The Great Hurdle
The telephone was invented almost 150 years ago. Now we have mobile smart phones - which can also send/receive text messages and emails, take and share and store photos, play music, play videos, play games, double as an alarm clock and calculator, access the internet for all kinds of information, and much more. It hasn’t taken long for this astonishing development in technology. Humans can be very intelligent, as well as able to recognise a good thing that will improve their lives.
We’ve known about the possibility of a greater understanding, love for all, and much better way of being for at least the past 3,500 years. Glimpses of this alternative psychology or consciousness have been reported by individuals from various cultures and different continents for a long, long time. This idea of a higher reality has been taken seriously by many - whether clothed in religious doctrine, philosophical ideas, or the language of poetry. The basic aim has been to transcend the limited, small “self” - unfolding human potential to a more understanding and more loving state that is beyond the everyday suffering. Yet, after several thousand years, there’s little or nothing to show of any real worth. In fact, if you look at the human situation, honestly and objectively, from an evidence-based perspective, there’s no sign of a fundamental shift. In short, it’s been a history of failure. The same self-orientated psychology persists - which we can simply think of as selfishness, in the wider use of the word.
Let me quickly emphasise here that I don’t for one second doubt the existence of a higher reality, different consciousness, or significantly better psychology that I prefer to call non-selfishness. Nor do I doubt that it can be learnt and achieved by all. But we shouldn’t be fooled by nonsense.
If we’re clever enough to work out the telephone and technologically develop it into something quite astonishing within a relatively short time, then why have we so far failed to work out the biggest issue of all: the improvement of human psychology? Why haven’t we been able to harness the same intelligence, applying it to an even more important area of life? The potential benefits are huge and widespread, going way beyond the positives of increased communication via the phone.
It’s both a farce and a tragedy, an almost unbelievable situation. The capability that humans have shown with phones has apparently deserted them when it comes to the central matter of sorting themselves out. People who are smart, thoughtful, and productive in certain things they do somehow become dumb, neglectful, and (directly or indirectly) hurtful at other times.
Setting off on a journey is one thing. Finding your way to the destination is another matter.
Some might think I’m being too hard in stating that there’s been a history of failure, claiming there’s been “progress”. But where is this supposed “progress”? The degree of hypocrisy, contradiction, and avoidance - even amongst those who should know better - is appalling. Abhorrent amounts of suffering continue on an individual, societal, and global scale. It’s so common that it’s normalised. You’ve hopefully already read the long list of dysfunctional human behaviour in A compelling answer to the Fermi paradox, so I won’t repeat it here. Humans are at the baby stage, not yet starting to crawl, let alone taking the first few steps, when it comes to the all-important task of shifting from selfishness to non-selfishness. At best, they are just gazing with an infant fascination at the twirling baby mobile hanging above their cot or crib. Progress? It’s a joke.
The vast majority who are convinced of the concept of change merely play at it or pay lip service to the idea. Religion has been institutionalised; it’s become worse than stale bread, as fossilised as the dinosaurs. Philosophy has been hijacked by the lazy shiny bums, a sad excuse for intellectualisation. And poetry is little more than sustenance for dreamers. As for the modern New Age crowd, or whatever name they prefer to go under, it’s just a mess of alternatives. The mumbo-jumbo or woo-woo is at the lower end of the sludge, with a mishmash of adapted “spiritual” ideas and practices at the so-called upper end - but none of it achieves actual and significant development. There’s no progress, other than perhaps growing up a bit with age as might be expected with anyone getting older. Lyrics from The Script’s song Six Degrees of Separation are relevant: “Tarot cards, gems and stones, believing all that shit’s gonna heal your soul. Well it’s not, no. You’re only doing things out of desperation.”
Meditation and other “spiritual” practices do not live up to their lofty claims. The self-orientated psychology remains. Failure persists.
The unstoppable human spirit that yearns for change came out in the late 1960s and early 1970s as a counter-culture movement in America. It spread to the UK, where I was still a teenager. Rock music conveyed lyrics of transcendental hope and new beginnings. LSD-induced insights awoke the young to that “something more”. Hippies travelled to India to find enlightenment, but just got diarrhoea. Communes were started, only to quickly crumble under the weight of emotional dysfunction. Then punk rock appeared to help the youth let out their frustrations and anger. The Eagles carried on, singing “We thought we could change this world with words like love and freedom.” Then the rat-race went into overdrive through the 1980s, with money and materialistic possessions becoming the new god. A false dawn had been and gone, soon to be forgotten.
Over the past few thousand years, many strands of wisdom have been realised - not least by those individuals who have had glimpses of a better way of being through oneness experiences. But any resulting knowledge has been incomplete and confused. Then it’s been messed with by those who didn’t really know much, cherry-picked and watered down, resulting in something lesser. It’s mostly been a matter of the blind leading the blind, albeit sometimes with good intentions but certainly not always. The result is a jumble of mumbo-jumbo that’s simply false, truisms that aren’t relevant to the actual process of change, plus bits and pieces which are both true and relevant. How is the proverbial seeker of truth meant to wade through the mess without getting bogged down or dirtied themselves? Traditionally, you’ve needed a guide or guru - but who can be trusted? Most are likely to exploit your ignorance for their own purposes - and the rest of these so-called teachers don’t actually know much more than those doing the seeking. “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach” doesn’t just apply to conventional schools. The “spiritual” situation has been, and continues to be, an embarrassment.
Two huge stumbling blocks fully explain the long history of failure. When identified and understood, the situation becomes glaringly obvious. The first is the lack of a precise “how to” framework for achieving authentic change. A reliable blueprint is needed, detailing the “nuts and bolts” components - just the same as is required to manufacture mobile phones, perform medical surgery, fly an aeroplane, etc etc. The second reason is failing to realise the extent of psychological avoidance, in its various forms, and how this frustrates or stops change. The Human Potential Trust’s main website expands on the above.
I recently coined the term the Great Hurdle when writing a series of essays in November 2020. I did so in response to the suggestion that there might be some kind of Great Filter which limits or stops life developing, which I doubt. Instead, the Great Hurdle is a certainty, a real phenomenon, a challenge to be overcome. There’s a considerable problem or hurdle to fundamental change. The self-perpetuating bubble of ignorance and avoidance somehow needs to be burst. And if we don’t get over it, then we’re stuffed - condemned to an ongoing life of dysfunction and resulting misery on an individual, societal, and global level. This is the wretchedness of selfishness. Until there is a major breakthrough, humans will fail to realise their full potential, trapped in the shadowlands, unaware of a fullness of relationship with life.
The longed-for “peacefulness” of “spirituality” is a self-indulgent limitation which misses the point. What’s needed is aliveness and capability. Would we be impressed by a mobile phone that quietly sat there in deep meditation, but not functioning? Of course not; we expect technology to actively work. It’s frustrating enough when there’s a delay because of some software update. We can consider the option of peacefulness once the world’s many problems have been solved - although I guess people at that time will still prefer aliveness and capability (which, of course, is the answer to achieving peace). Meanwhile, it’s time to stop being silly and to get real.
The next step forward in human evolution will occur as a result of educational endeavour, on a psychological level rather than by more primary biological means. Precise education is the only reliable way forward. The days of messing about and being comfortably numb have to be banished. We have to get serious. We must prevail and progress beyond the Great Hurdle. We must get over it. Once we succeed at what I have called “an almost impossible task”, humanity will finally reach the beginning of adulthood. This leap forward will be so significant that the current classification of Homo sapiens will be replaced with Homo liberalis. We will be liberated. The future will then be very, very different to life as is known now. It will mark the end of adolescence and stupidity - heralding the beginning of maturity. Society will be all-inclusive, with no suffering. And, assuming that advanced extraterrestrial beings exist, what are the chances that it’ll finally be time for them to say “Hello”?
Written by Iain Scott, 4th May 2021
UPDATE (September 2022): We recommend this film as a good follow-up: