Comments on THE Interview

Thank you very much for your comment, Eddie. Yes, Jeremy Griffith’s instinct vs intellect explanation of the human condition explains how our conscious mind became alienated from our loving, cooperative instinctive self, resulting in a universal psychosis. As he points out in THE Interview, the word ‘psychosis’ literally means ‘soul-illness’ and ‘psychiatry’ literally means ‘soul-healing’ (derived as they are from psyche meaning ‘soul’, osis meaning ‘abnormal state or condition’ and iatreia meaning ‘healing’). And, significantly, a psychosis is changeable as it can be healed through understanding! And we suggest that the more you digest this explanation, the more you will see that it does not rob life or explanations of life of its ‘spiritual’ dimension. We thought you might find our FAQs about religion of interest, in particular FAQ 6.7 ‘How can a scientific explanation ever hope to account for and encompass the great ‘spiritual’ dimension we know exists in life? / Isn’t ‘spirituality’ beyond a purely rational explanation?’

Hi Ginste, it’s great to have your interest. At the 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 registering for our free, live, interactive events with Jeremy Griffith and others and joining our popular Facebook Group, where there is much profound and exciting discussion happening.

    Essentially, DF, we needed to find the scientific explanation for why when the universal ideals are to be loving, cooperative and selfless are humans 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, see FAQ 1.3 for a very brief summary of the core concept. The human condition manifests in different ways in all as a result of our own experiences and exposure to the world, but the clash between instinct and intellect is the source of all our insecurity and subsequent anger, egocentricity and alienation, and so explaining it makes all those defensive behaviours redundant.     Our homepage — HumanCondition.com — provides an initial guide to learn more. At the top of the homepage it states ‘WHAT NEXT after watching THE Interview?’ and leads you through the steps to pursue your interest.

I’m excited. I need more and knowledge. The human condition is an eye opener. Without knowledge people perish.

The solution is understanding the human condition and the legitimate return to a selfless way of living that brings about. To clarify, all the problems we’re experiencing on this planet, aside from natural phenomenon, are caused by us humans. We are the ones who are egocentric, selfish, greedy, materialistic, fake, angry as hell. And so it’s that underlying issue—our ‘good and evil’ stricken human condition—that has to be addressed and fixed if we are to solve the world’s problems and that is exactly what Jeremy Griffith’s ‘instinct vs intellect’ explanation of the human condition does (see FAQs 1.5 & 1.6). And, as THE Interview explains, this will solve problems very quickly because instead of us being preoccupied with proving ourselves artificially (through seeking power, fame, fortune and glory) all our energies will be freed to truly work together and focus on doing whatever it takes to end the suffering in all the corners of the world. So, in a world fast going crazy from the effects of the human condition, this is the now desperately needed reconciling understanding that brings about a new world for humans FREE of the agony of the human condition. This is the understanding that ends human suffering at its source, and unites the human race (see our FAQs on the transformed state & our Transformation page).

Thank you for sharing your wonderful experience with Jeremy Griffith’s work Svenson! Also thank you for your reference to the Beatles song Here Comes The Sun which is anticipating exactly this moment of liberation from the bewildering darkness of ignorance about our lives' meaning and worth. Jeremy Griffith discusses this song and many others in his Freedom Essay 45 which we are sure you will thoroughly enjoy!

I want to listen

It’s great you are persevering Daniel! While great care has been taken to present the information as quickly and simply as possible (which is done in Part 1 of THE Interview) explanation of the human condition can be initially difficult to access. This is because it has been the most terrifying of subjects to face as it is the issue of whether we are fundamentally good or bad as a species, and we have necessarily lived in almost total denial of it. We suggest looking at Video/Freedom Essay 1 titled ‘Your block to the most wonderful of all gifts’ where Jeremy Griffith explains this initial ‘deaf effect’ and how to overcome it, which is also summarised in FAQ 1.16. Also FAQ 1.3 presents a very brief summary of the key ‘instinct vs intellect’ concept.

    What THE Interview explains is the source of human violence, patriarchy and racism is the universal psychosis caused by the human condition, not religion. Religions (including the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) have provided humanity with incredible guidance, comfort and love under the duress of the human condition but ultimately to resolve and liberate ourselves from our conflicted human condition we needed to be able to scientifically explain why when the universal ideals of life are to be loving and cooperative are we also so hateful and competitive, which is what biologist Jeremy Griffith has done. With this knowledge we can at last advance the human race from a human-condition afflicted state, where religions were a means of managing our condition, to a state completely free of that terrible affliction.     Human’s belief in a supernatural God again is a product of our psychological upset or insecurity and the biology of this is explained in THE Interview: that all humans are born with loving moral instincts but we all now variously suffer from a psychosis due to clash between our cooperative instincts and our intellect. This instinct vs intellect explanation of the human condition at last reconciles science and religion by bringing biological understanding to pre-scientific concepts. It demystifies the supernatural God we have needed. As Jeremy briefly explains in Part 3 of THE Interview ‘God’ is the personification of the Negative-Entropy-driven integrative meaning of existence, see FAQ 6.2 ‘What is ‘God’?’.

Hi Ricardo, as Jeremy Griffith explains in this presentation, humans have two different learning systems, the gene-based and nerve-based learning systems. And with the understanding that science has found of the different ways that these systems work—namely that the gene-based, natural selection process only gives species instinctive orientations to the world, whereas our nerve-based, conscious mind, which is able to make sense of cause and effect, is and needs understanding of the world to operate—we can understand that when our intellect emerged, a clash between those two operating systems would have occurred, producing the psychologically upset, angry, egocentric and alienated state of the human condition. But 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.” You might be interested in Video/Freedom Essay 4 where this is explained in more detail.

    Thanks for your question David. As is explained in Part 1 of THE Interview, humans’ selfish, angry and alienated behaviour, which has compromised our ability to nurture our childrent to the extent their instincts expect, is not a product of unchangeable savage animal instincts within us, but the result of a universal psychosis caused by a clash between our instinct and intellect, and significantly since a psychosis can be healed with understanding, human behaviour is not unchangeable or immutable – a revelation that transforms the human race forever and allows us to “find our way way back to a time that has been forgotten”, but as T.S. Eliot wrote, “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.”     We would highly recommend you read chapter 6:13 of FREEDOM which is titled, Nurturing now becomes a priority. There Jeremy explains that “now that we have found that very good reason why parents have been unable to nurture their children with anything like the unconditional love children instinctively expect and need, it is no longer necessary to deny the importance of nurturing both in the maturation of our species and in our own lives. Yes, with the arrival of understanding the terrible guilt that parents have felt for not being able to adequately nurture their offspring departs. Parents can now understand that their inability to adequately love their offspring is not their fault, but the product of the ever-accumulating levels of upset in the human race as a whole that resulted from our species’ heroic 2-million-year search for knowledge, specifically for self-knowledge, understanding of why we conscious humans are good and not bad. So yes, we can finally now admit the importance of nurturing and turn our attention back to the nurturing of our offspring—in fact, it now becomes a matter of great urgency that we do both these things.”

The human condition is the study of humans’ capacity for so-called ‘good and evil’and is therefore the realm of inquiry where science and religion overlap, so in explaining the human condition religion is demystified and explained. Jeremy Griffith’s treatise actually reconciles science and religion by bringing biological understanding to pre-scientific concepts. Although this is science, it is based on a Godly nature in the sense of recognising, like all the great religions do, that we humans once lived in a pre-human-condition-afflicted state of original innocence where we were perfectly instinctively orientated to the cooperative, selfless, loving, ‘Godly’ ideals of life; ‘God’ being briefly explained in THE Interview as being the integrative meaning of existence (see our FAQs about religion especially FAQs ‘What is God’ and ‘Does this understanding undermine religion’).

We suggest that what is unique about Jeremy Griffith’s understanding of the human condition is that he has biologically answered the essential question of why, when the ideals are to be loving and selfless, are we so competitive and selfish? See FAQ 1.13 ‘Is this idea original or new?’

    In regard to the hominin clade being instinctively cooperative, Jeremy Griffith explains in THE Interview, genuinely cooperative, unconditionally selfless genetic traits are self-eliminating, and therefore cannot normally develop in animals—which means animals are not normally able to cooperate beyond situations of reciprocity or kin selection (see chapter 6:9 of FREEDOM for an expose of this false biology that claims cooperation can be selected for). However, as Jeremy explains in Part 3 of THE Interview, the selfish process of natural selection was able to create loving selflessness in our forebears through nurturing (Freedom Essay 21 and chapter 5 of FREEDOM explain this ‘love-indoctrination’ process, as Jeremy has termed it, more fully).     Also, THE Interview reveals humans’ selfish, competitive and insensitive behaviour is not a product of unchangeable savage animal instincts within us, nor a result of heirarchies or competing for leadership —but the result of a psychosis, caused by the clash between our instinct and intellect. Jeremy explains the key biological distinction is that humans suffer from the conscious-mind-based, psychologically troubled human condition, not the genetic-opportunism-based, animal condition.

Our homepage at HumanCondition.com provides everything you need to pursue your interest! This includes THE Interview and Jeremy Griffith’s other key books which you can see here. Just click the ‘Get your copy for FREE!’ to see the various formats (including downloads) and translations available.

    Thanks for your thoughts Glen. What we can now understand is that deference to a religion or employing denial were responsible ways of coping with the upset the human condition caused in us. As Jeremy Griffith explains in THE Interview “we’ve had to live in denial of our corrupted, psychologically upset condition while we couldn’t explain it”. Significantly, now our upset state is explained and defended, we can safely stop denying the human condition in ourselves and the world and bring love or forgiveness to our dark side because we can understand that becoming upset was an immensely heroic state, not a shameful one.     So yes this is wonderfully liberating and freeing. To quote Jeremy again from Part 4: “the good news, and this is very important, is that while it will take a number of generations to heal all the upset in us humans, everyone can immediately live free of their upset…In fact, to continue using the old artificial defences of retaliation, denial and the search for relieving power, fame, fortune and glory when our fundamental goodness has been established is not only clearly pointless but also unnecessarily destructive of ourselves, everyone around us and our planet. That way of living is now completely obsoleted, finished with.” And as Craig Conway then summed it up “our artificial ways of reinforcing ourselves are obsoleted by the real reinforcement of ourselves. One way of living ends, a new one begins, free of the human condition—phew, thank God for that!!” Anything new has to be pioneered, which can indeed be lonely, but there are now so many people who understand and appreciate the world-saving power of this understanding no one has to be lonely ever again! So jump on our homepage—HumanCondition.com—to see all the ways to pursue your interest and join our WTM Community including registering for our live events with Jeremy and joining our booming Facebook Group.

Hi Margie, as THE Interview explains our soul or instinctive self is perfectly aligned to a cooperative and selfless way of living so that is innate in all humans but the critical question is why did we leave and corrupt that original loving state? 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. That is the great breakthrough presented here, see FAQ 1.13 ‘Is this original or new?’ which explains the unique significance of Jeremy Griffith’s work. Also you may find FAQ 1.26 ‘What is soul’ most helpful.

No Penny, as Part 4 of THE Interview explains, this is not about dogmatically imposing idealism like religion or a positive just-feel-good mindset. This treatise confronts the source of our ‘good and evil’ stricken human condition. It explains our aggressive and selfish behaviour isn’t due to us having savage genes but rather we suffer from the universal psychosis caused by the clash between our cooperative instincts and our intellect. 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 here. For a nutshell explanation see FAQ 1.3 and FAQ 6.5 explains the critical difference between Jeremy’s work and pseudo idealism.

Hi Andre, at the top of our homepage — HumanCondition.com — it states ‘WHAT NEXT after watching THE Interview above?’ and guides you through the steps to pursue your interest. This includes registering for our free, live, interactive events with Jeremy Griffith and others and joining our popular Facebook Group.

While thinkers such as Alan Watts touched on elements of the human condition in their thinking, 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 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.

Thank you for your excellent comment Nicholas. As you appear to have realised, what is so extraordinary about Jeremy Griffith’s treatise is that it logically and accountably defends human selfishness and egocentricity. What that this defence of our ‘dark side’ through finding the good reason that we had to defy our instincts means is that all our defensive behaviours (our anger, egocentricity and alienation) are now redundant. We no longer need them because we have the real defence for why we had to defy our instincts. Certainly it will take some generations for all our hurt and trauma to subside, but people can immediately choose to behave in line with a set of principles any time they want – they do it all the time in religions (although the ‘change of heart’ this information allows is based rational scientific knowledge, not faith). This is the essence of the transformation that is now available. To fully heal the human race will take generations, but everyone can immediately choose to live in accord with that understanding, which is what is so immensely exciting – see FAQ 4.1 to read all about the Transformed State.

Hi Peter, at the end of Part 3 of THE Interview Jeremy briefly explains that ‘God’ is the personification of the Negative-Entropy-driven integrative meaning of existence. This explanation — which is summarised in FAQ 6.2 ‘What is ‘God’?’ and fully presented in chapter 4 of FREEDOM — forms a key part of Jeremy’s thesis, because it shows that love is the theme of existence; it is the meaning of life. Now we can understand that in order to search for this understanding we had to defy our loving instincts and become angry, egocentric and alienated we can legitimately return to the cooperative and loving state we once lived in and in that sense return to a ‘Godlike’ state.

Hi Josie, it does take time to absorb this paradigm shifing information. What is explained is that virtually all animals are controlled by must-reproduce-their-genes instincts, however, through the love-indoctrination process, our ancestors developed genuinely altruistic selfless instincts (a process you can see occuring in bonobos). We do have instincts, but they are loving and cooperative, and so the source of our ‘fighting’ behaviour is not instincts, but is the result of a psychosis caused by the ‘instincts and intellect’ clash. We don’t suffer from a genetic-opportunism-driven ‘animal condition’, but a conscious-mind-based, psychologically troubled human condition.

Hi Marya, as with any new scientific breakthrough in history it will take time to gain mainstream acceptance, and from there break through the bastions of power in the world. However once this information gets a foothold through enough people developing a deep appreciation and desire to support it, the selfless love and energy that will generate will solve our problems very quickly because, as THE Interview explains, instead of being selfishly preoccupied with power, fame, fortune and glory, all our energies will be freed to truly work together and focus on doing whatever it takes to end the suffering in all the corners of the world.

It’s wonderful to have your interest, Bengt! You will be happy to learn Jeremy Griffith’s work is being translated into many languages around the world, thanks to wonderful efforts from the WTM’s ever-expanding global network of support. Unfortunately we don’t yet have any Swedish translations yet but the WTM Sweden Centre website is presented in Swedish, so we encourage you to visit it. Also people can watch THE Interview (and all the videos on our website) using the closed captions or subtitles function in their native language (just click on the ‘cc’ icon at the bottom of the video player/window).

Thanks for your thoughts, Sherre, it’s great this understanding is resonating with you. 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. It is only with the intellect defended for why it had to defy our loving instincts and become angry, egocentric and alienated, do we have the foundation to legitimately “find the heaven on earth we are looking for”, that is, 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).

Hi Justine, thank you for your question. In THE Interview Jeremy Griffith explains that the development of consciousness was gradual, occurring over millions of years. Specifically in Part 3 he refers the audience to chapter 7 of his definitive book FREEDOM for a more in-depth explanation of how we humans became fully conscious. This is also summarised in FAQ 5.4 ‘‘What is consciousness? / Why is it that humans became conscious while other animals haven’t? / How did consciousness emerge in humans?’ on our website.

    Thank you very much for your comment, Justin. Yes, 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—and so in the absence of the fully accountable, true understanding of the human condition, we humans needed to come up with some excuse, like humans having ‘savage animal instincts’, in order to cope with the negative implications of our behaviour (see FAQ 1.2).     But all that changes now that we have Jeremy Griffith’s first-principle-based biological explanation of why the intellect had to defy our cooperative ‘good’ instincts (in order to search for knowledge) and become psychologically upset, or ‘bad’, because only through that understanding could we resolve our species’ psychosis and legitimately return to the nurturing, loving and sensitive state we once lived in, that children, in their innocence, still instinctively expect. So we can now understand it has been humanity’s necessary preoccupation with finding knowledge that has compromised our ability to nurture and now that preoccupation ends we can safely acknowledge the absolute importance of nurturing in the development of children – see chapter 8:16C of FREEDOM on ‘The dire consequences of terminal levels of alienation destroying our ability to nurture our children’. So indeed our ability to heal depended on deeply knowing ourselves by having this core mystery of our contradictory behaviour biologically understood. This is the focus of Part 4 of THE Interview and is further explained on our Transformation page.

Thank you Linda. In fact, the redeeming explanation of the human condition allows us to return to a loving state that is millions of years old, not 150 years old, with the big difference being that this time it will be 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).

    Jeremy Griffith explains near death experiences in his definitive book, FREEDOM, in paragraphs 997 and 1200, and we have included the former passage below. Jeremy’s explanation of the human condition makes clear how much deep fear we all live in of the whole subject of the human condition, and how utterly preoccupied we are in keeping away from it and proving our sense of self worth. So it makes total sense to me that when people survive a near death experience, the mind, in that moment, gives up on denial and worrying in general and they experience the joy of what it is like to be free of the whole horror of the human condition, and the true world of our soul surfaces, and for the rest of your life you will remember and be guided by that experience.     “What occurs during a so-called Near-Death Experience actually illustrates what is occurring in some minds that have completely dissociated from reality. For instance, mountain climbers who survive falls that they were convinced would be fatal (they were saved, perhaps, by landing in a snow drift) often report that during those near-death moments they experienced a state of extraordinary euphoria in which the world suddenly appeared utterly beautiful and radiant and that they were flooded with a feeling of ecstatic enthrallment. With understanding of the horror of the human condition we can appreciate how, in such cases, the mind would give up worrying, and that all the facades—in particular the denial they adopted at Resignation—would become meaningless. If death is seemingly imminent, there is no longer any reason to worry or to pretend, at which point the struggle and agony and pretence of having to live under the duress of the human condition ceases and the true world of our all-sensitive soul suddenly surfaces. So yes, ‘savant genius lie[s] dormant deep inside everyone’s brain’. The Superman mythology is an expression of humans’ suppressed awareness of their alienated state—that resigned humans are Clark Kents with hidden Superman potential (news reporter Clark Kent being Superman’s civilian identity).”

Thank you very much, Mohamed, for your suggestion. The fundamental problem the human race has always had is to explain or justify competitive, selfish and aggressive behaviour. That is the issue of the human condition that Jeremy Griffith finally explains and why his work is of unique importance to the survival of the world. After THE Interview we encourage people to watch/read our Introductory Videos/Freedom Essays 1-4 and 14 on our homepage, and you will see in Video/Freedom Essay 14 that Jeremy discusses Jordan Peterson’s work, which he describes as immensely heroic yet ultimately doomed, because only the psychosis-addressing-and-solving, real explanation of the human condition can stop the destruction of our world and the disintegration of society that is happening everywhere we look. It is precisely this real psychologically redeeming and transforming explanation that Jeremy has delivered in his first principle-based biological understanding of the human condition. But while Peterson does not explain the biology of the human condition correctly, Jeremy is very appreciative of his work, referring to it in an essay that was published in Spectator Magazine.

Hi Liisa, in this summary presentation Jeremy Griffith briefly explains God is the Negative-Entropy-driven integrative meaning of existence and refers the audience to chapter 4 of his book FREEDOM. We also recommend our FAQ 6.2 ‘What is God’.

    Thank you for your comment Barbara – you are right that love is a primal instinct in our species evolution, however the truth is that what de Waal is presenting is very evasive, and doesn’t explain human empathy and altruism at all! Unlike our ancestors (and unlike bonobos), chimpanzees are still controlled by selfish, must-reproduce-their-genes instincts. Which means that chimpanzee’s apparent empathy and altruism are in-fact selfish forms of selflessness, driven by the genetic reproductive strategies of kin selection and reciprocity. As Jeremy explains in Part 3 of THE Interview, the only way that genuine cooperation or selflessness could develop was through the nurturing based love-indoctrination process, which is how we gained our loving instinctive self or soul (you can read more about love-indoctrination in chapter 5 of FREEDOM). The influence of the love indoctrination process on the bonobos, who are cooperative and matriarchal (compared with the chimpanzees, which are competitive and patriarchal) is readily apparent, which you can read about in chapter 5.6 of FREEDOM. Of course, without the explanation of the human condition, admitting that nurturing is what made us human has been an unavoidable truth, and so ‘left wing’ scientists such as de Waal who want to emphasise our cooperative traits have had to come up with false, nurturing-denying explanations to do so, which is what he is doing in this video. You can read more about left-wing biology in chapter 6:9 of FREEDOM.     What is also now clear is that the source of humanity’s soul-oppressing psychosis was not “imperial, hierarchical, patriarchal “civilization””, but a clash between our emerging conscious mind and those pre-established instincts. Certainly this psychosis manifested itself in those aspects, but we can now understand that all that competitive, aggressive, even destructive, behaviour was an unavoidable, indeed necessary, part of human life. This understanding defends our so-called ‘dark side’; 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, allowing us to return to that loving state!