Comments on THE Interview

Yes, while Jeremy Griffith’s work doesn’t contradict a belief in God or Christianity, it does bring biological understanding to all those pre-scientific concepts. You might be interested in our FAQs about religion include FAQ 6.2 ‘What is God’ and FAQ 6.3 ‘Does this undermine religion/God’.

There is a fundamental difference between Jeremy Griffith’s ‘instinct vs intellect’ explanation of the human condition (which is illustrated by the Adam Stork story) and Freud’s theory of the Id, Ego and Superego. While Jeremy acknowledges Freud’s courageous recognition that humans carry negative, repressed elements of our personality, a ‘repressed unconscious’, beyond that, there is very little similarity. Freud believed that the ‘ID’, our unconscious, instinctive mind, contained primitive selfish ‘savage’ urges that the conscious mind or ‘ego’ has to control, whereas Jeremy has now explained that our instinctive self is completely loving and cooperative, and that our aggressive and selfish behaviour is psychological in origin, the result of a clash between our instincts and intellect. Freud also believed that our morals are learnt and held by the superego, whereas Jeremy has now explained that they are the expression of our loving, cooperative moral soul or instincts. By starting from the false basis that we have ‘savage instincts’ that the ego had to control and mediate meant that Freud was not able to explain the ultimate source of human’s psychological problems.

We are respectful of everyone’s beliefs, but do suggest that while religions contained extraordinary truth about human life, it was all from a pre-scientific view, and that ultimately we needed to find the scientific explanation for why when the universal ideals are to be loving, cooperative and selfless are we so angry, competitive and selfish. Answering this question required finding the clarifying difference between the way the intellect and instincts work, and that clarifying difference means we can now understand that we had to defy our instincts, which is why this great breakthrough is described as ‘redeeming’. It follows that by finding the good reason we had to defy our instincts, we can reconcile ourselves with them, because all our defensive behaviours (our anger, egocentricity and alienation) are now redundant. We no longer need them because we have the real defense for why we had to defy our instincts. We recommend reading FAQ 6.3 ‘Does this undermine religion?’ where it is explained that, “The great founding prophets of religion actually looked forward to the arrival of the reconciling understanding of the human condition—which means supporters of religion shouldn’t see Jeremy’s scientific demystification of religious teachings as blasphemy, but as religious fulfillment!”

While it takes some time to digest, we suggest that what is unique about Jeremy Griffith’s work is that he has answered the essential question of why, when the universal ideals are to be integrative are we so disintegrative? Our endeavours in religion and philosophy have failed, until now, to provide a truthful, real, fully accountable, genuinely clarifying explanation. Answering this question required finding the clarifying difference between the way the intellect and instincts work, and that is the great biological breakthrough Jeremy presents here. We suggest Video/Freedom Essay 4 which expands further on other thinkers (both ancient and contemporary) who have recognised instinct and intellect elements involved in creating the human condition.

Thank you Hendricks! Our homepage — HumanCondition.com — provides a wonderful road map to progress with all our key material made freely available and you can register for free, weekly emails about this immensely relieving understanding. Also our Facebook Group provides a wonderful platform for participating in, or just observing, interesting and exciting discussion with others about how we can live with this critical new science.

Thanks for your comment Frank. We suggest this is the fundamental redemption that human beings have searched for, ever since the emergence of our conscious mind corrupted our original all-loving instinctive self or soul. Understanding why the intellect had to defy our instincts is what liberates humanity from the great burden of guilt it has carried. This is the rational, scientific redemption that we have longed for.

We are respectful of everyone’s beliefs, but do suggest that while religions contained extraordinary truth about human life, it was all from a pre-scientific view, and that ultimately we needed to find the scientific explanation for why when the universal ideals are to be loving, cooperative and selfless are we so angry, competitive and selfish. Answering this question required finding the clarifying difference between the way the intellect and instincts work, and that clarifying difference means we can now understand that we had to defy our instincts, which is why this great breakthrough is described as ‘redeeming’. It follows that by finding the good reason we had to defy our instincts, we can reconcile ourselves with them, because all our defensive behaviours (our anger, egocentricity and alienation) are now redundant. We no longer need them because we have the real defense for why we had to defy our instincts. We recommend reading FAQ 6.3 ‘Does this undermine religion?’ where it is explained that, “The great founding prophets of religion actually looked forward to the arrival of the reconciling understanding of the human condition—which means supporters of religion shouldn’t see Jeremy’s scientific demystification of religious teachings as blasphemy, but as religious fulfillment!”

Thank you so much for your very considered feedback, Alison. We just wanted to clarify one thing, it is explained that the original genetic instinct for maternalism is a naturally selected instinctive orientation that evolved because it promotes the perpetuation of its genes through better protecting its offspring HOWEVER, over time, through the love indoctrination process that is explained in Part 3 of THE Interview, it became a case of mothers actively loving their offspring. You can read more about the nurturing based love indoctrination process that created humanity’s altruistic, moral instinctive self or soul in chapter 5 of Jeremy’s definitive book, FREEDOM, which we think you will find fascinating.

Thanks for your comment Richard. We suggest that what is explained in THE Interview explains precisely why humans have made “disastrous decisions”. The answer is that we have been so psychologically upset angry, egocentric and alienated as a result of the human condition that all our decisions have been hopelessly selfish and destructive because our priority has been proving ourselves. As to whether our species had the cognitive capabilities to “explain ourselves”, well, the answer is in THE Interview. You can see for yourself that that explanation has now been found.

Looking for more info on it

Thank you so much for your most appreciative comment, Carl. While the explanation of the human condition is as you say, “definitely a breakthrough”, the concepts are actually very simple — but because it presents a massive paradigm shift in the way we view humans it just takes time to absorb. This summary interview is broken into four short parts to help people access the presentation. We also provide FAQs, which people find most helpful; for instance, FAQ 1.3 presents a very brief summary of the key ‘instinct vs intellect’ concept. There it is essentially explained that when we humans developed a conscious mind some 2 million years ago, a battle unavoidably developed between it and our already established cooperative instincts. The result of this conflict between our instinct and intellect was that we became psychologically defensive, angry, alienated and egocentric – the upset state we refer to as the human condition. But now that we can explain and understand this conflict, all those insecure, defensive behaviours are obsoleted, brought to an end, and we free ourselves from the human condition!

As Jeremy explains in Part 2 of THE Interview, the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is a metaphor for the conscious mind going in search of knowledge in the presence of pre-established loving instincts, and how the conscious mind was in effect ‘condemned’ by those instincts, and as a result became ‘upset’ or angry, egocentric and alienated. So the metaphor of eating the fruit is symbolic of us defying our cooperative instinctive self in order to begin searching for knowledge, which was what consciousness required. Understanding that the gene-based learning system can orientate a species, but that the nerve-based learning system is insightful, allows us to understand that the conscious mind was right to defy our instinctive self to search for understanding which produced our psychologically upset condition. Without that explanation the conflict could not be resolved. That is the great biological breakthrough Jeremy presents.

Take your time Mary. This represents a massive paradigm shift in our thinking, but what people discover is Jeremy Griffith’s scientific explanation of the human condition does actually solve our species’ discord at its source, bringing to an end to all the terrible, and seemingly overwhelmingly problems besetting the world.

    Pramod, in Part 1 of THE Interview Jeremy Griffith addresses the almost universal excuse for our angry, egocentric and alienated behaviour, which is that it is due to selfish, must-reproduce-our-genes, survival-of-the-fittest, ‘savage instincts’ within us, which is what you are advocating. However, with our psychologically upset angry, egocentric and alienated state now defended, it is now safe to admit that our human instincts are loving and cooperative, a result of the love-indoctrination process – see Part 3 of THE Interview.     Moreover, we can now explain that our “behavioural problems” are not “acquired by instinct” but are the result of the psychologically upsetting clash between our loving and cooperative instincts, and the conscious mind as it attempted to wrest day-to-day management of our lives from those naturally selected instincts.

Hi Jane, it’s great you’ve watched THE Interview as it’s the ideal introduction to Jeremy Griffith’s explanation of the human condition. From there, at top of our homepage HumanCondition.com, it states ‘WHAT NEXT after watching THE Interview?’ and guides you through the steps to pursue your interest. This includes subscribing to our mailing list where you will receive one email per week, occasional News Flashes, and notificatons for our Live Events. We also encourage people to join our Facebook Group to learn more about this amazing, human-condition-resolved new world. We are not-for-profit organisation and make all our material and publications free to read online, watch, listen to and even download and print!

    Thanks for your comment Adrian. What Jeremy Griffith is presenting is a completely rational, scientific explanation of the human condition, namely the source of our angry, egocentric behaviour which makes redundant ‘mystical’ explanations of human behaviour, such as that our behaviour is due to “dark spirits”. We suggest that the more you digest this ‘instinct vs intellect’ explanation, the more you will realise how accountable it is in getting to the source of all humanity’s psychological upset, which in the extreme, produces people who are capable of what we have described as ‘evil’. Of course this breakthrough explanation doesn’t condone or sanction the horrendous atrocities humans can commit rather, through bringing compassionate understanding to the source of humans’ upset behaviour, it gives us the power to ameliorate and thus subside and ultimately eliminate it, see FAQ 1.38 ‘Aren’t some people just born psychopathic, or even ‘evil’? / How does this explanation rehabilitate people capable of ‘evil’ behaviour? / Does this condone ‘evil’ behaviour?’.     Yes, we can now understand that our competitive, aggressive, destructive, even seemingly ‘evil’ behaviour was an unavoidable, indeed necessary, part of human life. This understanding defends our so-called ‘dark side’ and explains that despite all appearances to the contrary, all humans are ‘good’. And by explaining the very good reason why our intellect had to defy our instincts, it makes redundant our defensive behaviours of anger, egocentricity and alienation, bringing into being the “Moral Consciousness” we have all longed for!

    Hi Dennis, thank you for your comment. With so much violence and power-mongering in the world it is fair enough to think that healing isn’t possible for everyone but what is being introduced is an entirely revolutionary way to think about human behaviour. This new scientific paradigm is based on confronting rather than the historic practice of avoiding the issue of the human condition and therefore addresses cause of human violence and selfishness and solves it (FAQ 1.3 provides a nutshell summary).     What biologist Jeremy Griffith explains in this interview is that all humans are born with all-loving moral instincts (not savage animal instincts) but now variously suffer from a psychosis due to the human condition caused by the conscious mind’s necessary search for knowledge. What is so important about this is that it finally explains the real reason for why our violence and need for power behaviour became an unavoidable, indeed necessary, part of human life and by so doing establishes our fundamental goodness. Part 3 especially evidences this key biological distinction that humans suffer from the conscious-mind-based, psychologically troubled human condition, not the genetic-opportunism-based, animal condition. And, most significantly, as Part 4 explains a psychosis can be healed with understanding, so our psychologically upset human nature is fixable or changeable—not unchangeable. Importantly, this understanding of why we became upset does not condone or sanction our destructive behaviour, rather, through bringing understanding to it, it gives us the power to ameliorate and thus subside and ultimately eliminate it. These two FAQs are most relevant to your thoughts. FAQ 1.40 ‘How can you hope to transform the world? — In particular, how are you going to change the behaviour of the rich and powerful? / How are you going to reach the bastions of power? / Won’t the greedy and power-hungry simply ignore this?’ and FAQ 1.38 ‘Aren’t some people just born psychopathic, or even ‘evil’? / How does this explanation rehabilitate people capable of ‘evil’ behaviour? / Does this condone ‘evil’ behaviour?’

This is my first endeavor to assist with a comprehensive presentation for others to follow. Thanks ...I’m on your side.

Hi Dorothy, it’s so wonderful to have your interest. At top of our homepage HumanCondition.com, it states ‘WHAT NEXT after watching THE Interview?’ and guides you through the steps to pursue your interest. This includes accessing Jeremy Griffith’s key books (for free), and subscribing to our (also free) mailing list where you will receive one email per week and occasional News Flashes. We also encourage people to join our almost 60k-member strong Facebook Group to learn more about this amazing, human-condition-resolved new world.

Hi Annet-Esther, yes, on our Translations page you can freely access all our Dutch translations; this includes THE Interview, Jeremy Griffith’s definitive book FREEDOM, its condensation, Transform Your Life And Save The World, and Freedom Essays 1-14.

Thanks very much Ashley. Yes, our intellect brings with it a huge potential to manage life from a conscious basis, something that our instinctive self could not do. All we needed was to find the liberating understanding that would remove the burden of guilt we have carried for having defied our instinctive self, in order to try and fulfil that potential. We thought you might find our FAQs about religion of interest, in particular FAQ 6.2, ‘What is the meaning of life? / What is the Integrative Meaning of existence? / What is ‘God’? / Does the scientific explanation of ‘God’ really contain all the attributes of religion’s metaphysical ‘God’?’ We can now understand that the emergence of conscoiusness, and our ensuing angry, upset and alienated behaviour was all part of the integrative process; in other words, it has been ‘Godly’ at the most profound level!

What is so significant about the explanation of the human conditon is that this understanding defends our so-called ‘dark side’ and explains that despite all appearances to the contrary, all humans are ‘good’. And paradoxically, by explaining the very good reason why our intellect had to defy our instincts, it makes redundant our defensive behaviours of anger, egocentricity and alienation, allowing us to end the perpetuation of our destructive behaviour!

    Yes, our distant human ancestors were peaceful and matriarchal, however with the emergence of the conscious mind, and the subsequent emergence of the human condition, we not only became psychologically upset angry, egocentric and alienated, but the focus shifted from a nurturing based matriarchy society, to the need to find knowledge, which is why our species became patriarchal. As Jeremy Griffith explains in chapter 7:3 of his definitive book FREEDOM: “humanity’s matriarchal structure came to an end when our ignorant, ideal-behaviour-demanding instinctive self began to criticise our conscious mind’s search for knowledge and men, in their role as group protectors, had to take up the battle of resisting that naive, idealistic criticism from our instinctive self that was threatening to stop the maturation of humanity from ignorance to enlightenment. At this point, the patriarchal society that has existed for the last 2 million years came into being.”     Most importantly, at the heart of this explanation is the revelation that all our astonishingly selfish and brutal behaviour, especially on the part of men, has been an unavoidable consequence of humans’ necessary search for self-knowledge. Now we have understanding of our human-condition-psychosis which is shared by all humans, women are finally able to reason and see that what men have been doing on this planet has been actually the most meaningful and heroic job of all. This insight finally allows a real reconciliation between men and women. As molecular biologist Dr Anna Fitzgerald says in her commendation of Jeremy’s work: “because Griffith’s work establishes the equal worth or goodness of all humans we can now understand the different roles that men and women have traditionally played in the human journey and this is actually the unlocking point, this is what brings about deep empathy for each other, it heals the divide.” You can watch/read this Video/Freedom Essay 9 titled This is the real liberation of women here.

    Essentially, the only way humans could, as Jung said, ‘own our own shadow’ was to ameliorate the guilt we, our conscious thinking mind, feels for having corrupted our all-loving instinctive self or soul, and that could only be achieved by explaining why we had to endure becoming angry, egocentric and alienated — why our corrupted human condition was actually a heroic and loveable condition rather than a bad, ‘evil’, ‘sinful’ condition. Answering this question of questions, lifting the ‘great burden of guilt’ from the human race, required finding the clarifying difference between the way the intellect and instincts work, and that is the great biological breakthrough Jeremy presents. Which is why Professor Harry Prosen, a former President of the Canadian Psychiatric Association, said, ‘I have no doubt this biological explanation of the human condition is the holy grail of insight we have sought for the psychological rehabilitation of the human race.’     We recommend reading FAQ 1.47 “How does Jeremy Griffith’s explanation of the human condition differ from the theories of Freud or Jung?”, as it explains how Jeremy’s ‘instinct vs intellect’ explanation of the human condition varies with Jung’s work.

Thanks for your thoughts Rojer. We do suggest that the more you digest this explanation the more you will realise how accountable it is in getting to the source of all humanity’s psychological upset, which in turn is the source of our “self seeking motives”. While some of us had the motivation to “counter” these impulses to some extent, to finally bring an end to them we needed to get to the bottom of their source. We can now understand our behaviour has been driven by a deep insecurity about our fundamental goodness, so now that our goodness is biologically established we no longer have to behave insecurely and selfishly and can legitimately return to a selfless way of living. This is the rapidly transforming effect of being able to understand the human condition, however because it presents a huge paradigm shift in our thinking it does take a little time to fully grasp.

It is explained that the source of our guilt is much deeper than anything we are ‘taught’. It is a profound guilt that all humans carry for having destroyed our species' innocent soul - see Jeremy Griffith’s presentation The Great Guilt. It also needs to be stressed that while Buddhism and other Eastern modes of thought contain all manner of truths about human life, it is all from a pre-scientific view. Ultimately we needed to find the scientific explanation for why when the universal ideals are to be loving, cooperative and selfless are we so angry, competitive and selfish. Answering this question required finding the clarifying difference between the way the intellect and instincts work, and that is the great biological breakthrough Jeremy presents in THE Interview and his book FREEDOM. We suggest FAQ 1.13 ‘Is this original or new?’ which explains the unique significance of Jeremy Griffith’s work.

Hi Carolyn, you can immediately access a copy from our homepage just under THE Interview! You will see an image of FREEDOM with the text ‘Free Copy’ so click on that to access your electronic copy to read, listen to or download. You can also download free Kindle versions from Amazon. If you are particularly after a hardcopy of Jeremy Griffith’s books they are available to purchase from Amazon and other good bookstores.

In Part 1 of THE Interview Jeremy Griffith addresses the almost universal excuse for our angry, egocentric and alienated behaviour, which is that it is due to selfish, must-reproduce-our-genes, survival-of-the-fittest, ‘savage instincts’ within us, which is what you are referring to. However, with our psychologically upset angry, egocentric and alienated state now defended, it is now safe to admit that our human instincts are loving and cooperative – see Part 3 of THE Interview.

Hi Jan, thank you very much for your comment. We wanted to clarify that there is a huge difference between biologist Jeremy Griffith’s work and 'A Course in Miracles’ which you, and readers of these comments, may find helpful. The many new age and self-help courses like ‘A Course In Miracles’ don’t deal with the source of our species’ corrupted condition and biologically establish our fundamental goodness as a species. There have been thousands of years of different techniques for calming, restraining, repressing, and even transcending our psychologically upset human condition, which have been very valuable in managing our upset, but none of them have brought an end to the upset state of the human condition — it’s still rampant everywhere — and the reason is because they don’t solve the human condition, bring relieving understanding to it. As one of our subscribers summarised: “I can now see why A Course in Miracles didn’t work for me. I completed the 365 day course three years running to try and heal myself from deep depression and anxiety. After reading essay 15 [Freedom Essay 15: ‘How your life can immediately be transformed’] and studying Freedom [the book] it becomes clear that without the explanation of WHY we are so upset ACIM can only act as a sticky plaster with the 'scream’ still going on underneath.” Being able to understand the human condition is what actually allows humans to accept and be nonjudgmental about their pain, and truly be calmly mindfully aware about their life, see FAQ 6.5 ‘Is this just another self-help, New Age, pseudo idealistic, superficial-treatment-of-psychosis type movement?’

We respect people’s right to disagree but for the readers of these comments Jeremy Griffith’s fully accountable, first-principle-based biological explanation of the human condition has received outstanding commendations from leading thinkers and scientists which people can read on our homepage here. Also, Part 4 of this interview, titled ‘How does the psychological rehabilitation of the human race that the arrival of understanding of the human condition finally makes possible actually occur?’, does explain how this discovery works in our lives.

Great to hear Poonam! You can easily share THE Interview via our share button on our website and to progress your understanding our homepage provides the perfect guide for you to follow. Share away!

While it takes some time to digest, we suggest that what is unique about Jeremy Griffith’s work is that he has answered the essential question of why, when the universal ideals are to be integrative are we so disintegrative? Our endeavours in philosophy, psychology and biology have failed, until now, to provide a truthful, real, fully accountable, genuinely clarifying explanation. Answering this question required finding the clarifying difference between the way the intellect and instincts work, and that is the great biological breakthrough Jeremy presents here. We suggest FAQ 1.13 ‘Is this original or new?’ and Video/Freedom Essay 4 which expands further on other thinkers (both ancient and contemporary) who have recognised instinct and intellect elements involved in creating the human condition.

In chapter 5:5 of his book FREEDOM, Jeremy Griffith includes an analysis of the hominin fossil record (particularly Ardipithecus) that evidences that on the basis of physique, intelligence, small canines, bipedality the bonobos present a more accurate model of our human ancestors than common chimps; and there is also analysis from paleoanthropologists on the environment inhabited by those ancestors, demonstrating its similarity to the territory south of Congo River that the bonobos currently inhabit (see chapter 5:6 for more about bonobos). So, all the evidence points to loving and cooperative bonobos being a better model.

Hi Michael, it’s so wonderful to have your interest. At top of our homepage HumanCondition.com, it states ‘WHAT NEXT after watching THE Interview?’ and guides you through the steps to pursue your interest. This includes accessing Jeremy Griffith’s key books (for free), and subscribing to our (also free) mailing list where you will receive one email per week and occasional News Flashes - which you may have already done! We also encourage people to join our Facebook Group to learn more about this amazing, human-condition-resolved new world.

Of course the great paradox is that all of our angry, egocentric and alienated behaviour has actually been a heroic and necessary response to our instincts' criticism of the conscious mind’s search for knowledge. However, with the redeeming and reconciling understanding of the human condition now found all that behaviour is now redundant, and we can legitimately return to a peaceful, cooperative world.