittest’ biological heritage when the truth is the majority of our history was spent living in a Page 173 of
PDF Version totally integrated loving state. The fact of the matter is the ‘savage state’ didn’t emerge until our mid 30s/ H. sapiens stage.) In Freudian terms civilising our upset meant developing a ‘super ego’, an ability to restrain, contain and repress our upset ego. The super ego watched over the ego and tried to mediate between it and the ideals of our conscience. In Jungian terms the now-much-repressed real upset self that occasionally could break loose was our ‘shadow’. This non-civilised or non-restrained real self is also what we have referred to as our ‘evil’ side.

Since this self-discipline and its civility has been the main way of managing our extremely upset state and has been practiced for so long now in human existence it has become to large extent an automatic, instinctive behaviour in humans, so much so we now hardly notice we are practicing it, to the extent that we are hardly aware of just how upset we really are underneath our restrained exterior. As was emphasised in Section 26, the truth is there is immense upset within us as a species from living for so long with the injustice of being condemned as evil, bad and worthless when we intuitively knew we weren’t but couldn’t explain why we weren’t. Morris West offered rare honest insight into the extent of the upset that exists in all humans now when he said in part: ‘The disease of evil [now able to be understood as upset] is pandemic; it spares no individual, no society, because all are predisposed to it…I know that, given the circumstances and the provocation, I could commit any crime in the calendar’.

Through civility, we not only concealed the extent of our anger and egocentricity, we also concealed the extent of our alienation—the extent of our estrangement from our original, unembattled, upset-free, happy, innocent true selves. We manufactured smiles and politely greeted acquaintances with ‘good morning’ and asked ‘how are you?’ and talked about totally non-confronting subjects such as the weather. In order not to be overcome by the true negativity of life under the duress of the human condition we have had to, as is said, ‘put on a brave face’, ‘keep our chin up’, ‘stay positive’, ‘keep up appearances’—the actor David Niven once said people actually ‘had a duty to be cheerful’. ‘Good manners’ is a term that we use without properly explaining it, because, once again, we were unable to acknowledge the issue of the human condition. The term means knowing that you have to avoid letting your upset feelings show. Such civility and positiveness, while it made living together possible, was an extreme form of pretence—of being what we were not. This falseness, while highly destructive of any young innocents looking on, was however far less destructive than allowing our real upset to express itself. While civility has been very necessary it now masks the extent to which we have blocked out the truth of our upset, corrupted condition. The extent of upset within humans even today only reveals itself in situations where our carefully controlled facade of restraint is discarded, such as in situations of war and sex. When we put on scary masks we were exorcising our real upset self; we were being honest about ourselves. We were saying ‘this is what I am really like’. The Greeks call masks ‘ekstasis’, a word which means ‘to stand outside oneself’. When we stand outside ourselves we are then looking into our self and seeing our real self. R.D. Laing spoke the truth about just how upset our species has become when he said, ‘The condition of alienation…is the condition of the normal man…between us and It [the issue of our non-ideal state] there is a veil which is more like fifty feet of solid concrete’.

The word ‘sapiens’ in H. sapiens is Latin for ‘wise’ or ‘knowing’. It is true that by our mid 30s we had finally experienced and thus become fully aware of and thus realistic about life under the duress of the human condition. We were at last ‘wise’ to and ‘knowing’ Page 174 of
PDF Version about the full horror of living with the human condition. What we did however as a result of making that realisation was to restrain/ discipline/ civilise the upset that we had encountered. We hid the reality of our true state under a facade of controlled togetherness. If we were to give an honest psychological description of what happened in our 30s the label ‘False man’ would therefore be more appropriate than ‘Wise man’, however, obviously wanting to live in denial of the human condition, needing to put a positive spin on the situation, the choice of ‘Wise man’ was preferable, but it was not the full story by any means.

It has to be emphasised that adopting self-discipline did not mean we had stopped the corrupting search for knowledge; we had just decided to try not to allow the expressions of it to show. When the 40 year old stage is explained shortly we will see that when upset developed even further, some were forced to abandon and even side against the corrupting search for knowledge in a far more drastic attempt to slow the increase in upset. Also, as has been emphasised, being self-restrained didn’t eliminate the upset in ourselves, it merely disguised it. While we were upset we learnt to behave as though we weren’t. Instead of expressing our hate, anger and fury with ‘the world’ we learnt ways to contain it and act cooperatively. While we manufactured discipline/ restraint on the surface, the truth was we were still extremely angry and upset underneath. Self-discipline was the art of containing and hiding our anger, not resolving it. Restraint bought time for humanity; it held humanity back from complete social disintegration and did allow us to feel much better about ourselves but it was a major step in humans becoming more dishonest/ false/ alienated. When teaching the subject of human culture in school, students were taught about a society’s rituals, manners, customs, mythologies, costumes, styles of dwellings and diet etc but, as has been mentioned, what human culture was really all about was passing on techniques for coping with the upset state of the human condition. While societies needed to pass on practical skills for living, such as ways of acquiring food and avoiding predators, these were of minor concern compared to the need to develop and pass on ways of restraining upset.

Being civilised was all very well but it did mean bottling-up our frustrations and angers and this produced another problem of how to relieve that pent-up state. Unable to be honest about our internal upset we had to learn to valve off in ways that weren’t destructive. The origin of humour for example has never been able to be properly explained but once it is understood how false humans became the source of humour becomes clear. For the most part, adults maintain a carefully constructed facade of denial but every now and again they make a mistake, they ‘slip-up’, and the truth of their real situation is revealed, providing the basis for humour. Occasionally situations occurred where the extreme denial, self-deception, delusion, artificiality, alienation became apparent and transparent, and in those moments the truth of that immense falseness was revealed and seen for what it really was—so farcical it was funny, in fact a joke. When someone fell over, for instance, it was humorous because suddenly their carefully constructed, civilised image of togetherness disintegrated. We take humour for granted now as being a natural part of our make-up but there was a time when there was no humour because prior to becoming false there was nothing very comic or silly or funny about humans to laugh about.

It should be acknowledged here that distracting and mood-lightening humour, while very important to us when we were exhausted, was infuriatingly distracting if we were Page 175 of
PDF Version still trying to confront and understand the reason for the suffering in the world. The Bible contains no jokes or humour because the Bible is not evading the real problems on Earth. It is not concerned with self-distraction, with escaping, with relief. Many minds became so committed to evasion they went off in search of a joke as soon as a conversation began. Humour however is the opposite to seriousness and in truth humanity’s plight has been extremely serious.

Swearing has been another way of tearing down and breaking free from the extreme dishonesty of our condition. A stark measure of just how dishonest humans have been is that we don’t even have an everyday word for all the evasions and denials and delusions we practice every minute of the day—of integrative meaning, of a soulful past for our species, of the existence of our immensely alienated human-condition-afflicted, corrupted state etc, etc—that is, except for the swear word ‘bullshit’, or ‘BS’ or ‘bull’ or ‘crap’. So, to use the only language we have available for one of the most dominant activities of human life—even, as we have been discovering, in the claimed objective discipline of science—the whole of humanity is ‘full of it’, in fact ‘it is so up to here in it’ it is a ‘fucking joke’. To understand why ‘fuck’ is such a powerful swear word we only have to acknowledge the truth of what sex really is. As was explained in Section 22, while sex at its noblest level was something that marvellously complemented the human journey and as such has truly been an act of love, it has nevertheless at base been about attacking innocence (which women represent) for innocence’s unjust condemnation of humans’ (especially men’s) lack of innocence. ‘Fuck’ means destroy or ruin, and what is being destroyed or ruined or sullied is innocence or purity. Such was the horror of the human condition; while humans were unable to explain their lack of innocence they had no choice but to use denial, retaliation and oppression to hold at bay the unjust criticism they were having to endure because of their divisive state. Sex has been such a preoccupation of humans and yet everyone lives in denial of the truth that it is at base an attack on innocence. This makes sex one of the biggest lies and thus jokes of all, which is why using the word ‘fuck’ is such a powerful attack on the world of lies, and thus such a powerful swear word. Swearing has been a way to be honest, a way to tear through all the denial, a way of admitting humans are living in an ocean of dishonesty. In one sense the civilised state, which required that humans avoid swearing, was marvellous because it made life bearable by concealing the ugliness of humans’ extremely false condition, but in another sense it made life unbearable because it hid the truth of humanity’s extraordinarily dishonest state. The importance of your adherence to or adoption of civility depended on your position: did you want to contribute to the maintenance of the lie, or did you want to relieve the world of its lying?

Of course civilising our upset didn’t stop its development, it only concealed and helped contain it. Inevitably, as the corrupting search for knowledge continued, levels of upset were only going to grow until eventually, by our late 30s, we/ H. sapiens were in a rage of hate and anger. Because of the compounding effect of upset we became immensely embattled, ‘punch drunk’ in fact, and this made us absolutely desperate about our situation. On reaching this state of extreme anger and destructiveness we began to hate even ourselves. Life had become both personally and socially unbearable. This produced a crisis, the well-known ‘the mid-life crisis’ of the early 40 year old, or in the case of humanity, of H. sapiens sapiens who emerged from H. sapiens some 50,000 years ago.