Method in the Madness
Understanding the human condition allows us to clearly see and understand the underlying method in all the madness surrounding current human life as it descends with increasing speed into deeper and deeper levels of agonising despair and alienation. Yes, it’s hard for me to look on the world now and try to remember the thoughts and feelings that I had prior to having the explanation of the human condition in my life, providing a solid, calming, sensitive, compassionate, positive and strong framework for why everything is as it is. I simply can’t imagine the hopelessness that anyone daring to look at the state of the world with any kind of honesty must feel. Everywhere you look just seems to be an immensely terrifying mess with very little for us to be positive about—children who are growing up in today’s world with all the problems that they are facing have every right to suffer from the myriad of mental health issues that so many of them are being epidemically struck down with if you ask me. However, still when you walk down the street or go to a football game or go into work, you find people with smiles on their faces trying as best as they can to build a life of some substance, meaning, friendship and love. Such is the capacity for humans’ denial of the human condition and their need to live psychologically removed from its array of deathly symptoms.
Ralph Steadman’s The Lizard Lounge 1971
Australian biologist Jeremy Griffith describes humans real behaviour in an incredibly honest (which means it’s confronting) and succinct way by saying—‘...humans have an unspeakable history of greed, hatred, brutality, rape, torture, persecution, murder and war—a propensity for deeds of shocking violence, depravity, indifference and cruelty. Despite all our marvellous accomplishments, we humans have been the most ferocious and destructive force the world has ever known.’ (Freedom: Expanded Book 1). We all know that this is dead accurate, and possibly we can cope with elements of this statement when it is directed at the world in general, but really any honest contemplation or introspection of the human predicament leads you to realise that these aspects of life exist, not only in the world around you but in your own life and how are we supposed to cope with a reality so stark?
Fortunately, in addition to Jeremy’s honest description of the problem, his books and videos provide the solution, one that actually provides a fully compassionate and all-out exciting path forward for us all. The brilliance of his treatise is that it presents a rational biological explanation for why human behaviour has had to be so destructive and seemingly completely at odds with the universally accepted ideals of life. Simply, his explanation describes a clash that broke out between our original gene based or instinctive learning system and the newer nerve based or conscious learning system that emerged some two million years ago, with this conflict leading to humans becoming angry, egocentric and alienated or in one word ‘upset’. It is this simple and in many ways obvious explanation that provides an all-powerful insight into our dilemma and allows the unravelling of all human issues from their most fundamental point.
Seemingly impenetrable aspects of our existence, ‘instinct and intellect, conscience and conscious, ‘good and evil’, yin and yang, idealism and realism, altruism and egotism, spiritualism and materialism, young and old, women and men, blacks and whites, religion and science, the left-wing and the right-wing, socialism and capitalism, country and city, and all the other manifestations of the poles of life under the duress of the human condition’ (Freedom: Expanded Book 2) are laid bare.
With explanation of the human condition found and life’s riddles laid bare, we genuinely have the knowledge required for the lasting psychological rehabilitation of the human race. ‘Evil’—humans’ capacity for shocking acts of destruction and depravity—was a result of this conflict and insecurity within us that arose from the dilemma of the human condition: resolve the dilemma and you end the conflict and insecurity and therefore the upset. Peace could only come to our troubled, divisive state and world through removing the underlying insecurity of our condition. We had to understand WHY we have been behaving so badly, why we haven’t been able to behave in a fully cooperative and loving way towards ourselves, others and the world around us. We had to be able to explain in first principle based, biological terms why we are in fact good, worthwhile beings and not the heartless monsters it appears we are—and now we can! And with our ego and sense of self worth now satisfied at the most fundamental level our anger can subside and all our denials and resulting alienation can be dismantled.
That basic level of explanation has the potential to take the human race to a new-found existence of understanding that we could only have ever dreamed of previously, but in Jeremy’s books there is so much more honesty, insight and explanation. All his beautifully written publications are extensively researched, brimming with the most prescient and marvellous quotations from pre-eminent scientists, artists, musicians, authors, philosophers and the great prophets, to offer a veritable treasure-trove for all. As Professor and Chair of the Psychology Department, and Graduate Program Director for psychological studies, at the University of Dallas Scott Churchill once said; ‘Griffith manages to summarize book-length expositions of these oftentimes obtuse and varying perspectives on human evolution with clarity and brilliance’. Once you have finished reading his book FREEDOM: The End Of The Human Condition for example, you feel like you might have done ten university degrees worth of discovering what all the great/honest minds that have shown themselves over the last few thousand years were actually talking about. And none of the big questions are left unanswered, with simple language Jeremy traverses the seemingly impossible subjects of consciousness, our moral instincts, social Darwinism and the human soul, to name a few, the world truly does become your oyster!
But, as important and wonderful as his explanation of the human condition is, the most wonderful thought for our current generation in my mind is when Griffith articulates the truly wonderful vision for humanity’s future;
“I know that such excitement and happiness may seem insensitive to all the suffering in the world, but this joy and enthusiasm is not out of place because ‘the cavalry is coming’–well, that is the phrase used in ‘Cowboys and Indians’ folklore; in more contemporary ‘Star Wars’ terms, ‘the Force’ is with us–everything is possible now, help is on its way to every person in every corner of the world. Love has come to the world in its absolute purest form, namely as relieving understanding. We humans are free now of the agony of the human condition. Everyone in every situation and predicament can now rise up as radiant new beings from their corpse-like state. A great rising up of humans will now occur across the world. Everyone is now able to come back to life–to wake up from a human-condition-afflicted torpor and look outwards and see each other and the world for the first time, and move across and help each other, and do anything and everything that needs doing to end the suffering and pain that plagues this planet.
The great awakening of the human race is on! We humans have, in truth, all been asleep, owned by so much pain and suffering. Certainly we are going to be in shock for a little while absorbing the realisation that we have finally won our freedom from the agony of the human condition–but it’s on, the great awakening, the rising up of the human race from its deep slumber.” (Freedom: Expanded Book 2)
With the human condition solved there is now absolutely no doubt there has been a wonderful and completely meaningful ‘method in the madness’ of human behaviour and, with the explanation of the human condition found, all that madness will now end and the lives of humans will be transformed into the most incredible state of true happiness and joy.
