Much has been written about the human condition, but at its core it is very simple and stems from a psychological contradiction that has evolved in the human mind. There are two simple concepts at play.
For billions of years, life has evolved a very simple imperative: Survive (live). It is the core instinct that drives every action. The evolutionary force driving this is actually simply statistics. Genes that reproduce will continue to exist, any gene that does not reproduce will of course cease to exist. So evolution really boils down to statistics. A genetic entity reproduces and continues on or not.
Thus a biological or evolutionary imperative to not die is at the core of every living thing. This is fine for the lower animals who can deal with any threat that may arise as it comes up. There is no threat to the lower mammal that its mind cannot try to muster a solution for or at least come up with a plan or some effort to continue to survive.
Humans, however, are not so lucky. Humans are intelligent enough to know that ultimately they will die and there is no possible action they can take to prevent this. This is completely at odds with the genetic or evolutionary imperative to survive. It’s in every organism’s DNA to survive, but humans can come to realize that they ultimately cannot. This is the basic psychological conflict of the human condition that every human has to resolve.
There are many strategies humans employ and all are rooted in the denial of death. Raising families, creative works, religion, and especially heroic endeavors (including meaningful careers and other life endeavors) all serve to tell the psyche “Some of my essence, something about me that is part of what I really am will not die”.
But what if you know that all you are is a physical organism? There is overwhelming scientific evidence that mental states correlate to physical processes in the brain, that indeed we are physical creatures and nothing more. When the physical processes end, we die, we end, we are nullified.
What is the import? Not everyone has the capacity to fully grasp their purely material nature, but some do. The philosophy and psychological framework that Freud created helps to enlighten the state of affairs. Such a deep psychological conflict—a threat to one’s existence that cannot be avoided in any way—can lead to severe consequences for the psyche. Here the concepts of ego and id are helpful. The ego can handle this conflict. It can logically understand it, it can analyze it, it can even put it aside. However the reptilian and primitive id can do no such thing. The id needs a sense of permanence and in fact requires it. Essential to it is a sense of immortality or permanence. The ego must protect the id from any sense of mortality and impermanence. This is because the id is the primary psychological structure that is programmed with survival. For the id, survival is a non-negotiable imperative for the organism, this to avoid extinction.
Failure of the ego to protect the id from the final and ultimate destiny of organismic death puts the id in an impossible conflict. It cannot resolve an essential existential threat. It’s akin to a catastrophic programming error and throws it into a state of panic and terror. A state of madness ensues, the ego can no longer help as the powerful id takes over. The organism at its most basic level becomes aware of a threat to its existence that cannot be resolved.
Only in a subset of the population will the id become infected with the realization of its own demise and this can be due to a complex set of factors related to trauma and the peculiarities of how each individual filters and processes reality. The ego too can become bogged down in the sense that all will ultimately be lost, but this typically leads to different outcomes such as anxiety, depression and a host of other psychological ailments.
For a small subset of the human population, a near constant state of terror is the ultimate outcome as the id goes haywire. This population exists, but is hidden from view from society in the most restrictive psych wards although some are “saved” with severely mentally debilitating medications.
The complete break down of the human psyche thus is very rarely witnessed, though some do study it. Ernest Becker is one such person who was able to study it extensively and thus profoundly grasp the problem of man. Why should the human mind break down so terribly and completely for so many?
It comes down to a simple conflict; to have the genetic imperative to live, but the intelligence and/or experience to know death (even ego death, a complete loss of meaning) is the ultimate outcome.
For the mad, imagine a lizard under constant threat of attack by a mouse with no possible escape. This is the reptilian brain in an unresolvable state. The reptilian brain (id) has no mechanism of accepting death as an outcome.
This conflict is the wellspring of religion and all human activity—to ward against death (a “good enough” buffer)—to create the illusion for the id of something enduring and permanent. The “infected ids” are cordoned off from society, but it’s plausible the illusions society sustains today could fail at some point. Do not try to imagine that chaos, but whole societies have had their illusions fail and simply ceased to continue, although these seemed to have occurred on an ego level (not deep into the id). The fear and terror of the conflicted id can be contained to a subset of the population, but it is possible to spread. The basic animal terror of the id that knows it will die can spread through the human population to an extent, much like a virus.
Society will continue among the inoculated population—the people among us who are sufficiently illusioned and untraumatized. But for a small but growing few, the outcome is hell.
Afterword
It is important to note that many of the illusions that sustain a large number of us in modern society revolve around the progress of science and technology. The secular sector that thrives today was born of the advancements in science and technology that we owe to the fossil fuel driven prosperity. As it becomes evident that there is no alternative and hence no way to sustain the modern way of life, the illusions that sustain a large swath of the population will be increasingly harder to prolong. This may mean a return to more primitive world views and a domination of the monotheistic religions, but possibly also a breakdown of modern society, as more and more people realize the illusions they’ve been holding onto are nothing more than smoke and mirrors. This might explain the lack of leadership we see today in the younger generations who have a better sense of what is and isn’t possible.
Musings of a Hyperactive Thinker 