MN, You asked
"..how can humanity break out of their limbo?"

My opinion is..

Nature has provided us with bigger brains..so we should try to use it more to understand the truth through reasons than being taken over by our evolutionary psychology of 'aping' others around us.

..and what in your opinion makes a good bench mark to measure up our perceptions of truth/false against?"

I would like to compare my views with that of other educated and pragmatic minds and know how close I stand from the truth. Ofcourse this is again an arbitrary benchmark.