1. ABOUT THE HUMAN CONDITION
AND ITS RESOLUTION
WTM FAQ 1.2 How does science currently explain the human condition?
In the absence of the fully accountable, true understanding of the human condition—the explanation for why we behave divisively instead of cooperatively and lovingly—it makes sense that we humans needed to come up with some excuse in order to cope with the negative implications of our behaviour. And so we came up with the excuse that our ‘human nature’ is really no different from that seen in the animal kingdom; that we humans are competitive, aggressive, and selfish because of a need to reproduce our genes. Scientists embraced this excuse and developed it into a series of extremely dishonest, human-psychosis-avoiding theories—such as Social Darwinism, Evolutionary Psychology, and Multilevel Selection.
But this ‘biological need to reproduce our genes’, savage instincts excuse cannot be the real cause of our competitive and divisive behaviour because firstly, we humans have cooperative and loving moral instincts, the voice or expression of which within us is our conscience. As Charles Darwin recognised, ‘The moral sense perhaps affords the best and highest distinction between man and the lower animals’ (The Descent of Man, 1871, ch.4).
Secondly, descriptions of human behaviour, such as egocentric, arrogant, inspired, depressed, deluded, pessimistic, optimistic, artificial, hateful, mean, immoral, guilt-ridden, evil, psychotic, neurotic, alienated, etc, all recognise the involvement of our species’ unique fully conscious thinking mind—that there is a psychological dimension to our behaviour. Humans have suffered not from the genetic-opportunism-based, non-psychological animal condition, but the conscious-mind-based, psychologically troubled human condition.
And importantly, the ‘selfish instincts’ excuse has led to the belief that human nature is fundamentally unchangeable—that there will always be bad people, wars, murders, inequality, and so on, and that the meaning of life is just to try as best we can to manage those supposedly innate, unchangeable savage aspects of our make-up. But since our condition is a psychosis and psychoses can be healed with understanding, human nature is not unchangeable or immutable!
So what has been needed is the psychosis-addressing-and-solving, real biological explanation of the human condition, because that will heal humans, rehabilitate and transform our lives. And it’s precisely that real explanation that is presented in biologist Jeremy Griffith’s book FREEDOM: The End Of The Human Condition (a condensation of the explanation appears in Video/Freedom Essay 3).
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For further explanation of why humanity had to adopt the false, ‘savage instincts’ excuse, see Video/Freedom Essay 2 and Video/Freedom Essay 4, or for a more comprehensive treatment, read chapter 2:4 of FREEDOM. And for further description of the resulting dishonest biological ‘explanations’ for human behaviour, see Video/Freedom Essay 14, and for a more comprehensive treatment, chapters 2:9 – 2:11 of FREEDOM.