Jeremy Griffith’s homage
to Steve van Hemert

 

21 March 2026, Hunter Valley, NSW, Australia

 

Introduction to Jeremy’s speech, by Tony Gowing

 

This is gold. It’s Jeremy doing his thing on 21 March 2026—taking the false world head on, standing up to the artificial and superficial, sophisticated, all-confident and all-dominant, ‘There’s nothing wrong with our world or us, don’t embarrass us by confronting us with the truth of our corrupted condition’ attitude that exists everywhere in the world. ‘Just leave us alone Jeremy so we can get on with our resigned lives where we promenade about as got-it-together legends’ when, as Jeremy compassionately explains in all his books, we are actually all, the whole human race, in a dire state of terminal alienation!

This video is of Jeremy giving a speech at his very good friend Steve van Hemert’s surprise 80th birthday party where many close friends of Steve’s had gathered to celebrate the contribution he had made to their lives. Jeremy is glorifying Steve’s truth-telling honesty and how that honesty helped Jeremy go on to solve the human condition, find the redeeming and liberating good reason for why we humans have suffered from the corrupted state of the human condition. You will see that Jeremy was boldly making it completely clear to everyone how important Steve’s honesty has been to the world by creating a new Australian flag with Steve at the centre of it in the famous Australian outlaw Ned Kelly’s helmet. Bold Ned Kelly, bold Steve van Hemert, and bold Jeremy Griffith! (The transcript of Jeremy’s speech is included below the video.)

So thank you Steve for helping Jeremy hold onto the truth about our corrupted human condition, which enabled him to continue to think truthfully enough to, as I say, go on and find the human-race-saving, redeeming biological understanding of that horrifically corrupted state that will fix the world. And thank you Steve & Robbie van Hemert, Tom & Molly Shannon (Steve & Robbie’s daughter), and Manus McFadyen (a great friend of theirs), for giving Jeremy the opportunity to stand up for his true world against the dishonest false world where everyone everywhere in the world is living in a resigned state of dishonest denial of our corrupted human condition. And thank you for enabling Jeremy to do it in the middle of the Hunter Valley, which from Armidale to the coast has in the all-too-recent past been a hot-bed of outrageous lies that FIX THE WORLD is a sinister organisation—terrible lies that we finally defeated after an extremely agonising but successful 15-year-long defamation court action. And, by the way, almost singlehandedly, Tim Watson and his wife Ali, who drove Jeremy up from Sydney to this Hunter Valley gathering, stood like a colossus against all the persecution of us in that valley by courageously publicly supporting us time and again through those terrible years from their home in the middle of that valley.

This video is wonderful inspiration for us all at FIX THE WORLD. Historically it has always been important to stand up for truth, but the levels of devastation in the world now are so great that standing up for this particular truth of Jeremy’s redeeming explanation of the human condition is absolutely critical—because it is the ONLY way to save the human race. As Jeremy said to me on his return to Sydney, ‘What is going to happen in the world over the next 10 or possibly more years is that more and more people are going to accept that the human race is in a completely devastated and desperate situation, but that there is a way out of this horrific predicament, and that is to support this redeeming and psychologically healing scientific explanation of the human condition. More and more people are going to realise that you can set out to do ‘this’, or strive to achieve ‘that’, but the fact is it will make no difference to the dire situation the world is in—ONLY SUPPORTING THIS INITIALLY-CONFRONTING-BUT-ULTIMATELY-RELIEVING EXPLANATION OF THE HUMAN CONDITION CAN SAVE OUR SPECIES. Basically the world is now in a life-or-death war where the human-race-liberating truth has to win out over the entrenched lies, the entrenched denial of our corrupted human condition. That is the predicament the world and every human in it is now in. So our job at FIX THE WORLD is to defend the human-race-liberating understanding of ourselves everywhere and anywhere—hold the fort until the cavalry of responsible establishment support arrives.’

Which is precisely what Jeremy is showing us how to do in this video—how to defy all the denial, all the silence, all the darkness that wants to resist the human-race-saving understanding we now have of our corrupted human condition.

Yes, anyone can figure this out for themselves once they understand this information—that the world is mad and rapidly going completely crazy, but there is actually a way out, and that is to support this truthful and compassionate understanding of the human condition. There is no other meaningful path forward that anyone can follow, and that is the truth! So all we at FIX THE WORLD have to do is, as Jeremy said, look after this biological understanding of the human condition until everyone turns up to help us.

As evidence of this growing appreciation of the importance of Jeremy’s work and thus of the importance of “holding the fort until the cavalry arrives”, this is what Professor Yonas Adaye at Addis Ababa University sent us just last week: ‘I consider FREEDOM by Jeremy Griffith to be the rarest gift on the planet. Jeremy tells the truth and is our guide to ending the human condition. In my assessment, his books are next only to the Bible, they truly make sense and are absolutely thrilling, liberating and transformative. I have given a copy of FREEDOM to dozens of my friends and colleagues, including at the Ethiopian National Dialogue Commission who ended up buying and recommending the book to many. What else should be disseminated more than good news such as this? It does not preach a new religion; it does not degrade your colour, creed or class; it embraces humanity as they are; it ignites imagination; it empowers you to release your own potential to be kind to yourself, to your loved ones and to the world. It reinforces your religion, makes you accept yourself, and fosters respect for the rest of humanity! Most importantly, it makes sense of and ends the moral corruption we are all facing across the world today. I am glad to cite the works in my research and presentations. I just recommended that some of my PhD students keep the books as self-help readings in their bags and on their shelves wherever they go.’

And this is what Professor Alejo Vidal-Quadras, a nuclear physicist and former Vice-President of the European Parliament no less, said only a few weeks ago, ‘FREEDOM is a really significant contribution to science, providing fundamental answers’, and ‘Jeremy’s interview with Craig Conway deserves spreading to the largest number of people possible.’

So watch Jeremy in this video of his speech in the Hunter Valley show us the only way to save the human race—how to stand up for the light of this liberating understanding against all the darkness of the entrenched denial that basically wants Jeremy and his human-race-saving truth to go away and let the human race die in a horrific state of terminal psychosis!

 

Video of Jeremy’s speech

 

 

 

Transcript of Jeremy’s speech

 

 

Robbie van Hemert: So I’ll just put you over to Jeremy. Good on you Jeremy. Thanks for coming up.

 

Jeremy Griffith: Molly, you are an absolute angel. That was beautiful, and so lovely to hear Steve’s backstory.

What I want to say is very important to me so I have written it out. So I’m sorry about that, but it’ll only take 10 minutes. This is pretty profound stuff that’s incredibly important, which I’m hoping you’ll get to understand in a minute.

 

 

I’m here to pay homage to one of the most unsung heroes in Australia, indeed in the world—our Steven van Hemert. In fact, to correct this appalling situation and sing his much deserved praise—[butcher bird sings in background] see the butcher birds are on side too—I’ve designed this new flag for Australia that features Stevie Pops in [the famous Australian outlaw] Ned Kelly’s helmet—so this is a present for you Stevie. The text which I’ll make sense of shortly, reads ‘Our new Australian flag — our Stevie ‘Popsie’ man-mountain who stood up to and exposed bullshit like our Bold Ned Kelly — and laid the foundations for a new truthful world!’

 

 

I’ve made this flag because Steve is an absolutely outstanding example of one of those super precious and very rare ‘hell raisers’ who are often denigrated for their honesty—one of those ‘larger than life’, ‘rebellious’, ‘high spirited’, ‘non-conformist’, immensely entertaining and relieving but often extremely confronting demolishers of all the bullshit falseness that we have to put up with in the world. An ‘outlaw’, like Ned Kelly, who stands defiantly up against the oppressively dishonest, artificial and superficial establishment—someone who tears the scab off all the crap we have to stomach! Zorba the Greek and the hell-raisers Richard Harris, Peter O’Toole and Oliver Reed were famous examples of this high-spirited, larger-than-life character.

They just don’t come any better than Stevie when it comes to being a larger-than-life exposer and demolisher of all the bullshit. We have all here I’m sure greatly enjoyed and benefited from Steve’s endless humour and jokes that are all based on remorseless, outrageous, irreverent, defiant honesty. God I love—we all love—Stevie van Hemert!

I have just turned 80, like Stevie does this year, and we first met in our 20s back in the early 1970s at the ‘Four In Hand’ hotel in Paddington in the heart of Sydney where Steve was on a bender of absolute bullshit-exposing-and-demolishing escapades! Deb McDonald had brought Steve to Paddington because she thought he was so extraordinarily special, and he certainly was. He had bleached blond hair and a big upper torso from weight-lifting or something, so much so we called him ‘Arms’, but all that ahead-of-his-time, put-it-out-there presence wasn’t what made him so special, it was the outrageously disarming honesty of his humour and wild, ‘hell-raising’, nothing-is-sacred carryings on.

 

— I remember at the Four In Hand, John Walton, one of the young business Turks of Sydney coming in in his suit and tie, and Steve putting his arm around him and telling him what a legend he was and then ‘accidentally’ undoing his briefcase so all the papers fell out on the floor and then ‘accidentally’ stepping all over them and spilling his beer on them while ‘helping’ to pick them up!

 

— On another occasion, there was this bloke who thought he was God’s gift to women and Steve wrote a message on a drink coaster, seemingly from the barmaid, saying “I just think you’re so special, love Suzie”, and slipped it in front of him when he wasn’t looking, and the whole pub was in on it, watching this bloke whispering to the barmaid, who had no idea what he was talking about, that they should meet up later!

 

— And this sort of stuff would go on all the time, right up to this day, which I’m sure everyone here who knows Steve has joyously experienced. We actually tried to get Steve on radio because he was so entertaining but his honesty was just too deadly for the world, he was just fucking right out there!

 

— On the weekends we would go on adventures, like out to the Polo at Windsor, and Steve would entertain everybody, like standing in one of the 44 gallon garbage bins in front of everybody, saying “Lord & Lady Muck and all you other distinguished guests”, and ramble on with all manner of bullshit about their distinguished world! Honestly they loved it.

 

— One year we were invited to the annual Black & White ball at the Opera House, and I remember Stevie had some sort of friendly liaison with the Matron of Honour under the tableclothed main, official table in the ballroom! Needless to say, that was the last time we were invited to that event!

 

— If anybody invited us to a party, we would turn up with tampons in our nose and ears, you name it, we were crazy!

 

— In the end, no one would invite us to anything—except a few like one-armed Pete Mansfield, and yeah Rosie at her restaurant in Oxford St Paddington where we would go when the pubs closed to get a feed and say hello to her two pretty daughters. Despite causing chaos every time we visited, Rosie never kicked us out. I remember one time Steve entertaining a table of diners who were celebrating a birthday, and Steve got up on the table and stood right in the middle of the birthday cake and dolloped bits of it on everyone around the table! Talk about tear the crap off all the artificial, pretentious bullshit with humour, Stevie is just amazing!

 

— And I should say that our very, very good friends here Manus McFadyen and Tim Watson took part in some of these wild escapades over the years, so they were part of all this high-spirited wickedry!

 

 

I will give you even more dramatic examples of these carryings on shortly, but firstly I’ll very briefly explain what is meant by the term ‘larger than life’ that describes Stevie.

I’m a biologist who has written over 20 books about the human condition, which is the issue of why we humans are the way we are, such deludedly artificial and superficial beings, so I’m in some sort of a position to explain what we mean by ‘larger than life’.

You can read about this in my books, but one of the greatest of all philosophers, Plato, in his greatest work, The Republic—and this is the central part of The Republic, so it’s one of the greatest bits of writing ever—truthfully described humans as being ‘prisoners’ in a ‘dark cave’ of extremely dishonest denial, fearfully hiding from the truth of their corrupted ‘human condition’. So you’ve got to envisage this. Alfred North Whitehead, one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century, described the history of philosophy (philosophy being the study of ‘the truths underlying all reality’) as being merely ‘a series of footnotes to Plato’. So Plato was way out there in front of everybody in terms of his ability to talk truthfully about the human condition, why we are the way we are. And so what Plato had to say—and this is his central work, The Republic—truthfully describes humans as being ‘prisoners’—that’s his term—in a ‘dark cave’ of extremely dishonest denial, fearfully hiding from the truth of their corrupted ‘human condition’.

So, in terms of the human condition, ‘larger than life’ characters like Steve break the spell of all this dishonest cave-dwelling denial, tear the scab off all the crap, and by so doing bring deep relief from all the deluded dishonesty going on everywhere.

So you can imagine how much relief it was for me, having had a very sheltered upbringing and as a result being so distressed and perplexed by all the dishonesty in the world, to run into Steve who tore bullshit apart all day long—so we became very great friends. It was that honesty and truthful thinking that helped me to go on and find the understanding of the human condition that saves the human race, as indicated in my Steve van Hemert flag. Because it says here, it ‘laid the foundations for a new truthful world.’ So I’m talking really big stuff here, really the most significant things that are happening in the world today, the most significant thing happening in the world today. To quote Professor Harry Prosen, former President of the Canadian Psychiatric Association—so this is one of the leading psychiatrists in the world: ‘I have no doubt that Jeremy’s biological explanation of the human condition is the holy grail of insight we humans have sought for the psychological rehabilitation of the human race.’ And don’t we need that right now, with all the madness happening everywhere.

 

So now I want to tell you about two particularly wild adventures we went on. The bushrangers Ned Kelly and Ben Hall were outrageously-defiant-of-the-dishonest-establishment ‘outlaws’, who regularly held up whole towns, locking everyone in a pub and having one big party. In the case of Ben Hall, in 1863 his gang held up the whole of Bathurst which is only 150 kilometres from here. Well, Steve and I once took over Sydney, dressed up as the outlaws Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (which Molly has a famous photo of that a photojournalist took).

 

 

In the photo you can see the Lord Mayor of Sydney, Nick Shehadie, that’s Stevie, that’s me, we’re dressed up as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and the girl in the right-hand corner is Dolly from [the sitcom] Number 96. We’ve got these toy pistols. This is the official stage, we were as pissed as newts, and so we took over that stage and we’ve been told since we were lucky we weren’t shot by the police. So in the photo you can see the Lord Mayor of Sydney, Nick Shehadie, and his entourage of celebrities that we are holding up with toy pistols at the annual Rocks Festival in Sydney in 1975; a day of infamy where we ended up in jail—this despite the crowd that had been following us and growing all day trying to tip the paddy wagon over to free us—which was all reported in the newspaper the next day!

 

 

On another occasion we went to Melbourne and took over the famous ‘Tok H’ (Toorak Hotel) in the heart of Melbourne and so took that town over, and then went down to the wharfs in Melbourne determined to jump a ship and go to London and take that joint over too, before we finally ran out of steam.

But before running out of puff, I remember thinking the early Vikings adventured all the way to America—well, I was thinking we wouldn’t have stopped there, we would have gone all the way down the coast of America and then around the bottom and across to Tahiti where all the pretty girls are, and then to the moon, why not, I mean why fucking not, the world is so exciting—and in huge need of having all its bullshit exposed by the likes of Stevie!

I could tell you the unbelievable details of those two adventures to the Rocks Festival and to Melbourne, but I think everyone’s got the idea about the magnificence of Stevie boy.

So thank you Stevie from the bottom of my heart, and from the whole world, for all your fabulously courageous honesty. And very importantly, because you have lived such a defiant life, all the love in the world to Robbie, Molly and Manus, and now Tom, for looking after you and keeping your defiant self alive all these years. And let’s hope stem cell research comes up with a fix for PD, Parkinson’s Disease.

So yeah, thank you Stevie from the bottom of my heart, mate. [Applause]

 

 

That’s one of my main books called FREEDOM. [This booklet is the transcript of] an interview I’ve done which has gone viral around the world. And we’ve got over 80 Centres around the world now supporting this stuff, and we’ve got over 100,000 Facebook Group members and as I said, there’s 20 books and I’m working on another book.

 

(All books and materials freely available from www.humancondition.com.)

 

This is a good book, it’s one I’ve just finished. It’s called The Human Condition. And it says on the front cover, ‘What exactly is it, what caused it, and how the human race has finally liberated itself from the horror of it’.

 

 

And I’ve drawn this picture of this collapsing world that says ‘science’ and ‘human progress’ all disintegrating, people collapsed, vegetation collapsed. And then there’s this fire, this terrifying fire, which is the subject of the human condition which no one can go near; everyone’s living in fearful denial of this terrifying subject. As Plato said, they’re living in this ‘cave’, can’t go near the truth of who they really are because it’s unconfrontable, it’s unbearable. But one day, the human race has lived in hope, faith and trust that we would find the redeeming understanding of our corrupted condition. And then and only then could we liberate ourselves from the horror of the human condition and become sound and secure again. So [then I’ve depicted] putting out that fire so that we can all go to this human-condition-free state. And we’re getting commendations now from a broad range of eminent scientists, thought leaders and members of the general public from around the world—you can see all that on the Commendations & Reviews page on our website at www.humancondition.com/reviews-commendations.

So we have these flyers that people are handing out around the world.

 

 

This here is the transcript of my speech today, and this is a summary of the commendations from scientists. These are some of the leading scientists in the world, Professor Stephen Hawking, this is Professor Anthony Barnett, a zoologist who had a science show in Canberra, saying, ‘In all of written history, there are only 2 or 3 people who’ve been able to think on this scale about the human condition’. It’s a very, very difficult and dark subject to face, which is why this project of bringing understanding to the human condition was viciously attacked, and we had to endure that. All scientific new ideas are subject to initial condemnation and have to survive that. So we’re through that stage. We’re now getting lots and lots of support. This is a quote that’s come in this week: the former Vice-President of the European Parliament—you can’t get much higher than that—and nuclear physicist, Professor Alejo Vidal-Quadras, said, ‘FREEDOM is a really significant contribution to science, providing fundamental answers’, and my now famous interview with Craig Conway, ‘deserves spreading to the largest number of people possible’.

Steve’s daughter Molly’s been a great supporter of this information.

 

Molly Shannon; L to R: Annie Williams, Tom Shannon, Fergus Shannon, Jeremy Griffith, Molly Shannon

 

So the human condition is a difficult subject. And the ability to think truthfully about this forbidden subject is in large measure due to Stevie. So I just want to pass that on to everybody. [Applause]