Transcript of Simon Mackintosh’s
WTM Wellington Centre video

 

(To learn more about Simon, see www.wtmwellington.com)

 

 

Hi, my name is Simon Mackintosh and I’m delighted to be opening the Wellington World Transformation Centre in New Zealand. I’ve been a supporter of these ideas for 25 years, ever since I read Jeremy Griffith’s book Beyond The Human Condition in 1994.

My childhood was spent in Auckland and my secondary years at Whanganui Collegiate. On leaving school, I was selected to represent New Zealand as a young host of the New Zealand pavilion at the World Expo in Brisbane, Australia, with 30 others. This gave me a fast-tracked education into the adult world and the world at large. Unsure of which career to pursue, and having many questions about the state of the world and the contradictory nature of life itself, I used music as a tool of exploration and expression, playing in bands and travelling around the world.

I was always questioning my own behaviour, and those around me and the world at large, but it was only when I came across Jeremy Griffith and his writings, and his supporters, that I found a framework of understanding that could explain and dignify all the variety of human behaviour around me and within me. It was a very exciting and a very relieving time. I knew at once this was a very powerful explanation of what up until then had been murky waters. I have wholeheartedly supported Jeremy’s explanations since this time and it is an honour and a pleasure to be able to stand by these explanations by setting up a Centre in New Zealand. I am currently living and working in New Zealand as a builder with my lovely wife Christine and our daughter Maggie.

In thinking about my reasoning for supporting and promoting these ideas, I can think of three main reasons.

Firstly, Jeremy’s explanations explain clearly all there is to know about human life, from the superficial to the profound. On top of this he answers questions that many people would never think to ask, let alone answer—such questions as ‘Why are we the only animal species to develop our intelligence to such a degree that we can create engines and machines, and incredible medicine and technology, and given that extraordinary intelligence, why are we so limited in our capacity to resolve our problems as a species, and the animosity that abounds from individuals to communities to countries?’ In all of this vast arena of explanation and knowledge, he distils down to one very simple inter-reaction between our genes or our instincts and our nerves or our rational mind. So these explanations are incredibly nourishing to our mind and open up to us a very powerful understanding of the world around us and within us. As rational beings we would be doing our mind a disservice to let such a quantum leap in understanding lie unexplored and unutilised, and indeed unsupported.

My second reason that I have such enthusiasm for these ideas is that in explaining the relationship between our genes and our nerves, Jeremy incorporates our whole biological history, including the birth of our conscious mind and back further down through our primate past. This gives us a sense of belonging and connection to our past and to life itself, which I find very centring and nourishing.

And finally, my third reason is that in understanding the journey of our past and the solution and explanations of humanity’s current contradictory state, we are placed in the position of being finally beyond hope and faith. We can now know that the only logical and sensible path is to walk in this new, and now possible direction, as one with all the billions of our brothers and sisters on our planet. And how good is that?