Comments on THE Interview

Good on you Billy. Yes, 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’. As is explained in THE Interview, the story of Adam and Eve eating the “forbidden fruit” is a pre-scientific metaphor for the emergence of consciousness and its clash with our pre-established, cooperative loving instincts, resulting in humans ‘fall’ or them becoming psychologically upset or ‘sinful’. However as Jeremy stresses, we can now understand, from scientific first principles, that ‘Adam and Eve’ were ‘good’ to search for knowledge, not bad or ‘evil’. And with that redeeming answer to the human condition now found, our psychological upset (so called ‘sinful’ or ‘fallen’ state) can actually subside. 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!

Thanks for your comment Charles, however we suggest, if you watch the entire 1 hour interview you will find this explanation debunks the ‘we have savage animal instincts’ excuse for our selfish and competitive (which Karl Marx limited to such basic needs as sex, food, shelter and clothing). What biologist Jeremy Griffith explains in this interview is that all humans are born with all-loving moral instincts, not survival-of-the-fittest 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 selfish and competitive 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 and needing to be controlled or corrected through education and governing. As Jeremy says at the end of Part 1 “...our egocentric and arrogant and mean and vindictive and even sadistic behaviour has nothing to do with wanting to reproduce our genes. That was absurd. And it is actually really good news that our behaviour is due to a conscious-mind-based psychologically troubled condition because psychoses can be healed with understanding. If our competitive and aggressive behaviour was due to us having savage instincts then we would be stuck with that born-with, hard-wired, innate behaviour. It would mean we could only ever hope to restrain and control those supposedly brutal instincts. But since our species’ divisive behaviour is due to a psychosis, that divisive behaviour can be cured with healing understanding. So that is very good news. In fact, incredibly exciting news, because with understanding we can finally end our psychologically troubled human condition. It’s the understanding of ourselves that we needed to heal the pain in our brains and become sound and sane again.”

Hi Johan, thank you for your comment and people often need to read THE Interview slowly or watch it a few times to fully digest what it presents. As the host Craig Conway observes in this interview, the fundamental genes vs nerves argument is extraordinarily simple but is “so far-reaching in its ramifications” that it is understandable its simplicity can appear ‘complex’ in terms of all it explains. Also it presents a new paradigm of understanding which does take time to fully absorb especially since it is one that dares to confront the historically unbearably confronting and off-limits subject of the human condition. Our FAQ 1.16 explains we’ve had to live in denial of our corrupted, psychologically upset condition while we couldn’t explain it so we have to work through this denial to take in or ‘hear’ the full explanation. This is called the ‘deaf effect’ but with patient re-reading or re-watching it subsides and everyone can access this most wonderful gift of understanding!

Great to have your feedback Johnny and yes this new science or knowledge is extraordinary and mind-bending, or as you say ‘insane’, in all it explains and reveals!!

Watching THE Interview Pin, which is our ideal introductory presentation, is the best way to find out but to briefly answer your question. Essentially, when we humans developed a conscious mind some 2 million years ago, a battle unavoidably developed between it and our already established 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. This key ‘instinct vs intellect’ concept is summarised in our FAQ 1.3 ‘What is the explanation of the human condition’.

Hi Leon, it’s great to have your interest. What is presented in THE Interview explains that the basis of all the dysfunction and destruction in the world, including our governments, are manifestations of the ‘instinct vs intellect’ conflict within each of us. What is so significant about what biologist Jeremy Griffith explains is that it actually solves that discord at the individual level, and therefore at every other level, by reconciling instinct and intellect. By explaining the very good reason why our intellect had to defy our instincts (which is that genes can orientate but nerves need to understand) means all our defensive behaviours (our anger, egocentricity and alienation), are now redundant. You might be interested in reading more in FAQ 1.40, which addresses ‘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?’. In terms of politics this explanation allows us to understand the real merits and liabilities of both the left and right wing. It brings profound understanding to all sides which ultimately will allow the whole, divisive business of politics to at last come to a close, see FAQ 7.1 ‘How does understanding the human condition bring an end to the now horrifically polarised world of politics?’

Hi Luz, it’s wonderful to have your interest. Jeremy Griffith’s work presents a huge paradigm shift in our thinking so can take a little time to how this understanding changes our behaviour. Solving the human condition solves all the confusion, frustration and suffering in human life at its source because it explains the underlying cause of all our selfishness, anger and egocentricity. We can now understand that 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 or changing effect of being able to understand the human condition which you see in the relief and excitement of the over 20,000 ecstatic responses to THE Interview at the top of Fix The World homepage. Our FAQs 1.4 to 1.6 are helpful as they talk about the far-reaching practical applications of this understanding. For the most detailed explanation of the transformation that is now possible we recommend Jeremy Griffith’s two seminal presentations on the topic: The Great Transformation and Sermon On The Beach.

Wonderful to hear, Bodo! All of Jeremy Griffith’s books are freely available on our Books page to read online, download or print your own copy (no email required). You can also download the free Kindle version or purchase hard copies from Amazon (or other good bookstores). You will find all these options next to each book at the link above, including instructions for printing and even binding your own copy. If you’d like to, you can subscribe to our mailing list to receive one free email per week and occasional updates. We also recommend joining our FIX THE WORLD Facebook group (with 100,000 members) for helpful and thought-provoking conversations.

Yes it is such a relief Mary to finally have the human condition resolved! Despite our competitive and selfish behaviour, we have always intuitively believed we were fundamentally good, but we have never been able to explain this contradictory, conflicted condition but now we can!! In explaining this Jeremy Griffith does bring new insight to the story of Adam and Eve, clarifying that while in the pre-scientific story Adam and Eve were portrayed as ‘bad’, ‘fallen’ or even ‘evil’ to take the fruit of knowledge, and treated as ‘sinful’, we can now understand that humans were ‘good’, even heroic, to search for knowledge, even though it caused us to become psychologically upset angry, egocentric and alienated sufferers of the human condition. As Jeremy says in Part 1 of THE Interview, “‘No, no, that story got it wrong’. Adam and Eve are actually not just good but the heroes of the whole story of life on Earth.” What science can now add to that pre-scientific description of the human condition is that our instincts in effect criticised the emerging conscious mind’s search for knowledge, but importantly, we can now understand that the conscious mind was right, or ‘good’ to defy our instinctive self in order to fulfil its great potential to manage life. While religious assurances, such as ‘God loves you’ in Christianity, provided comfort, they failed to explain WHY we are lovable, and it is that missing explanation that this breakthrough provides. And significantly, by bringing biological understanding to pre-scientific concepts it at last reconciles science and religion. You might find our FAQ 6.3 about understanding religion helpful because we can now understand what religious doctrine was providing (even though it could be hurtful) and the great role religions played in humanity’s journey.

No, you aren’t slow Piet - quite the opposite! What Jeremy Griffith is presenting is a huge paradigm shift in how we’ve thought about humans, so it does take time to digest. But what you are doing is perfect - just listen a few times, and start to explore the other material on our homepage, and your mind will absorb the logic and naturally start to merge it into your own understanding.

Great, you will not be dissapointed Thomas. The emergence of consciousness is clearly central to Jeremy Griffith’s ‘instinct vs intellect’ thesis, however, you might be particularly intersted in our FAQ 5.4 titled ‘What is consciousness? / Why is it that humans became conscious while other animals haven’t? / How did consciousness emerge in humans?’

Thanks John. While Christianity and other religions 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 Griffith presents which actually reconciles science and religion. You might be interested in our FAQs on Religion.

    Yes, the central struggle between instinct and intellect has been described by all the great religions. For instance, THE Interview explains the story of Adam and Eve is a pre-scientific metaphor for the emergence of consciousness and its clash with our pre-established, cooperative loving instincts, resulting in humans becoming psychologically upset or ‘sinful’ or ‘evil’. However, significantly we can now understand, from scientific first principles, that ‘Adam and Eve’ were ‘good’ to search for knowledge, not bad or ‘evil’; we humans are actually the absolute heroes of the whole story!     Jeremy Griffith considers all the great religions to be repositories of extremely rare denial-free truth, containing all the truth about human life albeit from a pre-scientific view. But 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—for why we don’t live in harmony and aren’t of one spirit. 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.     You might like to watch or read Video/Freedom Essay 4 which expands further on thinkers (both ancient and contemporary) who have recognised instinct and intellect elements involved in creating the human condition.

The biological ‘instinct vs intellect’ explanation of the human condition allows us to understand the real merits and liabilities of both the left and right wing. His work identifies that the problem of the right-wing is its destructiveness, however, through its support of egocentricity and selfishness, it does encourage the search for knowledge to continue. However the left wing’s insistence on ideal behaviour had the effect of oppressing and thus regressing, not ‘progressing’, the all-important search for knowledge. Most importantly, this understanding brings a profound understanding to both sides which ultimately will bring an end to the whole ugly business of politics. This is fully explained in our FAQs about politics.

    Our FAQ 1.40 addresses the question ‘Won’t the greedy and power-hungry simply ignore this?’ and explains that even those who are most committed to seeking validation through gaining power and wealth, including those entrenched in positions of power, will quickly realise how empty and obsolete that strategy is now that we have the fully accountable, psychosis-addressing-and-solving, biological explanation of the human condition that establishes our worth at the most fundamental level. Basically, so exciting and relieving is this breakthrough, and the freedom from the human condition that is now on offer, that everyone will want it, and so it will catch on like wildfire and this is already happening.     The key thing to realise is that what is being presented here is not some imposed ideal state, but understanding that removes the insecurity that is driving all our divisiveness. In other words, it is not really a state that will need to be made into a “law”; everyone will want it. The following is a passage from Part 3 of Jeremy Griffith’s book Transform Your Life that might be helpful: “We are rational creatures, and so when all the logic points to there being only one response we can make, namely the human-condition-resolved, upset-obsoleted, transformed new way of living, then that is the response the human race has to take. No revolution dogmatically, and even physically, imposed upon us by others, as has pretty much been the case with revolutions in the past, just a peaceful revolution through the power of logic, knowledge, understanding."

We put it to the test every moment of every day. As the greatest of all physicists, Albert Einstein, once said that ‘truth is what stands the test of experience’. And so you can know that this is the breakthrough explanation of the human condition because once you understand the explanation and begin to apply it, you will discover it is so able to make sense of human behaviour it makes it transparent. This transparency of ourselves and our world—for example, the exposure of all our falseness—that this understanding of the human condition brings, is the ultimate ‘test of experience’ that confirms that the understanding being presented here is the long-sought explanation of the human condition. In this particular scientific study—the biological analysis of the human condition—we humans are the subjects, which means we can experience, feel and know the truthfulness or otherwise of the explanations being put forward.

‘IT’ being the human condition, the historically off-limits subject of our corrupted state!

The problem is that we haven’t been able to tell the truth, even to ourselves! The human condition — which is the question of are we a fundamentally good or bad species — is something almost all people have sensibly had to live in denial of until humanity could find the answer to it. With the defence for our psychologically upset state found, we can now afford to be honest about the corrupted state of the world, including ourselves. As Jeremy says at the end of THE Interview, “finding understanding of the human condition brings to an end the insecure, upset, artificial-reinforcement-dependent angry, egocentric and alienated world. A new human-condition-resolved, cooperative, selfless and loving world now emerges. Light comes streaming into the dark cave-like world of denial that we have been living in, and it will all be like waking up from a nightmare!”

    Hi Pauli, THE Interview and many of Jeremy Griffith’s books and essays have been translated into many languages, including Dutch, which you can find on the Fix the World Translations page. These Dutch translations include THE Interview, Jeremy’s definitive book, FREEDOM, and its condensation, Transform Your Life as well as our Main Video/Essay Series! These also appear on our Fix The World Amsterdam and Fix The World Arnhem Centre websites (see the Centres page on our website).     You may also be interested to listen to Emmy Award-winning actor Pierre Bokma, express his deep appreciation for Jeremy’s explanation of the human condition during an appearance on the Dutch television program Zomergasten (click here to watch.)     (Also people can watch THE Interview (and all the videos on our website) using the closed captions or subtitles function in their native language. The subtitles icon ‘cc’ is at the bottom of the video player, and you can choose languages using the ‘cog’ setting next to it.)

    As is explained in Part 1 of THE Interview, our selfish, competitive and aggressive behaviour is not due to savage instincts but is the result of a psychosis caused by the ‘instincts vs intellect’ clash. We don’t suffer from a genetic-opportunism-driven ‘animal condition’, but a conscious-mind-based, psychologically troubled human condition. As is explained, the idea that we are selfish because we have ‘savage instincts’ is just an excuse we have had to use until we had the real defence for our condition.     Moreover, we can now see that our ancestors were completely loving and cooperative (a state that the bonobos are approaching). Freedom Essay 21 and chapter 5 of FREEDOM explain the nuturing based ‘love-indoctrination’ process, through which these loving, cooperative instincts were created.     Importantly, as Jeremy explains in Part 1 of THE Interview, “it is actually really good news that our behaviour is due to a conscious-mind-based psychologically troubled condition because psychoses can be healed with understanding. If our competitive and aggressive behaviour was due to us having savage instincts then we would be stuck with that born-with, hard-wired, innate behaviour.”

Our FAQ 1.40 addresses the question ‘Isn’t it too late?’ and explains that even those who are most committed to seeking validation through gaining power and wealth, including those entrenched in positions of power, will quickly realise how empty and obsolete that strategy is now that we have the fully accountable, psychosis-addressing-and-solving, biological explanation of the human condition that establishes our worth at the most fundamental level. Basically, so exciting and relieving is this breakthrough, and the freedom from the human condition that is now on offer, that everyone will want it, and so it will catch on like wildfire and this is already happening. Just read the ecstatic responses THE Interview is receiving on our homepage and scroll down to see the rapidly growing appreciation and support for the WTM with outstanding commendations from thought leaders and WTM Centres all over the world!

    Yes! Jeremy Griffith’s breakthrough instinct vs intellect explanation of the human condition establishes the equality of all humans and brings compassionate and thus safe understanding to ALL of human behaviour — including why the horror of racism has existed under the duress of the human condition and, most importantly, finally brings it to an end. In Freedom Essay 28 ‘The end of racism’, Jeremy explains that: "One of the most unbearably condemning truths we had no choice but to live in denial of—even though it is an extremely obvious truth—is that the more and/​or longer an individual human, or even a ‘race’ (ethnic group) of humans, was exposed to the great battle that humanity has been heroically waging against ignorance, the more they would suffer from the upset state of the angry, egocentric and alienated human condition.     The particular reason this truth has been unbearably condemning while we couldn’t explain, understand and heal our upset behaviour is that it left those more upset feeling, and even portrayed as, less worthwhile and inferior to those who weren’t as upset. With the upset state of the human condition now at last explained and defended we can see how unjustly condemning and dangerous this prejudice against upset has been because what is revealed is that while humans do vary in their degree of upset as a result of humanity’s heroic battle to find self-knowledge, ALL HUMANS ARE EQUALLY GOOD. Upset is not a bad, evil state, but a good, heroic one. But again, until we could explain this truth that all humans are equally good there was the danger of unfair and destructive racist, ageist and sexist prejudice and discrimination against the more upset, and also retaliatory prejudice by the more upset towards the less upset for their either direct or implied condemnation of them."     Toward the end of that essay, Jeremy explains, “It no longer matters who is more cynical, more human-condition-adapted, because the Transformed State leaves all that behind. The greater truth is we humans have all become well and truly corrupted/​upset/​messed-up/​damaged/​soul-devastated anyway, but none of that matters now because we are leaving that upset world, we are out of there; we have won the match and we can now all head for the showers and get ready for humanity’s great victory party—and soon even the different scars we all carry from the match will be healed and gone, soon the human race will be rehabilitated.” For a testimonial on the power of this knowledge to end racism, we recommend the presentations from Franklin Mukakanga and Refentse Molosiwa in Video/Freedom Essay 8.

    It is true that Plato admitted that we humans have a cooperative past, and as we have grown more and more psychologically upset, that has become a more confronting truth. However, in Addendum 2 of his book Death by Dogma, Jeremy explains why the white, patriarchal, Judeo-Christian Western culture, like the right-wing in politics, has been one of the main targets for rejection by the pseudo idealistic, politically correct, ‘woke’, identity politics, cancel culture movement — but that it has finally delivered the explanation of the human condition that the whole world has been so desperately waiting for.     As Jeremy writes, “everyone has intuitively been waiting for these white male developers of the Judeo-Christian Western tradition to solve the human condition. And, further, since everyone has been intuitively aware of the critically important task this group has, everyone has been prepared to tolerate a degree of extra material good fortune and colonising power that the exceptional functionality afforded this group. BUT THIS TOLERANCE HAS ITS LIMIT: if this group is seen to be failing to deliver the answers that it was especially tasked with finding, then disenchantment with it, and resentment of its good fortune, would occur. And this is exactly what has occurred, the ‘deepest hostility’ and ‘denigration’ ‘of the Western tradition’ that Douglas Murray wrote about.”

Yes! As THE Interview explains, for humans to return to our original cooperative and loving instinctive behaviour, we had to first confront and solve the human condition. We had to answer the age-old question of why when the universal ideals are to be loving, cooperative and selfless are we so angry, competitive and selfish. Now with the intellect defended for why it had to defy our loving instincts and become angry, egocentric and alienated, we have the foundation to legitimately return to that non-upset ideal state or home we’ve longed for, but with understanding, in a fully conscious way; as the poet T.S. Eliot anticipated, ‘We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time’ (Little Gidding, 1942).

    The only way the world could survive was by answering the critical question of the human condition, which is why when the universal ideals are to be loving and selfless are we so competitive and selfish? It is this crux question that Jeremy Griffith confronts and answers through first principle biology because only through understanding the dark side of ourselves — why men in particular are so selfish and aggressive — can we free ourselves from the human condition and legitimately return to the loving nurturing, matriachal world we all long for. This is the critical difference between Jeremy’s work and the new age movement which just advocates for a return to a loving world - see FAQ 6.5.     We can at last understand why men especially, but also women, suffer from the human condition and all it’s related behaviours including selfishness and egocentricity, but that ALL HUMANS ARE EQUALLY GOOD and equally heroic. See molecular biologist Dr Anna Fitzgerald’s video commendation about how this explanation is the real liberation of women and our FAQ 8.1 ‘How does this reconcile men and women’.

Yes, we agree: empathy is part of our natural condition, and certainly not a weakness, and as you recognise, this understanding liberates the natural empathy within us. As THE Interview explains, all humans suffer from the universal psychosis caused by the clash between our instinct and intellect. We became angry, egocentric and alienated or in a word ‘upset’ so all humans, to varying degrees, suffer from the human condition and therefore have mental health issues. As the highly respected psychiatrist Professor Harry Prosen, a former President of the Canadian Psychiatric Association, wrote: “the beauty of Griffith’s treatise is that the healing starts at the macro level of the universal human condition; the healing of the shame and blame that the whole human race has suffered from…It brings the greater context and love to all human psychosis and suffering, and then, from under the umbrella of that safe position, everyone can gradually work inwards to their particular experience of all the imperfections in human life that have now, finally, been made sense of.” (see FAQ 1.34).

Yes, please pursue this with everything you have got Carol, because you will see that this new paradigm just keeps opening up more and more insight for you! You can immediately access a copy of FREEDOM on the Fix The World homepage under the ‘WHAT NEXT’ section. You will see you can freely access an 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.

Thank you for your feedback, Tim. We suggest that as you digest what is being presented here that you will see that rather than the need to “achieve, to acquire, to conquer” being negative attributes, we can now see that they have been heroic – the necessary defensive reactions to our instincts criticising the all-important search for knowledge. ‘New Age’ practices that advocate “surrender” were ‘false starts’, because the battle to find understanding of our corrupted condition had not yet been completed. And so they ultimately failed to produce a lasting solution to the destruction and devastation we see all around us. Fundamentally they are about transcending, escaping, the pain in our brains, rather than confronting and solving it at its source, which is what Jeremy Griffith’s treatise does.

Thank you for your consideration Dr Mann. We suggest that history and culture describe the human condition; they don’t explain its origin. Biologist Jeremy Griffith’s work is explicitly addressing that missing causal layer — why the human condition exists at all — which is why it’s biological rather than historical in focus. We thought it worth mentioning even though THE Interview is a summary presentation it does provide references to more comprehensive material, in particular Jeremy’s definitive book FREEDOM: The End Of The Human Condition. Given the format of an interview to introduce such a macro subject as the human condition, we think you will agree that Jeremy has actually included a lot of historical information or “reality”. This is from philosophy (including quotes from Hesiod and Plato), psychology, biology, anthropology and theology, all of which can now be parsimoniously explained by the ‘instinct vs intellect’ explanation being put forward.

Thank you for your thoughts Ivano, however, we suggest that on scrutiny, what you are suggesting is superficial. Just saying “love your neighbors” leaves the question screaming to be answered: WHY we don’t we love our neighbours? Why, when the universal ideals are to be loving and selfless, are we so competitive and selfish — such that we seek to dominate others and are unable to love ourselves, others and our world? Our governments and institutions are just manifestations of our own psychosis, not the cause of it, so that isn’t an explanation. No, we needed to get to the bottom of the human condition, which means we needed a completely rational, carefully evidenced, fully accountable, scientific explanation, and this is what Jeremy Griffith has answered – and why his work is heralded as the great breakthrough that can save the world; see commendations and reviews from scientists and thought leaders testifying to the accountability of the explanation; and see FAQ 1.6 ‘Why does understanding of the human condition solve everything?’

We appreciate you taking the time to listen Ken. For readers of these comments Fix The World is a global not-for-profit organisation and all our publications, subscription and membership are freely available on our website — there are no hidden costs.

    You will be very happy to know Henk that THE Interview and many of Jeremy Griffith’s books and essays have already been translated into many languages, including Dutch, which you can explore on the Fix the World Translations page. These Dutch translations include THE Interview, Jeremy Griffith’s definitive book FREEDOM and its condensation Transform Your Life and our Main Video/Essay Series as well! These also appear on our Fix The World Amsterdam and Fix The World Arnhem Centre websites (see FAQ 3.3 ‘How do I contact my nearest Fix The World Centre?’).     You may interested to listen to Emmy Award-winning actor Pierre Bokma, express his deep appreciation for Jeremy’s explanation of the human condition during an appearance on the Dutch television program Zomergasten (click here to watch.)     Also people can watch THE Interview (and all the videos on our website) using the closed captions or subtitles function in their native language. The subtitles icon ‘cc’ is at the bottom of the video player, and you can choose languages using the ‘cog’ setting next to it.