This is Freedom Essay 7

 

Professor Harry Prosen affirms the significance
of Australian biologist Jeremy Griffith’s book
FREEDOM: The End Of The Human Condition

 

Dr Harry Prosen, M.D., M.Sc. (1930–2021) was a professor of psychiatry who worked in the field for over 60 years, including chairing two departments of psychiatry and serving as a president of the Canadian Psychiatric Association. Professor Prosen was a Distinguished Life Member of the American Psychiatric Association and one of 500 Specially Selected Fellows of the American College of Psychiatrists. He was also psychiatric consultant to the Bonobo Species Preservation Society. (You can read Professor Prosen’s full biography and obituary here.)

 

Preposterous as I know it must seem, I have no hesitation in saying that Jeremy’s biological synthesis about our human condition explains this great breakthrough of breakthroughs that the human race has been waiting for—and, I should say, that given the plight of the world, its arrival couldn’t be more timely!

 

Watch the video below, filmed in February 2014 at the Milwaukee County Zoo in front of the Zoo’s extraordinarily cooperative and empathetic group of bonobos, and hear Professor Prosen affirm the significance of biologist Jeremy Griffith’s breakthrough explanation of the human condition:

 

Make and see comments here

 

This video also appears as Video 7 in the Introductory Series of videos at the top of our homepage at www.humancondition.com.

 

The Transcript of this video

 

This video of Professor Prosen was filmed
in February 2014 at the Milwaukee County Zoo, USA

 

 

My name is Harry Prosen, I’m a professor of psychiatry with over 50 years’ experience working in the field.

As a psychiatrist I not only work with humans, I also work with other species. In fact, I am consultant to the Bonobo Species Preservation Society, and have consulted on situations affecting some of the bonobos in the enclosure behind me here at the Milwaukee County Zoo.

Once referred to as pygmy chimpanzees, bonobos are an extraordinarily nurturing, loving, cooperative species who can reveal a great deal about how we humans acquired our original altruistic, moral, instinctive self or soul, the voice or expression of which within us we call our conscience. The nurturing origins of humans extraordinary altruistic moral instincts—which my own life-long studies of empathy especially amongst bonobos confirms—is but one of the great mysteries in biology that this absolutely incredible book I have here explains and solves. This truly astonishing book by Australian biologist Jeremy Griffith, is primarily concerned with explaining humans present psychologically troubled, innocence-destroyed, angry, egocentric and alienated so-called human condition. I first became interested in Jeremy Griffith’s explanation of our species’ present psychologically troubled human condition some 10 years ago.

I would like to be absolutely explicit about the importance I see in Jeremy’s insights into the human condition: I suggest that we humans have always known that one day, from somewhere on this planet, probably from some relatively quiet corner that is conducive to introspection—like Australia—that the completely penetrating and truthful, entirely compassionate, psychologically transforming answers about humans would appear. Preposterous as I know it must seem, I have no hesitation in saying that Jeremy’s biological synthesis about our human condition explains this great breakthrough of breakthroughs that the human race has been waiting for—and, I should say, that given the plight of the world, its arrival couldn’t be more timely!

So what this book effectively does is take humanity from a state of bewilderment about the nature of human existence to a state of profound understanding of our lives. It is a case of having got all the truth up in one go! Truly, this is the book that saves the world—yes, I believe this is the most sensational information to ever appear on planet Earth. As I say, I know this is all most extraordinary but you have the book to verify my amazement and excitement.

 

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Watch Jeremy Griffith present the breakthrough redeeming explanation of the human condition in Video/​F. Essay 3, or read chapter 1 of FREEDOM. And you can read an adapted excerpt from Professor Prosen’s Introduction to Jeremy’s book FREEDOM in F. Essay 19.

 

Discussion or comment on this essay is welcomed—see below.