I just finished reading the book "Denial: Self-Deception, False Beliefs, and the Origins of the Human Mind" by Ajit Varki and Danny Brower. It’s an amazing book that posits a profound theory about how the human mind evolved and the obstacles it overcame that allowed us to be the way we are today—intelligent, creative, and innovative. It’s all based on our denial of reality. “The potent combination of our powerful intelligence with our massive reality denial has led to a dangerous world…” (Denial page 221)
It seems that we’ve been asking the wrong questions about human evolution and the evolution of the mind. The questions put forth in the book are, "Why is there no humanlike elephant or humanlike dolphin, despite millions of years of evolutionary opportunity?" And, "Why is it that humans alone can understand the minds of others?" The theory in the book is directly related to my project—how death anxiety and the repression mechanisms we use came to be, and the functions they served in the history of human evolution.
This is not a book review; I’m just connecting the dots with my work and sharing some insights as they pertain to death anxiety and the denial of death. It gets to the core of my project about denial. It addresses why we are “wired” to deny reality and how that leads to malignant manifestations of death anxiety, which is the crux of my work and project.
It’s important for me to understand the origins of the denial of death and death anxiety. These ideas are the mainspring of my book. I’ve been trying to find answers to these questions for a while. Fortunately, I received an email from a person who shares similar interests (Thanks, Tim!). He recommended that I read the book. Sheldon Solomon mentioned the book on a podcast I was listening to, and I made a mental note to look into it but never got around to buying the book. I’m very happy that I finally did.
It’s given me a lot of fodder for my endeavor and answered a lot of questions for me. Not to mention, I learned a lot about the evolutionary origin of humans and the cognitive psychology and evolution of the human mind.
Varki makes it very clear that these are not falsifiable theories and that he speculates a lot about them. I like that he’s approached it in an honest and scientific manner. I respect that. It leaves the proverbial door open to being proven wrong and to making better “guesses” in the future. This is how science works.
Varki relates an interesting and sad story about how he met Dr. Danny Brower. It was Brower’s theory that piqued Varki’s interest. The book was born from a conversation that lasted less than two hours. How it all came about is too lengthy to go into here, but it was fascinating and sad.
One of the main topics of the book is the Theory of Mind (ToM) or as some might call it, “consciousness.” As the author points out, there are so many definitions of that word that it’s better to be more definitive. Some may call it “self-awareness,” and it is to a degree. As the author says, this is a continuum from rudimentary self-awareness to full ToM. ToM is the ability to infer and understand another's mental state—their beliefs, thoughts, intentions, and feelings—and use this information to explain and predict human behavior. The book explains why denial is a key to being human. Varki posits that we separated ourselves from the other creatures because we grasped self-awareness of ours and others’ mortality (ToM) and then just as quickly developed a way to deny that mortality. And that’s what my writing is about: the way we deal with death anxiety and what that can lead to (racism, bigotry, genocide, and crimes against humanity).
The theory posited in this book can be summed up this way: Mind Over Reality Transition (MORT) theory. MORT is the evolutionary adaptation in response to gaining theory of mind (ToM) by simultaneously evolving denial of reality. There it is: a few words that describe the essence of a 300-page book. Obviously, the details are important, but that’s the ultra-condensed version of the book.
We deny reality—that reality being our mortality (among a lot of other things). In order for us to be so intelligent, we needed to develop a full theory of mind (ToM). What comes along with ToM is the awareness of death. If the animal has no mechanism to deal with that—to deny it—they will not survive. Varki believes that other animals have repeatedly crossed the barrier over millions of years, having full ToM but not the mechanism to deny mortality. This leads to an evolutionary dead end. The only animal that has successfully crossed over is us, (behaviorally) modern homo sapiens.
So how did early (modern) humans gain a full theory of mind and a denial mechanism at the same time—something that no other animal has been able to accomplish? Varki and Brower present the idea that a denial mechanism was starting to form before full ToM arrived. It came in the form of lying. The main drive was to create offspring before MORT, so lying was a great way to get the best partner to make babies. I'm not sure how they lied; perhaps they claimed to have killed the largest lion or provided the most meat; who knows, but as a theory, it makes sense to pre-MORT. The ability to lie to others led to the ability to lie to oneself. Self-deception led to denying reality, and denying reality led to full ToM and MORT.
What a great story of evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology! It’s really put things in perspective for me. I know there are a lot of ideas in this theory that I’ll use for my book, connecting evolutionary biology and psychology to the actions of genocide and crimes against humanity. It ties in so nicely and explains so much of human behavior. It does give a great foundation for my studies and interests.