Video & Transcript of Professor Harry Prosen’s
Introduction to Australian biologist Jeremy Griffith’s book ‘FREEDOM: The End Of The Human Condition’, which was filmed at the Milwaukee County Zoo on 3 February 2014.

 

(For other praise see the ‘Commendations’ section on our
WTM Home page at www.humancondition.com/​#commendations)

 

 

My name is Harry Prosen, I’m a professor of psychiatry with over fifty years experience working in the field, including chairing two departments of psychiatry and serving as president of the Canadian Psychiatric Association.

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. Titled FREEDOM: The End Of The Human Condition 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, but in presenting that biological explanation many other truths are revealed and explained along the way by Jeremy, including the nurturing origins of humans’ ancestral, pre-conscious, fully-cooperative, all-loving, altruistic innocent existence, which the lives of bonobos evidence. I first became interested in Jeremy Griffith’s explanation of our species present psychologically troubled human condition some 10 years ago. Since then the extraordinary accountability of his explanations of humans’ behaviour have grown and grown on me—to such a degree in fact that I went to Australia in 2007 to meet Jeremy—and have spoken and corresponded with him on a regular basis ever since.

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—which is presented in his 2014 masterpiece book, FREEDOM: The End Of The Human Condition—contains 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!

What this book of books—indeed I believe this greatest of all books (and I do include within that comparison the Bible, which, as it turns out, and as many believed, is also entrenched in truth, but, unlike this book, was written in pre-scientific times and thus unable to provide a scientific basis for all those profound truths)—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.

What you will learn about human origins, which the bonobos evidence, and about our present psychologically troubled human condition, and about how the finding of understanding of that condition liberates us from it, I know will also leave you absolutely amazed. This truly is the great dawn of humanity’s freedom from the human condition. The sun of understanding of our species’ troubled human condition has finally come up to drain away all the pain and suffering from the world. I’m getting on in years now, but I’ve got to tell you it’s an absolute thrill to be alive when this greatest of all breakthroughs in the human journey occurs. It’s all just amazing and wonderful to me, as I know it will be for you too when you read this incredible book.