Comments on THE Interview

This understanding explains that the tragic cost of the search for knowledge was that we became psychologically angry, egocentric and alienated. Indeed it has been a long, terrible journey of over 2 million years since we first became conscious and the search for knowledge began, and during that time humanity became so psychologically upset that atrocities such as murder could be, and certainly have been, committed. However, the journey is now over; we have finally found the scientific explanation of the human condition that redeems and liberates humanity. You can read about the meaning of the story of Cain and Abel in Freedom Essay 38.

Yes, Ottmar, THE Interview and our key Introductory Video/Essays 1-10 & 14 are available in German on our homepage (just scroll down to under the ‘Main Videos’, and click on the ‘Translations’ button). You can also watch all the videos on our website using the subtitles function (see the ‘cc’ icon at the bottom of each video player). And you may be particularly interested to know that the WTM Austria Centre and WTM Switzerland Centre websites are provided in German and contain a feast of material.

Thank You Very much for this WONDERFUL INFORMATION !!!

Maternalism is a genetically selfish activity, but Jeremy is not saying maternalism accounts for the love human mothers feel for their children. In Part 3 of the THE Interview, he explains that it was because maternalism is a genetically selfish activity that love indoctrination was able to become established in our distant ancestors millions of years ago. However, and very importantly, once love indoctrination became established, mothers began to actively love their children. The extraordinarily nurturing bonobos demonstrate this transition from selfish instinctive behaviour to the beginning of genuine love. You can read more about love indoctrination in Freedom Essay 21 and chapter 5 of FREEDOM.

Humanity’s ability to nurture has been severely compromised by the human condition, but now that all our preoccupied behaviour has been defended by the explanation of the human condition, we can now 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’.

Thanks Livia, yes, with our psychologically upset now defended, it is now safe to admit that our human instincts are loving and cooperative, that is our natural state – see Part 3 of THE Interview; and in Part 4, it is explained how, with the human condition now solved, all humans will be able to return to that non-upset ideal state we’ve longed for, be it Paradise, Eden, Nirvana, Utopia, Shangri-La or whatever term we ever-hopeful humans ascribed to it, but we will return to it 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).

Jeremy Griffith’s treatise on the human condition, which is summarised here in THE Interview, explains that the 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. While it is true that some Western ‘races’ have been more exposed to the battle than some other, more sheltered ‘races’, it is not correct to say that the human condition is a Western condition – all humans are now part of the extremely upset stage of humanity, H. sapiens sapiens, and are, therefore, nowhere near as innocent as humans were some 2 million years ago when the battle of the human condition first emerged. All humans are now variously angry, egocentric and alienated due to the human condition. We recommend you read Freedom Essay 28: The end of racism.

In Part 2 of THE Interview, Jeremy explains that the pre-scientific story of Adam and Eve was “wrong” in the sense that “Adam and Eve [i.e. us humans] are actually not just good but the heroes of the whole story of life on Earth”. He goes on to elaborate that “what this real — and actually very obvious — instinct vs intellect explanation of the human condition fundamentally does is lift the ‘burden of guilt’ from the human race. It establishes that we humans are good and not bad after all. While we are all inevitably variously angry, egocentric and alienated from our different encounters with humanity’s heroic battle to find knowledge, ultimately self-knowledge, understanding of our corrupted condition, we can now know that every human is fundamentally good.” We encourage looking at the Introductory Videos on the WTM homepage because the more you do absorb this explanation, the more you realise just how all-clarifying, all-redeeming, all-reconciling, all-healing, all-liberating it is!

I’m not entirely sure I understand the entire thesis, however it seems to suggest that evolutionary science dictates that Homo sapiens must be forever dominated by a hyper individualistic dog eat dog mentality. A sort of Hobbesian war of everyone against everyone. However as a student of evolutionary science and a clinician I’m well aware that individual egos can be sublimated in the furtherance of shared and altruistic goals, the problem being that this reciprocity is rather easily directed into the furtherance of goals that are both selfish or destructive or both. History resounds with the clash of sabres of groups, tribes, nations, that had superlative ingroup compassion and rabid hatred for the outgroup. I may well be getting the wrong end of the stick here but if so it’s at least partly because of the professors repetition of “dog eat dog” mentality

It is true that this breakthrough wisdom has arrived at the 11th hour! And as with any new scientific breakthrough in history it may take time for people to realise this is what it says it is but once this catches on — through people recognising the importance of it — the infectious enthusiasm and selfless love it liberates will spread like wildfire. And it really is the universal solution to all the problems we face! For the growing momentum of support that is already building around the world for Jeremy’s breakthrough explanation of the human condition, see our FAQ on our ever-expanding network of WTM Centres, and please read FAQs 1.4–1.6 and chapter 9:9 of Jeremy’s definitive book FREEDOM for more on the speed in which this knowledge can turn humanity in the right direction and transform it.

The human condition has been such a deeply, deeply tragic journey full of so much unthinkable pain and suffering, especially for children, it really is almost too much to bare. What is so significant about Jeremy Griffith’s explanation of the human condition is we no longer have to be burdened by the fundamental question of whether we are good or bad because our core goodness as individuals and as a species has been biologically established. We can understand humans’ psychological upset was the price humans had to pay for searching for knowledge and that the human story presents the greatest, most heroic story ever told. We can know what happened to us as infants was not because we weren’t good enough or that we were unlovable but rather it was the result of the human condition. So we can bring great compassion and kindness to ourselves and others and we don’t have to overly confront the upset within us (as FAQ 1.19 summarises). Also our FAQs 1.4 – 1.6 and chapter 9:9 of Jeremy’s definitive book FREEDOM explain just how quickly this knowledge can transform the world.

Certainly there has been a recognition in literature (and by profound thinkers generally) that there must be something better than our current human condition afflicted state. However many people have deluded themselves that this liberated state could be achieved through people artificially restraining, sublimating and even transcending their upset, corrupted condition, but the truth is that this state could only be achieved by confronting, truthfully thinking about, and finally explaining and thus solving the human condition at its source, which is what Jeremy Griffith has done. In the end it was only getting to the bottom of it all, not transcendence, that could fulfil Richard Bach’s allegoral quest for perfection.

The above analysis seeks place blame for negative human qualities and behaviors solely upon the conscious intellect and asserts the notion that human beings are by their biological nature exclusively kind and loving. This ignores the reality that humans have evolved to be a gregarious species and goes against conventional scientific thinking about the origins of human behavior. Humans can indeed be kind and loving, but this behavior is directed towards members of their group. Towards outsiders they can display great savagery and brutality, red in tooth and claw, just like the other beasts. Thus, people are adapted to be both kind and cruel, just like all other gregarious species. There was never a time when they were only one or the other. The human intellect, although it can come into conflict with natural tendencies, acts, for the most part, to fulfill instinctively felt needs, not to create them. The problem with the presented analysis is that it encourages the reader to believe that negative human traits and desires can be entirely eliminated correct thinking and self discipline. This is clearly false.

The breakthrough explanation of the human condition presents a massive paradigm shift in our thinking so it’s natural to need to take time to digest all it reveals. As Jeremy Griffith describes, the human condition has historically been such a fearful, off-limits topic and the mind simply needs time to ride out the initial shock of having it broached and all manner of mystery unlocked. For instance, in Part 2 of THE Interview, Jeremy explains that the pre-scientific story of Adam and Eve was ‘wrong’ and that ‘Adam and Eve are actually not just good but the heroes of the whole story of life on Earth’. We encourage re-watching THE Interview and looking at the Introductory Videos on the WTM homepage because the more you do absorb this explanation, the more you realise just how all-clarifying, all-redeeming, all-reconciling, all-healing, all-liberating it is!

As Jeremy Griffith says in THE Interview, the power of cooperative selflessness that solving the human condition liberates will enable us to effectively deal with all the overwhelming problems that are burdening our world, and very quickly, because we will be able to effectively address challenges like pandemics as a collective by prioritising the needs of the greater whole. But it’s very important to point out that this explanation allows us to understand that even though we became immensely psychologically upset sufferers of anger, egocentricity and alienation for participating in humanity’s search for knowledge, we weren’t ‘evil’; in fact, humans are the heroes of the story of life on Earth. And it’s this knowledge that legitimately allows us to return to our natural loving, selfless and cooperative instincts, that ‘divine’ state you mention.

As Jeremy Griffith has written in one of his earlier books (A Species In Denial), “The demystification of our world doesn’t mean the specialness of our world is removed, rather it means the specialness is made more tangible. Mechanistic science, like all forms of denial, has largely been a process of stripping the beauty and truth from the world whereas the denial-free explanation of the world restores all that beauty and truth. It allows humans to live with a full awareness of, and ability to savour, the beauty of integration. It is alienation that is devoid of spirituality, not the truth.” You may also be interested in reading FAQ 6.2 which includes the answer to ‘Does the scientific explanation of ‘God’ really contain all the attributes of religion’s metaphysical ‘God’?

Certainly humanity has been trying all sorts of ways to therapise itself, but what is so unique about what Jeremy Griffith presents is that we finally have the ultimate scientific defence for our psychologically upset self, which is the key element in providing true therapy to all humans. As Jeremy says in Part 4 of THE Interview, “what this real—and actually very obvious—instinct vs intellect explanation of the human condition fundamentally does is lift the ‘burden of guilt’ from the human race. It establishes that we humans are good and not bad after all. While we are all inevitably variously angry, egocentric and alienated from our different encounters with humanity’s heroic battle to find knowledge, ultimately self-knowledge, understanding of our corrupted condition, we can now know that every human is fundamentally good. And this ability to understand and know there was a good reason why the human race became psychologically upset, is the key, relieving understanding we have been in search of ever since we became conscious some 2 million years ago and our corrupted condition emerged.”

Yes these videos are just wonderful! I don’t know if you saw it, but there’s a stunning quote from Dostoevsky in Part 3 of The Interview that Jeremy uses to illustrate “our species’ bonobo-like time in an alienation-free, all-sensitive and all-loving state of innocence”. Just search ‘Dostoevsky’ above to find it under the picture of the bonobos lying on the grass. I do agree that the great authors have explored the human condition, which is why their work has resonated I imagine. I must say though, that Jeremy is forever citing profound quotes from authors and philosophers that I have not come across before. Have a look through Freedom’s index and you’ll be amazed by all the references!

What is explained in THE Interview is that the 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. While it is true that some European ‘races’ have been more exposed to the battle than some other ‘races’, it is not correct to say that the human condition is a European condition – all humans are now part of the extremely upset stage of humanity, H. sapiens sapiens, and are, therefore, nowhere near as innocent as humans were some 2 million years ago when the battle of the human condition first emerged. We recommend you read Freedom Essay 28: The end of racism.

It is true that while the corrupting search for knowledge was going on it was not possible to find a permanent balance between cooperation and selfishness. These fluctuations are evident in the action of democracy — as Jeremy Griffith writes in chapter 3.9 of FREEDOM, under democracy “the proper balance is sought between the need to maintain a degree of selfless, loving, soulful, cooperative ‘ideal’ behaviour for society to function, and the need for there to be sufficient freedom from the imposition of the expectation of such ‘ideal’ behaviour, for people to be able to carry on the corrupting search for knowledge.” It does take some time to digest, but what is so significant about this breakthrough is that we can at last reconcile instinct and intellect, idealism and realism, which does bring about true and lasting equilibrium.

Yes, what was missing in all these attempts to delve into the problem of the human condition was the all-important clarifying, redeeming, reconciling and psychologically rehabilitating explanation for WHY the conflict between our instincts and our consciousness occurred. Until that was found, we humans couldn’t relieve ourselves of our psychologically upset state or condition.

Thanks Lysiane. Yes, in Part 3 of THE Interview, Jeremy explains that our human instincts are loving and cooperative — altruistic; that is our natural state. And in Part 4, he explains the reason why we had to defy those instincts and become angry, egocentric and alienated sufferers of the human condition, and in providing that redeeming, reconciling and transforming biological insight, humans will be able to return to that all-loving cooperative state, but this time in a fully knowing, conscious way.

Yes, Snowdon, this reconciling understanding of the human condition at last makes it possible to explain and demystify all mythology, including all the parables and stories in the Bible. Jeremy Griffith explains that the prophet Moses went as close as you could possibly go in those pre-scientific times to actually explain the human condition when he said “we took the fruit from the tree of knowledge [became conscious] and were disobedient [obviously meaning we developed a conscious free will that defied our already established instincts that had been controlling our lives] and became perpetrators of sin [sufferers of psychologically upset, divisive behaviour]”. All Moses lacked to fully explain the human condition was the scientific explanation of the difference between genes and nerves, which defends our ‘disobedience’. It is this explanation that finally allows us to understand that even though we became immensely psychologically upset sufferers of anger, egocentricity and alienation for participating in humanity’s search for knowledge, we weren’t ‘evil’; in fact, we are the heroes of the story of life on Earth!

Thank you for your comment. As Jeremy acknowledges and explains throughout his work, the angry, egocentric and alienated human condition has caused immense brutality, pain and suffering between humans—between different sexes, religions, ethnicities, generations; it has been one long horror story. But what matters now is that we can, through the reconciling and redeeming and rehabilitating explanation of the human condition, finally understand the source of the psychological upset that drove those injustices and bring an end to it. For present generations this means we can at last be honest about all the horrors, because the human condition has been defended at its very source, and even more importantly, the human race can leave behind its whole upset history as compassionately dealt with. And this includes those with extreme states of egocentricity and narcissism, known as psychopaths or power addicts. Jeremy explains this power addicted state, particularly in men, in chapter 8:16D of FREEDOM. The significance and profundity of Jeremy’s explanation of the human condition takes some time to absorb, but the more you do absorb it, the more you realise just how all-redeeming, all-reconciling and all-liberating it is.

Hi Mark, by subscribing to our mailing list you will receive our weekly Freedom Essays as well as regular WTM news updates on the fabulous new transformed world that opens up for all humans now that understanding of the human condition has been found.

Hi Marta, here are the links to THE Interview and our key Introductory Video/Freedom Essay 1 in Spanish. Regarding other Spanish translations, the founder of WTM Colombia, Carlos Cruz Blanco, presents his website in Spanish, including his welcome video and lots of other information about the WTM. Some of our key work has also been translated into German, Dutch, French and Afrikaans, all of which can be accessed on our homepage (under ‘Main Videos’ there is a ‘Translations’ button).

Jeremy explains that the emergence of consciousness was a by-product of the ‘love indoctrination’ process, which allowed it to escape the blocks that all other animals have to its development (see FAQ 5.4: What is consciousness? / Why is it that humans became conscious while other animals haven’t? / How did consciousness emerge in humans?). And when consciousness did emerge and begin to exercise its power of self-management, yes it did come into conflict with our pre-establised instincts, which led to the psychologically upset state of the human condition.

We certainly hope to be able to publish this breakthrough in all languages. At the moment THE Interview and other WTM publications are available in Afrikaans, Dutch, French, German and Spanish; you can access these translations on our homepage (below ‘Main Videos’ see ‘Translations’ button). We also have many WTM Centres all around the world which you can see here. You can also watch all our videos using the subtitles function. (The subtitles icon ‘cc’ is at the bottom of every video player.)

Unlike religions, which are based on faith or dogma, the understanding of the human condition is based on rational, first-principle-based biology; it is knowledge-driven. Please see our FAQs that clarify the difference between the work of Jeremy Griffith and the WTM, and religions.

The absolutely astonishing claims made about Jeremy Griffith’s breakthrough explanation, such as it is the insight that will ‘solve the human condition and save the world’, do warrant initial extreme scepticism, but the amazing fact is that they all withstand scrutiny; a person can begin reading the explanation and the more they read into it the more they will realise the claims being made are actually true, and in time become appreciated for their forthright honesty in indicating where the solution to our problems lies. Read more in FAQ 1.9: Should people be sceptical about these claims.

I definitely want and need to know this information

As is explained in THE Interview, humans’ angry, egocentric and alienated behaviour is the result of a psychosis, not due to savage instincts within us, and as Jeremy explains, “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 can read more about the false savage instincts excuse in FAQ 1.2.