Section 1:8 How does this liberate a criminal or a drug addict, and does it condone criminal behaviour?

QUESTION: ‘You said this explanation liberates everyone, so how, for example, does it liberate a convicted criminal or a drug addict—and are you condoning criminal behaviour?’

ANSWER: Using the Adam Stork analogy, if we look at Adam’s life, he’s condemned as bad when he isn’t, but he can’t explain why he isn’t bad. Can you imagine a more torturous situation to have to endure?! While we can now understand that Adam Stork is an absolute hero, up to now everyone has been saying he is an evil, guilty villain, so of course when he becomes extremely upset old Adam Stork is going to be pretty keen to get his hands on some heroin to escape the unjust abusive world he is having to endure; and of course he’s going to get very angry and vengeful and commit crimes. BUT, his ability to understand his behaviour now means he no longer needs to get written off through drugs, or get even through crime—he can now explain himself.

This understanding of the human condition doesn’t legitimise or condone the upset behaviour that exists in all humans to varying degrees, what it does is heal it, end it. Everyone comes in from the cold now, everyone is rehabilitated—as Jung said, ‘wholeness for humans depends on the ability to own their own shadow’. Our sanity depended on being able to understand ourselves at last.

So you can see that finding understanding of the human condition is what TRANSFORMS the whole human race, all of us—‘unites’ the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ in us all, as Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony proclaimed.