Part 4:14 Understanding of the human condition has had to be independently developed and promoted

Although the human condition has at last been explained and humanity can be free of the horror of its condition, a problem remains. As has now been explained and evidenced, the discipline of biology has coped with the issue of the true, psychologically upset state of our human condition by denying its existence. The problem for biology—in fact, for science as a whole—is how is it going to cope with the true explanation of the human condition now that it has arrived when it is so habituated to living in denial. The answer is that, to date, the scientific establishment hasn’t, in the main, been able to cope with it, which is why we have had to create an independent organisation, the WORLD TRANSFORMATION MOVEMENT, to develop and promote the true, human-psychosis explaining understanding of the human condition that is presented in Part 3:2, along with all the other vitally important denial-free, truth-based explanations, in particular of the origin of our species’ cooperatively orientated, moral instinctive self or soul that is presented in Part 8:4B, and the origin of our fully conscious mind that is presented in Part 8:4C.

What should happen when this full synthesis of explanation is presented to the scientific establishment is that it recognises its accountability and promotes it, but tragically the establishment is so habituated to living in denial that it won’t acknowledge and support these all-precious, human-race-liberating understandings, even though that is its mandate. Since ‘consciousness’ is the code word often used for the issue of the human condition—because consciousness is what caused the horror of the upset state of the human condition, it lies at the core of the issue—when Charles Birch said that ‘Biology right now awaits its Einstein in the realm of consciousness studies’ (ABC Radio National, Ockham’s Razor, 16 Apr. 1997) he was truthfully recognising that denial-based mechanistic science had failed to produce the insights humanity needed and that an inspired, different approach was necessary, specifically a denial-free approach. But when those desperately needed insights are finally found by a denial-free approach, no one wants to know about them! In a sense, all the claims made by our innumerable scientific institutions to want to assist the human race to find knowledge prove to be fraudulent.

In short, the scientific establishment will welcome new ideas and insights as long as they are not too insightful. The quote from Berdyaev that was mentioned in Part 4:10—that ‘reality’-‘sever[ed]’, ‘alienation of man’-‘based’, ‘meaning’-‘impossible’, ‘philosophy’-‘enslav[ing]’, mechanistic-‘objecti[vism]’ is ‘scientific terrorism’—turns out to be all too true. The truth about us humans has been, and continues to be, prohibited by mechanistic science.

And it is not as though we in the WTM haven’t tried mightily to interest the scientific establishment in these all-important insights. In December 1983, when the full synthesis of explanation of the human condition—including the explanation of our moral soul and the explanation of the origin of our fully conscious mind—was completed, I travelled to England to personally submit an 8,000 word summary of this all-problems-of-the-human-race-solving breakthrough synthesis to John Maddox (later Sir John Maddox), the then editor of Nature magazine, which at the time was considered the world’s leading science journal. I responsibly took the answers that save the world to the person in the world in charge of the search for it. I also submitted it to Colin Tudge, the then Features Editor of New Scientist magazine. Both declined to publish the article. In fact, it took much insistence by me of the importance of my submission for Maddox to even agree to see me. However, when I began the meeting by trying to convince him of the foundation truth of Integrative Meaning he became quite animated in his denial of it, saying to me twice that the concept of Integrative Meaning arising from Negative Entropy is ‘wrong’ (from audio recording of the 15 Dec. 1983 meeting). Soon after he terminated the meeting. My 1983 submission to Nature and to New Scientist can be read at <www.humancondition.com/nature>. In March 1989 over 800 review copies of my first book Free: The End Of The Human Condition, which contains a concise presentation of the synthesis, were sent to nearly all the scientific journals in the world. Other review copies were sent to leading scientists. There was virtually no response. There have been many other unsuccessful attempts since 1989 to interest scientific institutions in these ideas, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the International Primatological Society and the John Templeton Foundation. While some significant support for the synthesis was generated among eminent holistic scientists for my 1991 book Beyond The Human Condition (see <www.humancondition.com/ReviewsScientific>), and also in 2004 when I presented the synthesis as part of a proposed documentary about the issue of the human condition (commendations for the documentary proposal, such as from world-leading physicist Professor Stephen Hawking and Nobel Laureate Professor Charles Townes, can be viewed at <www.humancondition.com/doco-responses>), that support never led to wider interest in the synthesis in the scientific community.

While some of the interest generated as a result of the documentary proposal continues to this day, the overall situation remains that since there is no institution or structure or funding body that we can go to for support of these truthful insights into the human condition, it remains entirely up to the few people who comprise the WTM to develop and promote these world-saving insights.

That is a 2012 snapshot of what has happened—or ‘not happened’—on the science front in terms of the acceptance of these humanity-saving, fully accountable truthful insights into the human condition. A summary of the 30 years’ worth of submissions to the scientific establishment of these world-saving insights into the human condition, into the origins of our moral nature and conscious mind, and into the integrative meaning of existence is described in Part 8:6, and the full presentation can be read at <www.humancondition.com/full-history-of-rejection>. In terms of what acceptance or otherwise these insights have received from the general public, the story is even more dire because the overall response so far has not merely been the rejection of these concepts, but outright vilification and opposition. As is documented on our website at <www.humancondition.com/persecution>, over 20 years ago now a vicious campaign began against myself, those of us involved in supporting these ideas, and the WORLD TRANSFORMATION MOVEMENT itself. In 1995 this campaign of persecution, vilification and misrepresentation went public with the publication of a defamatory Australian Broadcasting Corporation television program and Sydney Morning Herald newspaper feature article. Produced by a minister of the Uniting Church, both these publications sought to stigmatise our organisation as a dangerous anti-social organisation and me as a deluded megalomanic leader. Ultimately, both publications were completely discredited by a series of official rulings and public apologies culminating in a 2010 court judgment that found my work was real science rather than the mindless dogma that characterises mind-controlling sects, which was how the defamatory publications sought to portray my work. As the full-page advertisement we ran in The Australian newspaper after our major court victory (see <www.humancondition.com/vindication>) explains, it was an incredibly hard-won and an incalculably precious victory against those who wanted to destroy us for daring to address the historically forbidden issue of the human condition—the one issue that had to be addressed and solved for there to be a future for the human race. Dealing as it does with the subject of self, the subjective dimension to life, and being the realm of enquiry where religion and science, faith and reason finally overlap, the issue of the human condition is naturally contentious. But that doesn’t justify throwing out the rule book on democratic, fair behaviour.

People are sometimes tempted to think that a good idea will withstand whatever resistance it encounters, but that is not true. In the English political philosopher John Stuart Mill’s 1859 essay On Liberty—a document considered a philosophical pillar of western civilisation—Mill emphasised this point when he said, ‘the dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of those pleasant falsehoods which men repeat after one another till they pass into commonplaces, but which all experience refutes. History teems with instances of truth put down by persecution. If not suppressed for ever, it may be thrown back for centuries’ (American state papers; On liberty; Representative government; Utilitarianism, 1952, p.280 of 476). The science historian Thomas Kuhn similarly argued that there is no guarantee truth will survive prejudice when he wrote, ‘In science…ideas do not change simply because new facts win out over outmoded ones…Since the facts can’t speak for themselves, it is their human advocates who win or lose the day’ (Shirley C. Strum, Almost Human, 1987—Strum’s references are to Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, second edn, 1970, p.164 of 294). Interestingly, Kuhn also recognised ‘that revolutions in science are often initiated by an outsider—someone not locked into the current model, which hampers vision almost as much as blinders would’ (ibid). Even Charles Darwin was ‘a lone genius, working from his country home without any official academic position’ (Geoffrey Miller, The Mating Mind, 2000, p.33 of 538). While there are certainly advantages to not being ‘hamper[ed]’ by ‘the current model’, the inherent danger of not being part of the establishment is that the ‘outsider’ is an easy, undefended target for those in the establishment who feel threatened by the outsider’s new ideas.

As mentioned in Part 4:12G, the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer summarised the baptism of fire new ideas in science have historically had to undergo when he ‘said that the reception of any successful new scientific hypothesis goes through predictable phases before being accepted’. First, ‘it is ridiculed’ and ‘violently opposed’. Second, after support begins to accumulate ‘it is stated that it may be true but it’s not particularly relevant’. Third, ‘after it has clearly influenced the field [including members of the establishment quickly remodelling/​plagiarising the ideas as their own discoveries, which unfortunately is something I have experienced] it is admitted to be true and relevant but the same critics assert that the idea is not original’. Finally, ‘it is accepted as being self-evident’ (compiled from two references to Schopenhauer’s quote—New Scientist, 15 Nov. 1984 and PlanetHood, Ferencz & Keyes, 1988). Note that each stage of recognition is achieved in a way that protects the ego of the onlookers. The extent of the insecurity caused by the human condition is very apparent. Because the ego or sense of self worth of each generation becomes attached to its view of the world, paradigm shifts typically have to be introduced by new generations. The physicist Max Planck succinctly described the historical reality of scientific progress when he said that ‘science progresses funeral by funeral’ (see his Scientific Autobiography, 1948). Kuhn similarly recognised that ‘the old scientists who became established within the dominant paradigm have to die off first: they will virtually never accept the new paradigm. Only the younger generation of scientists, who don’t have the emotional attachment to the old paradigm, will be willing to change their minds’ (a reference to the work of Kuhn by Marilyn Ferguson, New Age mag. Aug. 1982). The playwright George Bernard Shaw was another who warned of the true nature of progress when he said that ‘All great truths begin as blasphemies’ (from his play Annajanska, 1919).

But most importantly, in this, the greatest paradigm shift of all for the human race, from living in denial of the human condition to not living in denial of it, the TRANSFORMED LIFEFORCE STATE solves all the problems of the unbearably confronting exposure of our corrupted human condition that the arrival of the true understanding of our human condition unavoidably brings. The reason I said Max Planck was describing the ‘historical’ reality when he said that ‘science progresses funeral by funeral’ is because the TRANSFORMED STATE allows everyone to immediately leave behind the old paradigm and participate in the new human-condition-acknowledged-and-free paradigm.