Comments on THE Interview

    Thanks very much for your interest, Michele. Yes, 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; as the Nobel prize-winning physicist Charles H. Townes recognised, science and religion “both represent man’s efforts to understand his universe and must ultimately be dealing with the same substance. As we understand more in each realm, the two must grow together…converge they must.” So in explaining the human condition, religious scripture is able to be demystified and explained. Indeed, Jeremy Griffith’s treatise actually reconciles science and religion by bringing biological understanding to pre-scientific concepts (see our FAQs about religion).     And we also wanted to let you know that Jeremy’s definitive book FREEDOM: The End Of The Human Condition is available for free on our homepage here, along with his other key books including the booklet version of THE Interview, to read online or download. You can also download the free Kindle version from Amazon. Otherwise you can purchase hard copies from Amazon or other good bookstores.

Thanks Simon, for your enthusiasm and interest in Jeremy Griffith’s breakthrough, psychologically rehabilitating explanation of the human condition. We agree! And with the generous efforts of our global network of appreciative supporters, we have translated THE Interview and many other publications into numerous languages, all of which you can see on our Translations page. It is also worth mentioning until more translations are available people can watch THE Interview (and all the videos on our website) with subtitles in their native language (use the closed captions or subtitles function by clicking on the ‘cc’ icon at the bottom of the video player/window). We also encourage people to share THE Interview and other presentations provided on the WTM YouTube channel, and those posted on our other social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter. THE Interview is also freely available to download or print and also broadcast for non-commercial use (in accordance to the copyright notice which you can see at the end of THE Interview).

Thanks for your question, Sean. It does take a little time to fully absorb the significance of finally being able to explain the human condition. But essentially what it means is that we now have the ability, for the first time, to understand the source of our species’ divisive behaviour; we can at last understand that we have been driven by a deep insecurity about our fundamental goodness or worth, and 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. ‘Legitimately’ because at last we have the first principle-based science which liberates us to be honest about our conflicted upset state instead of denying or transcending it. With our dark side and truthfully explained and defended we can finally love ourselves and bring about a rehabilitated world, free of suffering, for ourselves and future generations. This is the rapidly transforming practical effect of being able to understand the human condition, which is fully explained and illustrated on our Transformation page. Also FAQs 1.4 to 1.6 explain the far-reaching application of this information while Freedom Essay 15 is all about ‘How our lives can be immediately transformed’. We especially recommend joining our Facebook Group and registering for our live events with Jeremy Griffith, as both forums provide insightful discussion about how this immensely redeeming and relieving knowledge transforms our lives.

Yes Bona-mae, the explanation of the human condition unravels and makes sense of the whole seemingly impenetrable and insoluble confusion of human life—and does so in such a simple way—it does appear ‘self obvious’ or evident. It brings to mind Thomas Huxley’s famous response to Darwin’s idea of natural selection: ‘How extremely stupid of me not to have thought of that!’ However, In THE Interview Jeremy answers the question of, ‘if the ‘instinct vs intellect’ explanation is so obvious, why weren’t we taught this at school?’; and similarly our FAQ 1.14 explains that the answer to the question of, ‘if these ideas are so important why haven’t people heard of them?’, is that the human condition has historically been an off-limits subject, and as a result people can find it difficult to take in or ‘hear’ discussion of it; others can even become hostile to opening the whole arena.

Thank you for your feedback, Isaac. In Part 3 of THE Interview Jeremy Griffith explains how humans became fully conscious as a result of nurturing or the love-indoctrination process. He also refers the viewer to chapter 7 of his definitive book FREEDOM which provides a comprehensive explanation — a summary of which is provided 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?’.

    As Jeremy Griffith explains, even though other animals display various levels of socialness, genuinely cooperative, unconditionally selfless or ‘moral’ 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). Part of the brilliance of biologist Jeremy’s treatise is he explains how humans biologically overcame this genetic limitation through what he identifies as the ‘love-indoctrination’ process, which produced our all-loving, altruistic instincts and he uses the example of the cooperative and maternal bonobos, who have developed this ‘love-indoctrination’ process to a lesser degree. Because of this love-indoctrination, it is apparent that while there are remnants of selfish reciprocity, sexual opportunism and aggression in bonobo behaviour, as indicated in THE Interview, the greater truth is that they are extraordinarily nurturing, and extraordinarily gentle and cooperative. The ‘love-indoctrination’ process is absolutely fascinating biology which is summarised in our FAQ 5.2 ‘How did we humans acquire our all-loving, unconditionally selfless moral conscience?/ What do bonobos tell us about our own evolutionary heritage?’     There is no suggestion of ‘removing’ instinctive traits from people or restricting free thought! What is being suggested is that we now have the ability, for the first time ever, to understand every aspect of human behaviour and our behaviour will change naturally as a result. At last we can understand our behaviour has been driven by a deep insecurity about our fundamental goodness or worth and 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 in line with our original loving instincts. This is the rapidly transforming practical effect of being able to understand the human condition which is fully explained and illustrated on our Transformation page. Also FAQs 1.4 to 1.6 explain the far-reaching application of this information and Freedom Essay 15 is all about ‘How our lives can be immediately transformed’.

     Certainly there are countless variations of human behaviour, but what is being suggested is that it is all a manifestation of a deep rooted insecurity about our self-worth, and what’s more, that this insecurity has a common source, which was a clash between our pre-established instincts and emerging conscious mind. In short, our pre-established instincts ‘criticised’ our emerging conscious mind’s experiments in self-management some 2 million years ago, and without the defence for why it had to search for knowledge, the conscious mind became insecure. And so despite the almost endless manifestations of the human condition, having this core mystery and problem about human behaviour solved ends all the conflict and suffering in human life at its source, and provides the now urgently needed road map for the complete rehabilitation and transformation of our lives and world! It couldn’t be a bigger breakthrough, see FAQ 1.6, ‘Why does understanding of the human condition solve everything?’     And regarding the indefinability of “the invisible ether of human interaction”, as Jeremy Griffith has also 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.”

While this necessarily has a slow start, humanity’s uptake of the explanation of the human condition has a fast finish as the selflessness it liberates in people will not only quickly solve all the problems on the planet, including teaching other people about this redeeming information, but the excitement and joy it brings means everyone will want to get on board as quickly as they can (see FAQ 1.5)! As Jeremy Griffith explains in his book FREEDOM chapter 9:9: “Although this new world for humans, which the World Transformation Movement has been established to facilitate, will, as has been stated, have a slow beginning because humans initially find it difficult even taking in or ‘hearing’ discussion about the human condition, once the WTM is discovered, word of it and what it offers every human and the world will spread like wildfire.’”

Hi Fran, you can see all our translations on our Translations page. You will see that we have translated THE Interview (A Entrevista) into Portuguese, and are working on adding other Portuguese translations as soon as we can!

Jeremy Griffith presents first principle-based, rational, testable, biological understanding of the human condition. There is no faith or belief involved, it’s all about knowledge. This realm of inquiry is, however, where science and religion overlap — as the Nobel prize-winning physicist Charles H. Townes recognised, science and religion “both represent man’s efforts to understand his universe and must ultimately be dealing with the same substance. As we understand more in each realm, the two must grow together…converge they must.” We recommend FAQ 6.1 ‘Is this a religion?’

Thanks Ronald. While great care has been taken to present this new science as quickly and simply as possible (which is done in Part 1 of THE Interview), opening up the human condition does mean that there are several absolutely critical questions to be answered (Parts 2, 3 & 4). For a very brief summary of the ‘instinct vs intellect’ explanation see FAQ 1.3.

    While Buddhism 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 presents in THE Interview and his definitive book FREEDOM: The End Of The Human Condition.     In FREEDOM, and other works, Jeremy acknowledges Sigmund Freud’s courageous recognition that humans carry negative, repressed elements of our personality, a ‘repressed unconscious’. However, beyond that, there is very little similarity between Jeremy’s explanation of the human condition and Freud’s thinking. 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. The clarifying explanation of the difference between instinctive orientations and conscious understandings presented in THE Interview is this longed for explanation of the source of our upset, and the key to rehabilitating all the subsequent manifestations of the human condition.     In Part 4 of THE Interview Jeremy defines the word ‘psychosis’ saying “The psychoanalyst Carl Jung said, ‘wholeness for humans depends on the ability to own our own shadow’, and since we can now ‘own’ the ‘shadow’ of our species’ 2-million-year-corrupted condition, the human race is finally in a position to become ‘whole’. 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’—see pars 63 & 72 of FREEDOM), but we have never been able to ‘heal our soul’, explain to our original instinctive self or soul that we, our fully conscious thinking self, is good and not bad and by so doing reconcile and heal our split selves—but now at last we can.”

Jeremy Griffith acknowledges religions contain all manner of truths about human life, however it is all from a pre-scientific view. The teachings of Kabbalah contain references to the truth of our upset psychological ‘self-destructive’ state, and the search to find the reason for it, which has been humanity’s great search, to solve the human condition and return to ‘wholeness’. In particular, in THE Interview Jeremy makes the point that from ancient times many thinkers have identified the elements of instinct and intellect involved in creating the human condition, however the great breakthrough science can now provide is the clarifying explanation of the nature of the conflict between them. 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 produces our psychologically upset condition. Without that explanation the conflict could not be resolved. That is the great biological breakthrough Jeremy presents. We suggest FAQ 1.13 ‘Is this original or new?’ which explains the unique significance of Jeremy Griffith’s work.

Jeremy Griffith’s book FREEDOM: The End Of The Human Condition is freely available on our homepage HERE, along with his other key books including the booklet version of THE Interview, to read online or download (no email required). You can also download the free Kindle version from Amazon. Otherwise you can purchase hard copies from Amazon or other good bookstores. Happy reading Catherine!

While ancient scriptures and 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 presents in THE Interview. What Jeremy is putting forward is that for there to be a fundamental change in our human situation we had to understand the human condition – humans’ capacity for good and evil – from a biological perspective.

Thank you for your interest Christine. Yes at last science can explain the ideals humanism upholds. Until the human condition was solved all we could do was aspire to be ideal but now it is solved—namely we can understand why when the universal ideals are to be loving, cooperative and selfless are we so angry, competitive and selfish—real and lasting transformation comes to the world and humanity will be able to ‘reset’ as you say. We thought you might find this FAQ 1.40 as it addresses the questions of ‘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?’

Hi Francisco, we suggest our FAQ 1.13 “Is this idea original or new? / How does biologist Jeremy Griffith’s ‘instinct vs intellect’ explanation of the human condition differ from other theories that recognise these elements?”, as it explains the unique significance of Jeremy’s work. Most importantly, in finding the clarifying difference between the way the intellect and instincts work, Jeremy has answered the great question of why, when the universal ideals are to be loving, cooperative and selfless, we are so angry, competitive and selfish. This is of great importance because having found the good reason that we had to defy our instincts means all our defensive, ‘bad’ behaviours (our anger, egocentricity and alienation) are now redundant. This is the essence of the transformation that this breakthrough makes available.

    As ‘THE Interview’ explains, to avoid the terrifying issue of the corrupted state of the human condition, human-condition-avoiding, resigned humans necessarily had to find some way of denying that our species did once live in a cooperative and loving state because then there would be no original innocent state to have become corrupted and therefore no guilt or shame. We recommend Jeremy Griffith’s astonishing new presentation The Great Guilt.     With the human condition now safely defended, we can admit our cooperative past, and in fact, the whole of FREEDOM evidences that we emerged from an innocent past, not a savage, ‘red in tooth and claw’ past as is commonly held. For example, see analysis of gentleness of so-called primitive peoples, such as the San Bushmen and the Australian Aborigines, as well as evidence from mythology of a ‘golden age’ of innocence (for example, in chapter 2:7); see also evidence provided by the astonishing sensitivity to paleolithic rock painting (see chapter 8:11C); indeed, all of chapter 8), is a revealing application of the ontogeny recapitulate phylogeny principle.

There is a lot to absorb here Terry, but I suggest the more you do absorb it, the more it will dawn on you just how accountable the instinct vs intellect explanation is. You can know that Jeremy Griffith has at last got to the bottom of the human condition and found the redeeming explanation of it, because as he explains in chapter 1:3 of FREEDOM the ultimate test of any hypothesis is how accountable it is of our own lives – 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.

    Yes Riph, now that we can safely explain why we became so selfish and egocentric, we can also safely explain the paramount importance nurturing has played in human development; and so current trends that result in children receiving less nurturing are alarming. The bottom line however, is that now the human condition is solved, humanity’s necessary preoccupation with finding knowledge and proving its self worth, which is what has compromised our ability to nurture, now ends, allowing nurturing to once again become humanity’s central focus.     The relationship between men and women is, of course, also paramount in nuturing future generations, and that too is reconciled and healed with this understanding; to quote molecular biologist Dr Anna Fitzgerald from 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” (see Freedom Essay 9). And, as Jeremy says in concluding chapter 8:11B of his book FREEDOM, “With understanding of the human condition now found, men and women can at last stand side by side—the ‘war of the sexes’ can finally be resolved. Yes, the human journey can have the happy ending we always hoped it would.” You might be interested in reading FAQ 8.1 ‘How does the explanation of the human condition reconcile men and women?’; and you can read about how women have grown frustrated with men’s egocentricity and dysfunction, to the point where they are attempting to usurp men, in Jeremy’s book Death by Dogma, along with other ‘false starts’ to a human condition free world. We can now see that men’s corruption was an inevitable side-effect of the heroic and all-important search for knowledge.

    At last with Jeremy Griffith’s instinct vs intellect explanation of the human condition we can understand WHY we are so destructive, greedy and oppressive. Which means we can now explain that the more innocent or sheltered ‘races’ (ethnic groups), like the Australian Aborigines, have not been as exposed to humanity’s heroic battle to find knowledge as less sheltered races, and so they aren’t as psychologically upset as those less sheltered races. So yes, more sheltered races have more affinity with our instinctive soulful, cooperative way of living and nature and are therefore not as “brutal and competitive” as more upset races. However, 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. Also, most significantly, despite the differing levels of upset due to everyone’s different encounters with humanity’s heroic battle to find knowledge, we are all equally good. You might like to read our FAQ 9.1 about how this understanding puts an end to racism and for a testimonial on the power of this knowledge to end racism, we recommend the presentations from Franklin Mukakanga, of Zambia, and Refentse Molosiwa, of South Africa, in Video/Freedom Essay 8.     Finally, in Addendum 2 of his book Death by Dogma, Jeremy explains why the 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.

Hi Gioshep, you can see all our Spanish translations, including chapters 1 – 5 of FREEDOM (we are working through the remaining chapters) and THE Interview, as well as the first Freedom Essay, on our Translations page. Also the WTM Colombian Centre presents its website in Spanish, including centre founder Carlos Cruz Blanco’s welcome video, so there is a significant amount of material available!

Hi Edwin, our team is currently working on the narration of chapter 4 of FREEDOM, so we hope to release that very soon, but in the meantime there are the hundreds of audios of most of our other books, as well as our essays and videos, in the WTM App (which you can download for free and there is no sign in required at App Store or Google Play) and on Spotify. Our essays are particularly worth listening to while FREEDOM is being finalised, as they provide a summary of its content.

The key insight of Jeremy Griffith’s treatise is that our selfish and aggressive behaviour is not instinctive, rather it is psychological in origin, the result of a clash between our emerging conscious mind, and pre-established loving instincts. And psychoses can be healed with understanding, so that’s the importance of the psychosis-addressing-and-solving, explanation of the human condition presented in THE Interview — this ‘holy grail’ of all human conscious thought and enquiry brings a complete and permanent end to our insecurity-driven destructive behaviour, transforming all humans into secure and functional beings. Certainly, as Jeremy explains in Part 4 of THE Interview, it will take generations for the upset within us as a species to be completely healed but we can be immediately free of its effects (see FAQ 4.1). As the late Professor Harry Prosen, psychiatrist and former president of the Canadian Psychiatric Association, said: ‘I have no doubt Jeremy Griffith’s biological explanation of the human condition is the holy grail of insight we have sought for the psychological rehabilitation of the human race. This is the book we have been waiting for, it is the book that saves the world’ (mentioned in Part 1 of THE Interview).

Thanks for your comment, Tom. There is a lot to digest here, but the idea that ‘we humans evolved from instinctive “animals”’ is actually central to Jeremy Griffith’s treatise. In particular, when we became conscious and began experimenting with self-management, a battle arose between our conscious and those pre-established instincts. However, as Jeremy explains throughout his writing, unable (until now) to explain our psychologically upset state, we have not been able to admit it, and instead have historically used the ‘savage instincts’ excuse in which our blameless conscious mind has to ‘step’ in and control our instincts. We suggest the more you do digest this redeeming explanation for our psychologically upset condition, the more obvious it becomes that the conscious mind is upset, and that this does explain all aspects of human behaviour.

Great to have your interest, Ruth, and to know this understanding of the human condition is resonating with you. The study of humans’ capacity for so-called ‘good and evil’ is the realm of inquiry where science and religion overlap, so in explaining the human condition religion is demystified and explained. As the Nobel prize-winning physicist Charles H. Townes recognised, science and religion “both represent man’s efforts to understand his universe and must ultimately be dealing with the same substance. As we understand more in each realm, the two must grow together…converge they must.” And this is what Jeremy Griffith’s work does; it reconciles science and religion by bringing biological understanding to religion’s pre-scientific descriptions of our condition (see our FAQs about religion).

Hi Victor, thank you very much for your interest! Jeremy Griffith’s definitive book FREEDOM and his other key books, including a booklet version of THE Interview, are freely available on our homepage here to read online, print and download. You can also purchase hardcopies and download free Kindle versions from Amazon. We also recommend pursuing this interest by joining our Facebook Group and registering for our live events with Jeremy and others as there is so much helpful discussion taking place in those forums about how this immensely redeeming and relieving knowledge transforms our lives!

Very educative. Yearning for more, thanks.

Thanks for your question, Mohan. It does take a little time to fully absorb the significance of finally being able to explain the human condition. What it means is we now have the ability, for the first time, to understand every aspect of human behaviour and our behaviour will change naturally as a result. At last we can understand we have been driven by a deep insecurity about our fundamental goodness or worth and 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. ‘Legitimately’ because at last we have the first principle-based science which liberates us to be honest about our conflicted upset state instead of denying or transcending it. This is the rapidly transforming practical effect of being able to understand the human condition which is fully explained and illustrated on our Transformation page. Also FAQs 1.4 to 1.6 explain the far-reaching application of this information and Freedom Essay 15 is all about ‘How our lives can be immediately transformed’. We’d especially recommend you join our Facebook Group and register for our live events with Jeremy Griffith as there is so much helpful discussion taking place there about how this immensely redeeming and relieving knowledge transforms our lives!

Jeremy Griffith’s breakthrough insight is that our psychologically upset alienated and aggressive state is a result of a clash between our instincts and intellect that arose because the gene-based learning system can orientate species to situations but is ignorant of the nerves’ need to understand. Everything that Griffith writes about is an application or extrapolation of this key insight. While Julian Jaynes may have identified the elements of instinct and intellect involved in creating the human condition, he did not provide the great breakthrough clarifying explanation of the nature of the conflict between them. Most importantly, without that explanation the conflict could not be resolved. You may be interested in reading Freedom Essay 53, which includes acknowledgement of the contribution to humanity’s understanding of itself by Julian Jaynes, and other thinkers who have recognised the instinct and intellect elements involved in creating the human condition. Jaynes’s work is further discussed in Jeremy’s expansion of his definitive book FREEDOM, at https://www.humancondition.com/freedom-expanded-book1-those-who-were-partially-honest/#julian-jaynes. You can also read about the establishment of our moral instincts in Freedom Essay 21, and the origin of human consciousness in Freedom Essay 24.