Chapter 5:7 The role of nurturing in our development has been an unbearably confronting truth

Before continuing, it needs to be re-emphasised just how unbearably confronting this discussion about the importance of nurturing in the development of our species has been without the compassionate understanding of the human condition. The tragic reality has been that ever since the terrible battle broke out between our original all-loving instinctive self or soul and our newer conscious mind and our present immensely upset angry, egocentric and alienated human condition emerged (as was described in chapter 3), no child has been able to be given anything like the psychosis-and-neurosis-free, pure love all infants were given back in this nurturing phase in our primate past. And unable, until now, to explain why humans have become so psychologically upset and thus unable to adequately love our infants, such talk about the role that nurturing has played in the maturation of our species—and continues to play in our individual upbringing today, since we are all born still instinctively expecting to receive such pure, unconditional love—has been unbearable. So yes, it is only now that we can explain why humans have become psychologically embattled and unable to adequately nurture our children that we can safely admit the crucial role that nurturing has played in human development. (Much more will be said in chapter 6 about how unconfrontable this nurturing explanation of human origins has been and, as a result, how human-condition-avoiding mechanistic science has denied the truth of the nurturing origins of our unconditionally selfless moral nature.)

While it has been unbearable and thus unconfrontable, the truth, nevertheless, is that nurturing was the all-important influence in the maturation of our species and remains the all-important influence in the maturation of our individual lives. The female gender created humanity, and, while under the duress of the upset state of the human condition it has rarely been possible to adequately nurture our offspring, the importance of nurturing in producing a secure, sound adult remains paramount. The archetypal image of the Madonna and child that is such a feature of Christian mythology—which I depicted in the drawing that appears at the beginning of this chapter—is all-meaningful because for Christ to have been such a sound, unresigned, denial-free-thinking person he must have had an exceptionally nurturing mother. So when the author Olive Schreiner wrote the following passage she was, in fact, articulating the agonising reality for virtually all mothers who suffer under the duress of the human condition: ‘They say women have one great and noble work left them, and they do it ill…We bear the world and we make it. The souls of little children are marvellously delicate and tender things, and keep for ever the shadow that first falls on them, and that is the mother’s or at best a woman’s. There was never a great man who had not a great mother—it is hardly an exaggeration. The first six years of our life make us; all that is added later is veneer’ (The Story of an African Farm, 1883, p.193 of 300). Yes, while nurturing is crucial in producing a sound, functional human—as the saying goes, ‘The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world’—this comment in a story about the failure of many mothers to adequately nurture their offspring shows just how unbearable a truth it has been: ‘For a lot of women the only really important anchor in their lives is motherhood. If they fail in a primary role they feel should come naturally it is devastating for them’ (‘The Deserted Mothers’ Club’, The Weekend Australian Magazine, 30 Nov. 2013). But, as will be explained in chapter 8:16D, the role that men had to take up of championing the search for knowledge when the fully conscious mind emerged was so psychologically crippling that they also contributed greatly to the corruption of the souls of each new generation of humans—so the unbearable ‘guilt’ from not being able to adequately nurture our children has not been confined to women, as this quote from the bestselling author of books for and about children, John Marsden, makes clear: ‘The biggest crime you can commit in our society is to be a failure as a parent and people would rather admit to being an axe murderer than being a bad father or mother’ (‘A Single Mum’s Guide to Raising Boys’, Sunday Life, The Sun-Herald, 7 Jul. 2002).