What is going on?[1][]
As shown in brain and moderating the free will debate, justifications paralyzes the ability to self-correct. But those justifications have of course formed in multiple steps. Computationalism and the we cockchafers lithania are the most recent step. In most of the world, that happened in the late 1970s to early 1980s, although in Africa it was started back in the colonial period by racist authorities indoctrinating the africans to believe that they were stuck in fixed limits to their minds. That is explained in origin of HIV. Other symptoms include an increase in mental illness (as shown in self-organization, there is so much missing heredity that there is no way natural selection could purge even a significant fraction of the defects that appears and have always been appearing, so all biologism predicts that we should all be severely mentally ill as explicitly described in brain), or more properly, temporarily mad ideas that everybody inevitably have sometimes gets permanented by social pressure to make up justifications on the lines of "I cannot help it". The defaitism also paralyzed efforts to change the world to the better, thus paving the way for unstopped destruction of the environment as shown in moderating the Gaia/Medea debate. This stage shows signs of being a terminal stage.
How did it get that way?[]
From today and back to the beginning of justification poisoning[]
But there are other stages of justification poisoning older than that. In classical times, literature depicted more nuanced characters instead of pure good or pure evil. Back then, brains were more plastic, as shown by such things as Egyptian faith in multiple souls of each person named Ba, Ka and Ach, i.e. multiple personalities (although academia says that multiple personality disorder does not exist, they still acknowledge the existence of what they call "disintegrative disorder" which translated from jargonese to clear language means virtually the same thing), Spartan men being virtually uniformly homosexual (demanding their wives to dress as men the few times they came home to impregnate them, reference: BBC Ancient Worlds episode 3: The Greek Thing), and other signs of strong cultural influence on behavior. Accounts of madness from that time usually describes it as temporary rather than chronical too. That was before mind-judging justification religions such as christianity and other Abrahamitic religions existed. The introduction of such rituals increased the pressure to make up justifications, which reduced brain plasticity.
The theory that faith in pure good and pure evil impairs brain plasticity is supported by studies of meditation in different religions. In hinduism and buddhism, both of which lacks concepts of pure good and pure evil, there are examples of conscious control of supposedly autonomous body functions. But in abrahamitic religions (judaism, christianity and islam) no such examples exist. Belief in pure good and pure evil is a core element in abrahamitic religions. That impairs brain plasticity by increasing the social pressure to make up justifications. The satanist version of Satan is, however, not a pure evil on the lines of abrahamitic Satan, since the satanist version is depicted as also having positive sides. That makes it a complex, ambiguous figure comparable to deities with both positive and negative sides often found in polytheistic religions. So although the term "Satan" is often used as a term for pure evil, the satanists themselves actually have no concept of pure evil.
But even back in classical times, intolerant ideologies like punishment already existed. It have sometimes been suggested that it should have begun with agriculture, but there is now evidence for some wars too big to be temporary hunger squabbles from the upper paleolithic. More likely, that early intolerance began with the aftermath of the origin of legends described in origin of language. The same article also explains that there were most likely very tolerant environments before that. This is supported by the fact that the Piraha tribe with their simple, non-storytelling language always reconcile and never have any prolonged feuds. The San people (aka bushmen) have a complex language and tells stories, but their culture is non-confrontational. They do not confront or condemn offenders, but instead change them by telling allegorical stories. The use of storytelling removes the San people a bit from the animal way of reconciling and places them one step closer to starting justification. They also punish themselves when they have done bad things to others as a way to avoid vengeance to avoid conflict, meaning that they have a nascent concept of sort-of "just" punishment, although they have not extended it into collective punishing or confrontation of offenders. Confrontation of offenders would be against their anti-conflict ideas. That is why they use allegorical stories instead.
Chronological timeline of justification poisoning[]
So the first step towards justification poisoning came with linguistic progress that the testing of the truth content of claims could not keep up pace with leading to unquestioned legends (the first religions). After that, they started telling allegorical stories to correct each other's behavior without direct confrontation. That avoiding of confrontation led to self-punishment to avert egoistic vengeance, creating a sort of concept of "just" punishment which paved the way for the later creation of cooperative punishing. The next stage began when someone started justifying his or her actions on the expense of others with stories, which ended the non-confrontational allegorism and led to actual cooperative punishing leading to stigmatization of morality violators leading to a nascent belief in characters leading to a sort of proto-monetary demand for repaying of services and generosity, which in combination with the mythologically justified privileges with its mass-deliveries of gifts led to the origin of celebration gatherings which in turn led to early urbanization and invention of agriculture to feed the partiers (yes, Göbekli Tepe and Catal Huyuk constitutes archaeological evidence that urbanization began before agriculture), although justified privileges and cooperative punishment began slightly before urbanization and therefore also exists in many tribes whose climate was not condusive to urbanization. The next stage, mind-judging justification religions with concepts of pure good and pure evil (which is rationally unrealistic simplifications) came with a more full-blown belief in defined characters, a black and white morality caused by two-side wars between major empires, at first in the Mediterranean region during late classic times but later spreading to other regions. The stage after that, which brings us more or less to the current stage, began with misinterpreted research leading to computationalism, caused by the academic obsession with prestige which had developed over the course of the previous stages, and became popular due to a desire to free oneself from responsibility, a desire that was also caused by institutions built over the course of the previous stages of justification poisoning.
What to do about it?[]
Just look at the world today, and the present stage of justification shows clear signs of being terminal. People are destroying the world and blaming their lack of rational foresight on so-called "human nature". What to do about it? As shown in origin of language, unquestioned dogmas are a key to the problem. Pure science Wiki, being a platform for the pure scientific method without academic prestige-obsession, can help. For how to make the scientific experiments affordable to anyone, see advice for cheapening science. That will make it possible to combine the historical knowledge of complex grammatical storytelling with a Piraha-like demand for evidence (the best of both worlds) into a truly scientific consciousness. And when that shows the world that punishment is counterproductive, the solution will rapidly be on its way. So the best course of action is to contribute to (and make people aware of) Pure science Wiki or some other forum with similar objectives. See advice of ways to stop justifying.