Part 10:3 Unresigned Prophets

Individuals who fall within the first category of Unresigned Prophets, as has already been explained, are extremely rare. In a 1983 interview between myself and the distinguished Australian zoologist, author and broadcaster Anthony Barnett, who was then Professor of Zoology at the Australian National University in Canberra, emphasised the rarity of denial-free thinkers when he said that ‘In the whole of written history there are only two or three people who have been able to think on this [all-confronting, macro] scale about the human condition’ (From recorded interview conducted with Prof. Barnett by this author, 15 Jan. 1983). I didn’t ask Professor Barnett who he thought the ‘two or three people’ were but I imagined he was referring to Christ and one or two of the other prophets around which great religions were formed. Plato might have been one of the people he was thinking of but I cannot be sure. Later I will list those individuals from contemporary times, the last 300 years or so, whom I think can be regarded as either Unresigned or Resigned Prophets. Of those, the ones who have lived since Darwin put forward his idea of natural selection in 1859, and who therefore had the benefit of his insight into the orientating mechanism of instincts, are Charles Darwin himself (1809–1882), Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), Olive Schreiner (1855–1920), A. B. ‘Banjo’ Paterson (1864–1941), Eugène Marais (1872–1936), Nikolai Berdyaev (1874–1948), Carl Jung (1875-1961), Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955), Kahlil Gibran (1883–1931), D.W. Winnicott (1896–1971), Sir James Darling (1899–1995), Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900–1944), Louis Leakey (1903–1972), Joseph Campbell (1904–1987), Arthur Koestler (1905–1983), Sir Laurens van der Post (1906–1996), Simone Weil (1909–1943), Albert Camus (1913–1960), Ilya Prigogine (1917–2003), Charles Birch (1918–2009), Robert A. Johnson (1921–), John Morton (1924–2011), R.D. Laing (1927–1989), Dian Fossey (1938–1985), Stuart Kauffman (1939–), Paul Davies (1946–), and, since I have been able to look into and explain the human condition, myself (1945–). In terms of which of these may have been able to explain the human condition before 1983 when I took the explanation to England, we can begin by considering who amongst them, apart from myself, were Unresigned Prophets—because, as stated, it was going to require an exceptional denial-free thinker to explain the human condition and such a thinker would have to come from the Unresigned Prophet category. Certainly in my view Sir Laurens van der Post was an Unresigned Prophet. Possibly so too were Sir James Darling, Charles Darwin and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. I am confident all the others belong in the category of Resigned Prophets. Thus the candidates for an exceptional denial-free thinking, human-condition-solving prophet are van der Post, Darling, Darwin and de Chardin. Since no one had, to my knowledge, explained the human condition prior to 1983, none of these four men could have been exceptional denial-free thinkers because if they had been they would have explained it, so crucial an issue is the human condition to a mind that is exceptionally free of denial and so accessible an explanation is it for such a mind that has the benefit of Darwin’s idea of natural selection. There are possibly other post-1859 Unresigned Prophets who I have not become aware of, although it is remarkable how each one of them became aware of the others so that if there are more I suspect I would have read or heard about them through references to them made by those I have become aware of. While there are billions of people and many cultures in the world, there are only a few regions left where a degree of innocence survives, and in a realm where there is a good education system in place to protect and foster soundness while giving access to the history of knowledge. Even if there are others who I have not become aware of the same argument applies: since the human condition wasn’t, to my knowledge, explained before 1983 an educated and exceptionally unresigned thinker seemingly didn’t exist among them.

So, the situation is that if van der Post, Darling, Darwin and de Chardin were Unresigned Prophets but were unable to explain the human condition then they can’t have been exceptional denial-free thinking, human-condition-solving, Unresigned Prophets. In the earlier mentioned spectrum of soundness that existed amongst Unresigned Prophets, it appears that these men must fall into those not sufficiently sound to explain the human condition, as will now be explained.

At this point what needs to be explained again is how when we were young children and still thinking completely honestly and thus effectively we knew the truth about our destiny. We didn’t know exactly what would happen in our adult lives but we did know the general form it would take as a result of how hurt our original instinctive self or soul was in our infancy and early childhood. This was briefly explained in Part 10:1 when the prophet Joseph’s authoritativeness as a young man was described. From a young age Joseph knew he would be able to achieve extraordinary things because he was sufficiently sound and secure to not ever have to adopt a strategy of denial. When we are children we have a clear awareness of the imperfections or otherwise of our circumstances and think truthfully about the consequences. If those circumstances were not ideal, as was the case in nearly everyone’s lives, then we rapidly began to stop thinking about those unhappy consequences, but the point is there was a time in everyone’s life when we knew the basic path our life was going to follow. In that brief time in our early childhood of total honesty and thus insightfulness we all knew of the immense problem facing humanity of the dilemma of the human condition, the issue of the extreme imperfection of human life and, knowing that crux problem, we made an assessment of our chances of being able to contribute to its solution. For the very rare exceptionally fortunate, those exceptionally loved and nurtured in their infancy and early childhood, they knew they could make a difference and the precise nature of it. When we talked of people being driven by a ‘vision’ this is essentially what we were talking about. We were talking about an awareness in someone of having the opportunity to make a special contribution to the underlying battle that humanity has been engaged in. People with such guiding visions were very difficult to deter from their path because they were carrying such a strong awareness of what they could and must do from such a young age that it was as if they were owned or possessed by their vision. As they progressed through life all the battles they would face would erode the clarity of the vision they had as a child but such visions were so powerful they would still be owned, directed and guided by it. All those who couldn’t see a way for themselves to make an exceptional contribution to humanity’s battle to overcome the problem of the human condition and instead who saw how they were going to have to be preoccupied with all manner of hurt, and in particular need for self-distraction and egocentric reinforcement, they learnt very quickly to forget their unhappy destiny. Everyone was born a truthful, denial-free thinking and thus insightful prophet, but few could afford to stay thinking so truthfully and insightfully. Most had to forget what they could see, just get on with their life as best they could. As will be described in more detail when Resignation is fully explained later, while the main Resignation to the imperfections of life typically occurred when people were about fifteen years of age, there were many mini resignations prior to that major one.

This quote from Sir Laurens van der Post recognises the essence of what has just been explained: ‘Human beings know far more than they allow themselves to know: there is a kind of knowledge of life which they reject, although it is born into them: it is built into them’ (A Walk with a White Bushman, 1986, p.142 of 326). While knowledge of our particular destiny is not something we are ‘born’ with, we are born with a depth of soundness and thus sensitivity that does give us a special ‘knowledge of life’.

In the case of Sir Laurens van der Post, Sir James Darling, Charles Darwin and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, they were all possessed by a vision that they could make a special contribution to overcoming the great and terrible impasse before the human race of the human condition. As we will see, it wasn’t a vision of being able to solve the human condition but in each case it was a vision of being able to make a valuable contribution towards the finding of that solution. By inference, they knew they weren’t sound enough to fully confront and solve the human condition but they did know they were sufficiently sound to make a valuable contribution towards that solution. They saw an opening in that great and terrible impasse before the human race of the problem of the human condition that they realised they had sufficient soundness to push through and advance humanity that much further towards its goal of solving that condition.

The online version of my second book, Beyond The Human Condition (1991), contains the following dedication that summarises the vision of three men who had such visions. (While I don’t regard Louis Leakey as an Unresigned Prophet, I do think he was a Resigned Prophet, so people who were not sound enough to avoid Resignation could also have a vision in their childhood of making a special contribution to humanity’s battle, but obviously the less sound you were the less exceptional the contribution.)

This book is dedicated to the vision of Sir Laurens van der Post:

‘…for I had a private hope of the utmost importance to me. The Bushman’s physical shape combined those of a child and a man: I surmised that examination of his inner life might reveal a pattern which reconciled the spiritual opposites in the human being and made him whole…it might start the first movement towards a reconciliation…’ Laurens van der Post, The Heart of the Hunter, 1961, p.135 of 233.

And that of Sir James Darling who acknowledged that:

‘…the future lies not with the predatory and the immune but with the sensitive who live dangerously…the truly sensitive mind is both susceptible and penetrating: it is open to new ideas, and it seeks truth at the bottom of the well. It is the development of this sort of mind which it should be the object of the educational process to cultivate’ James Darling, The Education of a Civilized Man, 1962, pp.63-64 of 223.

And that of Dr Louis Leakey who foresaw:

‘…that knowledge of the past would help us to understand and possibly control the future’ Mentioned by Dr Mary Leakey in her book Disclosing the Past, 1984, p.211 of 224.