Part 8:5 The denial of the nurturing origins of humans’ moral nature has been leading humanity to terminal alienation

What now has to be described is how science, the designated vehicle for human enquiry, has evaded the unbearable truth of the importance of nurturing in the development of our species, and in our own lives, by inventing theories about our origins that are now so dangerously dishonest, they threaten the human race with extinction.

Part 8:5A 140 years of madness

The truth of our corrupted human condition and of the integrative meaning or purpose of existence were two extremely obvious truths that, until we found the compassionate explanation and understanding for both, were so unbearably exposing, condemning and confronting that we, the human race, had no choice but to live in complete denial of them. For exactly the same reason, the truth of the importance of nurturing in both the maturation of our species and in the maturation of our own lives that was described in Part 8:4 has been another extremely obvious truth that has had to be denied because it too was unbearably condemning of our present unloved and unloving, human-condition-afflicted lives. And as we will see in Part 8:7A, the nature of consciousness is a further obvious truth that has also been so unbearably condemning that it too has been fiercely denied, to the extent that our conscious mind—nature’s greatest creation—has been deemed an inexplicable mystery.

In light of all this unavoidable denial, it is not surprising that these four great outstanding mysteries in science—of the explanation of the human condition, of the meaning of our existence, of the origin of our unconditionally selfless moral instincts, and of why we humans became conscious when other animals didn’t—hadn’t been solved. If you can’t confront the human condition you are in no position to find the explanation for it; and if you can’t admit to Integrative Meaning you obviously can’t explain what the meaning of our lives is; and if you can’t admit to the importance of nurturing you are in no position to explain the origin of humans’ unconditionally selfless moral nature; and if you can’t confront the truth of the nature of consciousness you are in no position to explain how it arose and what has prevented its development in other species.

Yes, the truth cannot be found from an evasive and thus dishonest position. Living in denial of the human condition and of any truths that bring it into focus means your search for truth and understanding is only ever going to end in a completely lost state of confused madness. For instance, as we saw in Part 4:12, mechanistic science initially tried to deny the existence of the human condition by dishonestly claiming that our selfish and competitive behaviour was a natural consequence of a supposed ‘survival of the fittest’ natural selection process, and that our selfless moral nature was actually a selfish strategy to help relatives or kin reproduce our genes. But that extreme dishonesty was both contrary to and offensive of the fact that we humans do have unconditionally selfless, loving, moral instincts, and so, in response to that backlash, a much cleverer way was then concocted to deny our species’ extreme sickness, its psychosis (as has been mentioned, the word psychosis literally means ‘soul-illness’). This contrivance was E.O. Wilson’s theory of Eusociality, which maintains there is no psychosis involved in the human condition, but that we simply have some unconditionally selfless instincts that exist alongside competitive, ‘survival of the fittest’ selfish ones, and that our human condition is the product of a conflict between those two instinctive states! Yes, the theory of Eusociality renders the human condition inconsequential, virtually benign—with the consequence of this extremely sophisticated denial being that the human race now faces terminal alienation, madness. Indeed, if this extreme dishonesty on the part of mechanistic science had not been exposed, as it has been through this presentation, then the stage was set for the extinction of our species.

In the case of humanity’s denial of Integrative Meaning, it was explained in Parts 4:4B and 8:2 that the way the upset human race eventually found to eliminate that truth was by making the integrative theme or purpose of existence out to be a supernatural deity we termed ‘God’, a subject or realm that supposedly had no place in science—an outrageous display of dishonesty that has led to all manner of blind, purpose-less, ultimately unaccountable, ridiculous interpretations of the natural selection process. And—as we will see in Part 8:7—a similar fate has also befallen the study of consciousness, which has been so characterised by denial and dishonesty that it too has resulted in the human race becoming lost in a completely bewildered state of intellectual confusion about the all-important issues of what consciousness actually is and how it emerged. And, lastly, in the case of that other key issue that is so critical to our understanding of ourselves, namely the origins of our moral nature, what will be revealed in this Part is that the denial of the importance of nurturing in the maturation of our species and in the maturation of our own lives has seen the 140 years that have passed since the American philosopher John Fiske first presented the nurturing explanation for our moral nature squandered through the development of extremely dishonest, alienated, mad biological theories—a tragic journey that has now culminated in the immensely dangerous Social Ecological Model, and its latest incarnation, the Self-Domestication Hypothesis, for our species’ altruistic instincts.

In short, what has just been outlined illustrates how, even though mechanistic science had no choice other than to practice denial of any truths that brought the issue of the human condition into focus until we found the true explanation of the human condition, such denial was an extremely dangerous practice. Yes, what has been described illustrates that, as necessary as they have been, the longer denials are practiced the more refined they become, so that in the end, after many decades of development, they inevitably become so sophisticated, so cleverly refined and so entrenched they effectively lock humanity onto a path to terminal alienation—to total derangement, death and extinction.