Biologist Jeremy Griffith's breakthrough explanation of the human condition is the key to solving our selfishness, greed and apathy.
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Griffith explains that the human condition – the paradoxical reality that humans are capable of extraordinary cooperation, love, and creativity, yet also selfishness, greed, violence, and destruction – is the result of an unresolved psychological conflict that arose when consciousness emerged in our ancestors and began operating in opposition to instinctive orientations established by evolution.
This evolutionary clash can now be scientifically explained. More significantly, Jeremy Griffith explains that understanding this condition makes possible the kind of spiritual and cultural transformation that Speth argued is necessary if humanity is to stop destroying the natural world.
It is an extraordinary claim, but one that has attracted support from a growing number of prominent scientists, conservationists and thought leaders.
The late wildlife biologist George Schaller, one of the world’s leading conservation scientists, described Griffith’s insights as “fascinating and pertinent” and said they “must be developed and disseminated.”
Similarly, Ian Player, the South African conservationist best known for helping save the white rhino, wrote that Griffith was “getting answers to much that has puzzled and bewildered humanity for a long time.”
Within academia, the eminent ecologist Stuart Hurlbert, Professor Emeritus of Biology at San Diego State University, went further – remarking that Griffith’s work was akin to a “Darwin II” discovery, in that it addresses the unresolved question of the human condition following Darwin’s explanation of biological evolution.
In his commendation for Griffith’s book 'FREEDOM: The End Of The Human Condition', Professor Harry Prosen, a former President of the Canadian Psychiatric Association, firstly acknowledged the seriousness of our species’ plight when he wrote that “I think the fastest growing realisation everywhere is that humanity can’t go on the way it is going. Indeed, the great fear is we’re entering endgame where we appear to have lost the race between self-destruction and self-understanding”, and then, described how Griffith has achieved the seemingly impossible task of confronting and solving the human condition, writing that “Astonishing as it is, this book by Australian biologist Jeremy Griffith presents the 11th hour breakthrough biological explanation of the human condition necessary for the psychological maturation and transformation of our species.
𝐈𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐭 𝐯𝐬 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐜𝐭: 𝐀 𝐒𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐭 𝐖𝐚𝐫 𝐖𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐈𝐭𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐟
At the core of Jeremy Griffith’s theory is a deceptively simple idea: humans are the only species to have developed a fully conscious, reasoning mind – and that development came at a cost. Like all animals, our hominin ancestors lived under the guidance of instincts. But as consciousness began to emerge in these distant ancestors, a profound conflict developed between instinct and intellect.
Crucially, instincts cannot understand, they can only direct. So when the conscious mind began experimenting and deviating in its necessary search for knowledge, our instincts effectively “criticized” that behavior as wrong. Unable to explain its departure from the instinctive directives, the conscious mind became insecure and defensive – it became retaliatory, preoccupied with proving its worth, and blocking out the criticism. This is the origin of the anger, egocentricity and alienation that characterize human behavior, and ultimately underpin humanity’s social and environmental problems.
Jeremy Griffith explains that these behaviors are not indicators of inherent human flaws but rather legitimate, albeit ‘artificial’, defensive responses that had to be adopted in the absence of the real explanation for why the intellect was challenging the instincts.
𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐈𝐭 𝐌𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐀𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐓𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐅𝐢𝐱 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝
For centuries, humans have tried to fix the world through religion, morality, politics, activism, education and social engineering. Yet despite enormous progress in science and technology, the underlying drivers of anger, egocentricity and alienation continue to wreak havoc on the world.
Griffith explains that lasting change cannot come from attempting to suppress these behaviours, because they are symptoms of a deeper psychological insecurity. Humans became defensive because the conscious mind could not explain why it had challenged our instincts. As a result, our species adopted ‘artificial’ defences of anger, egocentricity and alienation in an attempt to protect itself from a sense of guilt and condemnation it did not understand.
The significance of Griffith’s explanation, is that it finally provides the understanding that was missing. Having at last found the explanation it had been searching for, the human ego is satisfied at the most fundamental level. As a result, the artificial defences of anger, egocentricity and alienation are no longer psychologically necessary, because the conscious self no longer needs to defend or justify its condition.
Jeremy Griffith’s explanation therefore amounts to more than a theory of human behaviour, it provides the means to resolve the insecurity driving human selfishness and destructiveness, making possible the kind of spiritual and cultural transformation that Speth argued was necessary to fix the world.