I didn't explicate this in my original email, but there are various reasons
to believe that if the Moral Apex doesn't occur, we will surely destroy
ourselves. There are Nick Bostrom's arguments for why a Singleton is
necessary to avoid existential risks and steer evolution.

But another imperative is that it's impossible for minds like ourselves to
tolerate an understanding of life that doesn't afford the hope that the
injustices of life will be redeemed. Any honest, sane person will find life
intolerable at some point without the belief that there is some yet unknown
redemption for the injustices of life.

And I think that includes a necessity for consciousness to continue after
death because there are many lives that are surely not worth living and
it's utterly intolerable that such injustice against the soul is an
absolute condition.

I think Zapffe is right that most people artificially limit the contents of
their consciousness to deal with life. Because anyone who is persuaded that
such injustice is absolute must tolerate existence only by Zapffe's
remedies against panic, which consist of self-delusion, distraction,
isolation, and anchoring.

Today there are so many ways of 'amusing ourselves' that it's rare for
people to face existence head on. People don't have epistemic virtue or
integrity mostly because they cannot deal with understanding. The meaning
of the word 'disillusionment' reveals this. The phrase 'Burden of
Understanding' reveals this. Also Weltschmerz (a German word for
'world-weariness').

I've been around many religious people and one common feature of the
religious mind is a disinterest in what's true according to reason and
evidence. They usually just want an anchor, as Zapffe would say.

But religion in many ways also comes straight out of moral reasoning: There
must be some yet unknown source of justice to cope with the injustice of
life.

If the ongoing revelations of science and philosophy conclusively reveal
that there is no hope of a continual progress into justice, then when the
'spiritual atmosphere thickens', we will be forced to realize the truth of
doom and despair and withdraw back into unconsciousness. Or we could
degenerate into monsters. Or we could cycle back and forth from delusion to
disillusionment until we go extinct, never able to transcend a ceiling to
the Moral Arc.

Otherwise, if there is an ongoing progression into justice, there will be a
wondrous awakening from the distraction into existential joy and
enlightenment. Fortunately, there is indeed a moral arc, and the
justification hypothesis explains much if not all of it. There are many
trends and forces implying this evolution, including existential threats
that will force us into a more justified purpose.

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