2. ABOUT JEREMY GRIFFITH
WTM FAQ 2.6 Is it not inappropriate to call biologist Jeremy Griffith’s ‘Sermon On The Beach’ presentation a ‘sermon’, and isn’t Jeremy being pretentious holding forth, shirtless, sunglasses and in an ideal tropical setting?
The following is the WTM’s response to the above comment that was made shortly after Sermon On The Beach was published on our website in June 2024.
Firstly, as WTM founding member Tony Gowing says in his Introduction to Sermon On The Beach, which was reproduced on the Back Cover of the elaborated transcript, ‘people aren’t calling it a “Sermon” because it’s religious, but because, like Christ’s “Sermon on the Mount”—which was his great call to action, his great selling of the wonders of Christianity’s ability to relieve humans of their distressed human condition—Jeremy’s presentation is his great call to action to actually end the agony of the human condition that the finding of the redeeming and rehabilitating biological explanation of the human condition finally makes possible.’
In terms of Jeremy’s presentation, it was a natural, spontaneous and inspired talk rather than something confected and pretentious. He had been thinking about the idea of people accepting the logic that the ever increasing levels of upset that results from searching for understanding will eventually lead to terminal levels of psychosis, which is the end play state happening in the world right now, and how that realisation can help people let go of their Mexican Standoff attachment to their egocentric, resigned competitive way of living and by so doing discover the relief of taking up the Transformed Way of Living. The reason for recording the speech on the beach is not in any way pretentious, Jeremy just happened to be there when all this thinking became very clear to him and so he decided to make the recording there and then. Jeremy’s job is to think, and think about the most important of all subjects of the human condition that no one else is able to think effectively about because they are all either living in a resigned state of denial of the issue of the human condition, or unable to overcome that all-dominating denial. Jeremy is our only hope of saving the human race from extinction from terminal alienation/psychosis, and he is fully aware of this responsibility. If you watch the video carefully you can see how motivated and focused he is, without there being any overtones of pretention. You can see him thinking very intensely about what he urgently wants to communicate, seemingly almost unaware that he is shirtless. Indeed, if he was concerned about his appearance at his age of 78 he would have likely embellished his appearance with clothes, make-up, hairstyling, etc. And as you can clearly see on the cover of the Sermon On The Beach booklet, the glasses hanging around his neck are not sunglasses, but the reading and long distance spectacles he, for practicality’s sake, always wears around his neck. Jeremy has never worn sunglasses or a beard or tattoos or any embellishment for that matter; he is just a conscious thinking, thoughtful, considerate, loving mind walking around in the world seeking to make sense of it—as he has been able to reveal all humans really are at heart. Also, the beach is not some luxurious tropical island setting, it is simply one of the beaches near where he lives and drives to for some relief from the intensity of his work. On the east coast of Australia where Jeremy lives everyone goes to the beach—it has even been suggested that ‘going to the beach’ is the basis of Australia’s egalitarianism, because on the beach without their shirts on, everyone, from the Prime Minister down, is equal! So, the whole presentation is unpretentious, not pretentious.
It is natural for people to project the realities of the world, and even of their own insecurities, onto situations—in this case think that ‘If someone, or even I, did what Jeremy is doing, holding forth without a shirt on, it would be some sort of ego trip’—but if you look more closely at what is happening, as has just been done, the evidence is that Jeremy is not on some pretentious ego trip, but is being completely unpretentious, unself-conscious and natural.
And you can tell how accurate Jeremy’s thinking about the need for that talk is, and therefore why he wanted to capture it straight away, by the effect the talk has had on people. For example, Ales Flisar’s and Nikola Tsivoglou’s affirmations included at the end of the talk express how it helped them enormously. Jeremy’s mind was reading the play, the need for that talk, extremely accurately!
Jeremy’s honesty, sensitivity, lack of pretence, absence of egocentricity have been the defining traits of his whole life. The obvious truth is that he couldn’t have made any real progress towards all the amazing truthful insights he has reached if his mind was unsoundly motivated by egocentricity or self-aggrandisement or any of those insecure behaviours. As Christ said when he was accused of being a deluded, falsely-motivated, ‘prince of demons’ (Mark 3:22) person, ‘a bad tree cannot bear good fruit’ (Matt. 7:18) and ‘How can Satan drive out Satan?’ (Mark 3:23). Those who work and interact with Jeremy all the time have never experienced him being interested in self-aggrandisement. All Jeremy is interested in is getting the truth up and stopping the suffering on Earth. In fact, one of the problems the WTM has with people when they meet Jeremy is they are expecting somebody who puts on the airs and pretences of academic experts and new age gurus, etc. What they encounter is someone who is completely natural, almost childlike in his lack of any pretence.
Certainly, scepticism is a legitimate and responsible initial attitude to the analysis of the human condition in Jeremy’s work, which is why it is important to assess its merits or otherwise on the accountability of his explanations, and, in terms of his behaviour, on fair and careful analysis of that.
