“Unfortunately, the human mind is a precision instrument of self-delusion. Its most fearsome power is its capacity to provide self-sustaining fables that support its natural desire to escape its own demise,” writes The Gadfly columnist ROBERT MACKLIN.

In 2024 Democracy narrowly won the prelim on points. Now for the main bout. Its battlespace is the human mind where the contestants are truth and fantasy. 

If fantasy wins, our species will be decimated, our planet in danger of joining the dead worlds of useless gas and rock we glimpse in the universe around us. 

Victory for truth heralds a prospect that is truly inspiring – a future of extraordinary progress and achievement. 

Unfortunately, the human mind is a precision instrument of self-delusion. Its most fearsome power is its capacity to provide self-sustaining fables that support its natural desire to escape its own demise. 

That power is truly awesome. Even when the evidence shines brilliantly empirical, at least half of us (maybe two-thirds) choose the fantasy we grace with the honorific “religion”. 

It has fashioned hundreds of fairytales, each designed to appeal to our varying cultures. And so cleverly are they constructed that we regard its presence as one of the great achievements of the species.

“Freedom of religion” is seen an historic triumph. Our American friends still celebrate Thanksgiving Day when the religious Pilgrims of 1641 harvested their first successful crop of grain in their New World. 

Their propaganda machine, Hollywood, churns out endless repeats of a modernised Christian fantasy, a messianic cast of Superman and his Marvel compatriots fighting “evil” in the entire universe.

Thus the continued existence of a Roman Catholic Church when thousands upon thousands of its priests in nations around the world raped and degraded the children in their care. And no one rose up to demand its demise.

No one.

Truth’s opposing armoury is much less celebrated. The scientific method of observation, measurement and experiment leading to the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses. Its heroes include Socrates, Galileo, Copernicus, Isaac Newton and the great Charles Darwin.

I can’t recall a single movie – let alone a billion-dollar box-office winner – for the biopic of any of them. Yet they and their industrial and medical equivalents have been totally responsible for the lives of comfort and longevity we enjoy today.

And here’s the thing. Once you reject reason and accept the fantasy on “faith” you have lost your moral compass and opened the door to every other crackpot conman. Thus Donald Trump. Thus the “hoax” of climate change.

And since religion defies reason there is no capacity for compromise. Conflict is the only measure of its power. Thus the wars of the Middle East. Thus Benjamin Netanyahu and the savagery of his religious army that incidentally might save him from jail for blatant corruption in office. 

The male lust for power is also codified in most religions and women have been paying the price from time immemorial.

Altogether, not a happy prospect for 2025, but neither is it despairing. The green sprigs of hope are at last making their presence felt. Education is enhancing women around the world in their challenge to the status quo. Climate change is increasingly undeniable, even to the most demented fantasist. Trump in flight is charting a course taken once before by mythic Icarus. And in census after census, more Australians are marking “no religion” on their forms.

I do worry about quantum computing, which is going to speed up everything; and AI is a powerful tool in the wrong hands. But despite their best efforts, the human minds of the dictators will fade to nothingness like those of rest of us who tried to make the world a better place than we found it. So all the very best for a Happy New Year!

robert@robertmacklin.com