Practice English Speaking&Listening with: THE Interview That "Solves The Human Condition And Saves The World!"

Hello to everyone listening. My name is Craig Conway. Now, whilst Ive been an actor by

profession, very recently Ive been introduced to doing radio where I talk to people from all over the world.

Well, today I have a very, very special guest on the line from Australia.

The turmoil and trauma of this pandemic has only amplified the now dire need

in the world for a deeper, lasting solution to all the chaos and suffering in human life.

And this deeper enduring solution is actually what this biologist Im about to interview

is going to provide us with. He is going to do it by explaining and solving the underlying

is going to provide us with. He is going to do it by explaining and solving the underlying

cause of all the suffering, which is our good and evil stricken so-called human condition.

So I dont care what youre doing, you need to stop and listen to this interview.

In fact, I dont care what you do for the rest of your life, if you can you just need

to listen to this! The interview will be in four parts, each

averaging 15 minutes, which is not a lot when you consider that were going to be explaining

the whole human condition! So its a great privilege to introduce Australian

biologist Jeremy Griffith. Hes the author of a book titled FREEDOM: The End Of The Human

Condition, and this is my copy, which Ive had with me now for quite a long time and

I take it everywhere with me, and there are now millions of people all over the globe

studying, reading and researching through this book that Jeremy has brought to us.

So, Im here to tell everyone that this book has not only blown me away, it has also

impressed Professor Harry Prosen, who is a former president of the Canadian Psychiatric

Associationso hes one of the worlds leading psychiatristsand he said, and I

quote, I have no doubt Jeremy Griffiths biological explanation of the human condition

is the holy grail of insight we have sought for the psychological rehabilitation of the

human race. This is the book we have been waiting for, it is the book that saves the

world. End quote. Now, I think everyone listening would agree

that the psychological rehabilitation of the human race is exactly what this world

needs! So buckle into your seats, this is going to be the most interestingand excitingtalk

you have ever heard. So Jeremy, thank you for talking with us.

Tell us, how does your work bring about the psychological rehabilitation of the human

race and end all the suffering and strife, and, as Professor Prosen said, save the

world? Thank you very much for having me on your

program Craig. Finding understanding of our psychologically troubled human condition has

actually been what the efforts of every human who has ever lived has been dedicated to achieving

and has contributed to finding. As Professor Prosen said, finding understanding of the

human condition has been the holy grail of the whole human journey of conscious thought

and enquiry. We humans have absolutely lived in hope, faith

and trust that one day, somewhere, some place, all the efforts of everyonebut of scientists

in particularwould finally produce the completely redeeming, uplifting and healing

understanding of us humans. I know it must seem outrageous to claim that this goal of

goals has finally been achieved, but it has. In fact, the human condition is such a difficult

subject for us humans to confront and deal with that I couldnt be talking about it

so openly and freely if it hadnt been solved. Okay then Jeremy, solve the human condition

for us, were all ears! Firstly, Im a biologist, and thats important

because I think everyone will agree that what we need is a non-abstract, non-mystical, completely

rational and thus understandable, scientific, biological explanation of us humans.

So how are we to explain and understand the human condition, understand why we humans

are the way we are, so brutally competitive, selfish and aggressive that human life has

become all but unbearable. In fact, how are we to make so much sense of our divisive behaviour

that the underlying cause of it is so completely explained and understood that, as Professor

Prosen said, the whole of the human race is psychologically rehabilitated and everyones

life is transformed? Yes, thats what we want; the human condition

finally explained, fixed up and healed forever! Exactly Craig. So, to start at the beginning,

I know everyone listening is living with the beliefwell its what we were all taught

at school and are told in every documentarythat humans competitive, selfish and aggressive

behaviour is due to us having savage, must-reproduce-our-genes instincts like other animals have. I mean,

our conversations are saturated with this belief, with comments like: We are programmed

by our genes to try to dominate others and be a winner in the battle of life; and

Our preoccupation with sexual conquest is due to our primal instinct to sow our seeds;

and Men behave abominably because their bodies are flooded with must-reproduce-their-genes-promoting

testosterone; and We want a big house because we are innately territorial; and

Fighting and war is just our deeply-rooted combative animal nature expressing itselfand

the most common comment of all Craig is that Its just human nature to be selfish.

Yes, thats exactly what Ive understood is the reason for our competitive and aggressive

naturethat we have brutally competitive, survival-of-the-fittest instincts, which we

are always having to try to restrain or civilise or try to control as best we can; I mean thats

what I was taught in school. Yes, thats what we were taught, but lets

think about thisand what Im going to say now is very important, so I hope everyones

listening closely. Surely this idea that we have savage competitive

and aggressive, must-reproduce-our-genes instincts cannot be the real reason for our species

competitive and aggressive behaviour because, after all, words used to describe our human

behaviour such as egocentric, arrogant, inspired, depressed, deluded, pessimistic, optimistic,

artificial, hateful, cynical, mean, sadistic, immoral, brilliant, guilt-ridden, evil, psychotic,

neurotic and alienated, all recognise the involvement of OUR species fully conscious

thinking mind. They demonstrate that there is a psychological dimension to our behaviour;

that we dont suffer from a genetic-opportunism-driven animal condition, but a conscious-mind-based,

psychologically troubled HUMAN CONDITION. Whats more, we humans have cooperative,

selfless and loving moral instincts, the voice or expression of which we call our consciencewhich

is the complete opposite of competitive, selfish and aggressive instincts. As Charles Darwin

said, The moral senseaffords the best and highest distinction between man and the

lower animals (The Descent of Man, 1871, ch.4). Of course, to have acquired these cooperative,

selfless and loving moral instincts our distant ape ancestors must have lived cooperatively,

selflessly and lovingly, otherwise how else could we have acquired them? Our ape ancestors

cant have been brutal, club-wielding, competitive and aggressive savages as we have been taught,

rather they must have lived in a Garden of Eden-like state of cooperative, selfless and

loving innocent gentlenesswhich, as Id like to explain to you later in this interview

Craig, is a state that the bonobo species of ape is currently living in, and which anthropological

findings now evidence we did once live in. For instance, anthropologists like C. Owen

Lovejoy are reporting that our species-defining cooperative mutualism can now be seen to extend

well beyond the deepest Pliocene [which is well beyond 5.3 million years ago].

So saying our competitive and aggressive behaviour comes from savage competitive and aggressive

instincts in us is simply not trueas Id like to come back to shortly, its just

a convenient excuse we have used while we waited for the psychosis-acknowledging-and-solving,

real explanation of our present competitive and aggressive human condition!

Wow, so thats a pretty big statement Jeremy, I mean its a pretty important point youre

making here. Youre saying that our competitive and aggressive behaviour is not due to must-reproduce-our-genes

instincts like other animals, but is due to a conscious-mind-based, psychologically troubled

condition, yes? Yes, our egocentric and arrogant and mean

and vindictive and even sadistic behaviour has nothing to do with wanting to reproduce

our genes. That was absurd. And it is actually really good news that our behaviour is due

to a conscious-mind-based psychologically troubled condition because psychoses can be

healed with understanding. If our competitive and aggressive behaviour was due to us having

savage instincts then we would be stuck with that born-with, hard-wired, innate behaviour.

It would mean we could only ever hope to restrain and control those supposedly brutal instincts.

But since our species divisive behaviour is due to a psychosis, that divisive behaviour

can be cured with healing understanding. So that is very good news. In fact, incredibly

exciting news, because with understanding we can finally end our psychologically troubled

human condition. Its the understanding of ourselves that we needed to heal the pain

in our brains and become sound and sane again. As I said, the savage instincts explanation

was just a convenient excuse while we searched for the psychosis-addressing-and-solving real

explanation of our divisive behaviour, which is the explanation I would now like to present.

Okay, so what youre saying here, Jeremy, is that we dont need the convenient excuse

anymore that we have some kind of savage animal instincts because we have the real explanation

of our conscious-mind-based psychologically troubled human condition!

Yes, and this key, all-important, psychosis-addressing-and-solving explanation is actually very obvious.

If we think about it, if an animal was to become fully conscious, like we humans became,

then that animals new self-managing, understanding-based conscious mind would surely have to challenge

its pre-existing instinctive orientations to the world, wouldnt it? A battle would

have to break out between the emerging conscious mind that operates from a basis of understanding

cause and effect and the non-understanding instincts that have always controlled and

dictated how that animal behaves. Yes, that makes sense Jeremy, so what happened

though when this animal became conscious and its whole life turned into a psychologically

distressed mess? Well, the easiest way to see what happened

is to imagine the predicament faced by an animal whose life had always been controlled

by its instincts suddenly developing a conscious mind, because if we do that we will very quickly

see how that animal would develop a psychologically troubled competitive and aggressive condition

like we suffer from. So lets imagine a stork: well call him

Adam. Each Summer, Adam instinctually migrates North with the other storks around the coast

of Africa to Europe to breed, as some varieties of storks do. Since he has no conscious mind

Adam Stork doesnt think about or question his behaviour, he just follows what his instincts

tell him to do. But what if we give Adam a large brain capable

of conscious thought? He will start to think for himself, but many of his new ideas will

not be consistent with his instincts. For instance, while migrating North with the other

storks Adam notices an island full of apple trees. He then makes a conscious decision

to divert from his migratory path and explore the island. Its his first grand experiment

in self-management. But when Adams instincts realise he has

strayed off course they are going to criticise his deprogrammed behaviour and dogmatically

try to pull him back on his instinctive flight path, arent they! In effect, they are going

to condemn him as being bad. Imagine the turmoil Adam will experience:

he cant go back to simply following his instincts. His instinctive orientations to

the migratory flight path were acquired over thousands of generations of natural selection

but those orientations are not understandings, and since his conscious mind requires understanding,

which it can only get through experimentation, inevitably a war will break out with his instincts.

Ideally at this point Adams conscious mind would sit down and explain to his instincts

why hes defying them. He would explain that the gene-based, natural selection process

only gives species instinctive orientations to the world, whereas his nerve-based, conscious

mind, which is able to make sense of cause and effect, needs understanding of the world

to operate. But Adam doesnt have this self-understanding.

Hes only just begun his search for knowledge. In fact, hes not even aware of what the

problem actually is. Hes simply started to feel that hes bad, even evil.

Okay, so what youre saying is a war has broken out between his conscious mind and

his instincts, which he cant explain, and its left him feeling bad or that he is

bad in some way, or even evil. So what happened then?

Well, tragically, while searching for understanding, we can see that three things are unavoidably

going to happen. Adam is going to defensively retaliate against the implied criticism from

his instincts; he is going to desperately seek out any reinforcement he can find to

relieve himself of the negative feelings; and he is going to try to deny the criticism

and block it out of his mind. He has become angry, egocentric and alienatedwhich is

the psychologically upset state we call the human condition, because it was us humans

who developed a conscious mind and became psychologically upset. (And upset is

the right word for our condition because while we are not evil or bad, we are

definitely psychologically upset from having to participate in humanitys heroic search

for knowledge. Corrupted and fallen have been used to describe our condition,

but they have negative connotations that we can now appreciate are undeserved, so upset

is a better word.) So Adams intellect or ego (ego being

just another word for the intellect since the Concise Oxford Dictionary defines ego

as the conscious thinking self (5th edn, 1964)) became centred or focused

on the need to justify itselfAdam became ego-centric, selfishly preoccupied aggressively

competing for opportunities to prove he is good and not bad, to validate his worth, to

get a win; to essentially eke out any positive reinforcement that would bring him

some relief from his criticising instincts. He unavoidably became self-preoccupied or

selfish, and aggressive and competitive. So our selfish, competitive and aggressive

behaviour is not due to savage instincts but to a psychologically upset state or condition.

Basically suffering psychological upset was the price we conscious humans had to pay for

our heroic search for understanding. In the words from the song The Impossible Dream from

the musical the Man of La Mancha, we had to be prepared to march into hell for a heavenly

cause. We had to lose ourselves to find ourselves; we had to suffer becoming angry,

alienated and egocentric until we found sufficient knowledge to explain ourselves.

Wow Jeremy, I mean this is just fascinating. So Adam Storkwe humansdeveloped a conscious

mind and unavoidably started warring with our instincts, an upsetting war which could

only end when we could explain and understand why we had to defy our instincts, which is

the understanding that you have just supplied, yes?

Exactly, remember Adam Stork became defensively angry, egocentric and alienated because he

couldnt explain why he was defying his instincts, so now that we can explain why,

those defensive behaviours are no longer needed and can end!

Thats basically all there is to explain, that is the biological explanation of the

human condition that so explains us that, as Professor Prosen said, it brings about

the psychological rehabilitation of the human race!

This is such a simple story but so far-reaching in its ramificationsI mean it is world-changing

is what it is, because it truly enables the psychological rehabilitation of the human

race! I mean that is just wonderful. Okay, Im speaking with Australian biologist

Jeremy Griffith. Hello, Im Craig Conway and Im talking

with Australian biologist Jeremy Griffith about how we can end all the turmoil and trauma

in the world through explaining and understanding the human conditionwhich is the instinct

vs intellect explanation Jeremy has just given us in Part 1 of this interview.

I do have some questions Jeremy. Firstly, while it seems an obvious explanation that

when we became conscious a psychologically upsetting battle must have broken out with

our dictatorial instincts, but if it is so obvious, why werent we taught this at school?

And secondly, how were our bonobo-like ape ancestors able to become cooperative and loving,

which, as you said, must be the origin of our instinctive moral conscience that Darwin

said distinguishes us from other animals? And my third question is, how does the

psychological rehabilitation of the human race that Professor Prosen describes actually

take place; I mean do we all have to go into therapy or something?

Okay, by the way, I want to mention also that since theres quite a few newand very

interestingconcepts to think about, Jeremy has said that hell make both the video

and the transcript of this interview available at the top of the website that promotes this

understanding of the human condition, which is the World Transformation Movements website

at HumanCondition.com. Now this interview will be there as a video, and the transcript

as a little book, so you can re-listen to, or read the interview again there, because,

as I said, with this big subject of the human condition, there is quite a bit to take in

and think about. Okay, they are very good questions Craig.

So, to begin with your first question, which is that if this instinct vs intellect explanation

is so obvious why havent we been taught it at school?

The answer is that while it has been recognisedeven from ancient timesthat the emergence of

our conscious mind somehow caused us to fall from grace, or however you want to describe

the corruption of our original innocent cooperative, selfless and loving instinctive state, it

wasnt until science revealed the difference between the gene-based and nerve-based learning

systemswhich is that genes can orientate but nerves need to understandthat we were

finally in a position to explain the good reason for our angry, egocentric and alienated

human condition. The Biblical story of Adam and Eve in the

Garden of Eden that Moses wrote so long ago in about 1,500 BC actually perfectly describes

the psychologically upsetting battle that emerged between our instincts and conscious

intellect. It says Adam and Eve/we humans took the fruit from the tree of knowledge

and were disobedient. In other words, we developed a conscious mind and free will.

But in that pre-scientific story it says Adam and Eve then became evil perpetrators

of sin because they became angry, egocentric and alienated, and as a result Moses said

they were banishedfrom the Garden of Eden state of cooperative and loving innocence.

You see, not knowing how naturally selected instincts differ from cause and effect-operating

consciousness, this story of Adam and Eve becoming conscious could only conclude that

the angry, egocentric and alienated condition that emerged when we became conscious was

a bad, evil, sinful state, but this scientific presentation says, No, no, that story got

it wrong. Adam and Eve are actually not just good but the heroes of the whole story

of life on Earthbecause surely the conscious mind is natures greatest invention and

to be given the task of searching for understanding while the whole worlds condemning you was

the hardest and toughest of tasksbecause that condemnation was universal. All the other

innocent storks are condemning the search for knowledge, and since all of naturethe

rain, the clouds, the trees, and other animalsare all associated with our original instinctive

self that was condemning us, the whole world, in effect, ganged up on Adam and Eve, i.e.

us humansand yet all the time we were good and not bad but we couldnt explain why,

but now at last through the benefit of science, we can.

Yeah, I hadnt realised that, but it is true, I mean Adam and Eve taking the fruit

from the tree of knowledge is a metaphor for becoming conscious, and then they were thrown

out of the Garden of Eden of original innocence because it appeared that they were bad for

doing so, but now thankfully we can explain that they, we humans, werent bad at all;

in fact, we are the heroes of the story of life on Earth!

Thats right, we can now explain and understand that we conscious humans are immense heroes,

and not villains after all. How relieving is that!

And with regard to recognition of the upsetting conflict between our moral instincts and our

conscious intellect, the Biblical story of Adam and Eve is far from the only recognition

of it from ancient times. Indeed, as the researcher Richard Heinberg summarised in his 1990 book

Memories & Visions of Paradise, Every religion begins with the recognition that human consciousness

has been separated from the divine Source, that a former sense of onenesshas been

losteverywhere in religion and myth there is an acknowledgment that we have departed

from an originalinnocence and can return to it only through the resolution of some

profound inner discordthe cause of the Fall is described variously as disobedience,

as the eating of a forbidden fruit [from the tree of knowledge], and as spiritual amnesia

[forgetting, blocking out, denial, alienation, which is our psychosis]. So all our religions

and most of our mythologies have recognised the basic conflict within usthat the emergence

of consciousness caused our Fall from innocence.

Way back in about 800 BC, the Greek poet Hesiod wrote of our species pre-conscious time

of living cooperatively and lovingly in his epic poem Works and Days: When gods alike

and mortals rose to birth / A golden race the immortals formed on earthLike gods

they lived, with calm untroubled mind / Free from the toils and anguish of our kind / Nor

eer decrepit age misshaped their frameStrangers to ill, their lives in feasts flowed byDying

they sank in sleep, nor seemed to die / Theirs was each good; the life-sustaining soil / Yielded

its copious fruits, unbribed by toil / They with abundant goods midst quiet lands / All

willing shared the gathering of their hands. So yes, they didnt have a troubled conscious

mind, and they lived a sharing, gentle life. Yes, Ive heard of the idea of a golden

race, but I didnt actually know where it came from. So what youre saying then,

Jeremy, is our distant ancestors had a calm untroubled mindno human condition yet!

Yes, thats right, and in 360 BC Hesiods Greek compatriot Plato gave this very similar

description of our species pre-conscious time in innocence. He wrote: there was

a time whenwe beheld the beatific vision and were initiated into a mystery which may

be truly called most blessed, celebrated by us in our state of innocence, before we had

any experience of evils to come, when we were admitted to the sight of apparitions innocent

and simple and calm and happy, which we beheld shining in pure light, pure ourselves and

not yet enshrined in that living tomb which we carry about, now. Plato also gave this

other description of the innocent Golden Age in our species pre-conscious past,

writing of a time when we lived a blessed and spontaneous life[where] neither was

there any violence, or devouring of one another, or war or quarrel among themIn those days

God himself was their shepherd, and ruled over them [in other words, our original instinctive

self was orientated to living in an ideal cooperative, loving way]Under him there

were no forms of government or separate possession of women and children; for all men rose again

from the earth, having no memory of the past [in other words, we lived in a pre-conscious

state]. Andthe earth gave them fruits in abundance, which grew on trees and shrubs

unbidden, and were not planted by the hand of man. And they dwelt naked, and mostly in

the open air, for the temperature of their seasons was mild; and they had no beds, but

lay on soft couches of grass, which grew plentifully out of the earth.

The thing is, Hesiod and Plato, like Moses, were living at a time when science still had

to be developed, so they werent able to provide the redeeming, instincts-can-orientate-but-only-nerves-can-understand,

good reason WHY we departed from innocence and seemingly became evil, bad people.

Yes, because there was no science back then. Precisely, its only in the last 150 years

or so that science has given us A: the ability to know that the gene-based natural selection

process gives species orientations to the world; and B: the knowledge of our nerves

and how they are able to remember events, which, much developed, has led to our mind

being able to sufficiently understand the relationship between cause and effect to become

conscious of, or aware of, or intelligent about those relationships. So thats only

happened in the last 150 years, but since the fossil record of our ancestors suggests

that our large association-cortexed, thinking, fully conscious brain appeared some 2 million

years ago, that means for almost all of the 2 million years we have been conscious we

have had no ability to explain and understand why we corrupted our original innocent instinctive

self or soul. And without that redeeming explanation the only way we could cope with the astronomical

guilt of having destroyed Eden, has been to deny we ever lived in a cooperative

and loving innocent stateand thats exactly where the excuse that we have savage competitive

and aggressive instincts like other animals came to our rescue.

And, false as it is, its been an absolutely brilliant excuse because instead of our instincts

being all-loving and thus unbearably condemning of our present non-loving state, they are

made out to be vicious and brutal must-reproduce-your-genes instincts like other animals; and, instead

of our conscious mind being the instinct-defying cause of our corruption, it was made out to

be the blameless mediating hero that had to step in and try to control those supposed

vicious instincts within us! And those who dared to admit the truth of our cooperative

and loving past, like Hesiod and Plato, were dismissed as deluded romantics, and the whole

idea of an innocent, Edenic past was said to be nothing more than a nostalgia for the

security and maternal warmth of infancy, that it was never an historical state as

the Jungian psychologist Erich Neumann said in his book The Origins and History of Consciousness.

Yes, and we couldnt face the truth that we had turned utopia into dystopia, into a

dreadful place of conflict and suffering, yes?

Yes thats right Craig, and I should point out that while most contemporary thinkers

have clung to the savage instincts excuse for our divisive behaviour, there have been

some who, like the ancient thinkers, truthfully recognised the basic instinct vs intellect

elements involved in producing the human condition. Eugne Marais, Paul MacLean and Arthur Koestler

are a few who come to mind. But while all contemporary thinkers have had

the benefit of science having revealed the difference between the gene-based and nerve-based

learning systems, and have therefore had the means to truthfully explain the human condition,

those who did recognise the basic instinct vs intellect elements didnt take their

thinking far enough to actually explain the human condition. And those who have been attached

to the false savage instincts excusewhich is the great majority of scientistsobviously

havent been thinking truthfully, so they couldnt hope to explain the human condition.

Which is all why it has taken the truthful thinking of the pre-eminent South African

philosopher Sir Laurens van der Post, and following him, myself, to finally present

the complete, true explanation of the human condition.

Okay. And Jeremy, I assume that people can read about the contemporary thinkers who recognised

the instinct vs intellect elements involved in the human condition, and those who clung

to the savage instincts excuse, on the World Transformation Movements website at HumanCondition.com?

Yes, they can, in particular in the fourth video at the top of the homepage.

Also, how Sir Laurens van der Post and I managed to address and solve the human condition is

described in my 2020 book How Laurens van der Post Saved The World, which is also freely

available on that website. Basically, what is explained in that book is that since everyone

is naturally variously psychologically upset from their different encounters with humanitys

battle to find knowledge, there was always going to be a few who were fortunate enough

in their infancy and childhood to escape encountering the angry, egocentric and alienated effects

of that upsetting battle, and it is these few who could look into the human condition

without being overly confronted by itand Sir Laurens and I were two of these extremely

fortunate denial-free thinking people, which is how we were able to find understanding

of the human condition. I should also say that while there is growing

support for this now absolutely desperately needed understanding of the human condition,

mainstream science is yet to recognise and support itbut thats what happens with

paradigm-shifting, breakthroughs in science. When the physicist Max Planck said Science

progresses funeral by funeral he was recognising how attached each generation of scientists

becomes to the way of thinking they grew up with, and therefore how slow science as a

whole is to move to a new paradigm of understanding. And the playwright George Bernard Shaw also

warned of how difficult it is to introduce a new paradigm of thinkingespecially one

that dares to confront the historically unbearably confronting and off-limits subject of the

human conditionwhen he said that All great truths begin as blasphemies. So yes,

confronting the human condition when everyone has been living in fearful denial of it, even

though it has finally been explained and made safe to confront, represents the biggest of

all blasphemies. Yeah, I understand completely. I mean from

my limited experience, Jeremy, I know how difficult it is to get people to change their

way of thinking. But your basic point is that sciences discovery of the way genes and

nerves work has finally made it possible for the liberation of humanity from the horror

of the human condition. Yes, that is the essential truth: science

is the liberator, the so-called messiah or redeemer of humankind, as we always

And all this is in the nick of time, because I dont think the world can cope with any more upset behaviour from

us humansbut we still need the scientific community to get on board and support the understanding.

Absolutely.

While weve had to live in denial of our corrupted, psychologically upset condition

while we couldnt explain it, the truth is that on a graph showing the ever-increasing levels of upset in humans,

those levels,

especially of psychosis and alienation, have been increasing so rapidly lately that the line tracking their rise is near

vertical with the amount of upset virtually doubling now in each new generation!

Freedom Essay 59 on our World Transformation Movements website describes this terrifying end play threat of

terminal levels of psychosis.

Basically, we had virtually lost the race between self-destruction and self-understanding.

Indeed, early last century, the author Antoine de Saint-Exupry wrote that

We are living through deeply anxious days, and if we are to relieve our anxiety we must diagnose its cause

What is the meaning of man? To this question no answer is being offered,

and I have the feeling that we are moving toward the darkest era our world has ever known,

and the deeply anxious days have very greatly increased in the century since then,

so we are now very much in the midst of the darkest era our world has ever known

so this world-saving, reliev[ing]-of-the-cause, understanding of the meaning of man,

has definitely only arrived in the nick of timewhich means the scientific community definitely, definitely

needs to get its act together and support this breakthrough!

So now Ill address your other questions Craig, but I should mention that the first of the videos

on the World Transformation Movements website warns of the difficulty not only scientists have had,

but almost everyone has had trying to confront and think about the historically unbearably confronting subject

of our corrupted condition which has finally been explained and made safe to confront and admit.

Im Craig Conway and Im Zspeaking with Australian biologist Jeremy Griffith.

Were continuing our important conversation

with Australian biologist Jeremy Griffith whos been explaining the human condition

and how understanding it can end all the trauma and suffering in the worldand boy, dont

we need that! So in Part 1 Jeremy explained that we conscious

humans became angry, egocentric and alienated because we couldnt explain why we had to

defy our instincts, but now that we can explain this and understand ourselves those defensive

ways of coping are no longer needed and the human race is psychologically rehabilitated.

In Part 2 Jeremy explained that the reason we had to use the dishonest savage instincts

excuse is because science had to find understanding of the way genes and nerves work, that genes

can orientate a species but nerves need to understand cause and effect.

So Jeremy, my second question for this, Part 3, of our interview is how were our bonobo-like

ape ancestors able to become cooperative and loving, which, as you said, must be the origin

of our instinctive moral conscience that Darwin said distinguishes us from other animals?

Yes okay, so how we acquired our moral instincts has been one of the greatest mysteries in

biology. The primatologist Richard Wrangham described it as A question that has lain

unsolved at the core of biology ever since Darwin. And Darwin himself described it

as the one special difficulty with his concept of natural selection. The reason for

the difficultyand this is some basic biology for youis that genes normally cant

select for unconditionally selfless, fully cooperative traits, simply because such traits

tend to be self-eliminating and so normally cant become established in a speciesI

mean, By all means, you can be selfless and sacrifice your genes for me, but Im

not about to be selfless and sacrifice my genes for you. The process of natural selection

dictates that selfish opportunism will supposedly always exploit selflessness, so how could

such a selfish process as natural selection possibly have created such loving selflessness

in us? The answer is it was achieved in our forebears

through nurturing. To explain what is so significant about a mothers nurturing of her offspring,

I first need to point out that a mothers maternal instinct to care for her offspring

is selfish because she is ensuring the reproduction of her genes by ensuring the survival of offspring

who carry her genes. So maternalism is a selfish trait, which, as Ive just said, genetic

traits normally have to be for them to reproduce and carry on into the next generation. HOWEVER,

and this is all-important, from the infants perspective maternalism does have the appearance

of being selfless. From the infants perspective, it is being treated unconditionally selflesslythe

mother is giving her offspring food, warmth, shelter, support and protection for apparently

nothing in return. So it follows that if the infant can remain in infancy for an extended

period and be treated with a lot of seemingly altruistic love, it will be indoctrinated

with that selfless love and grow up to behave accordingly. So selfish maternalism can train

an infant in altruistic selflessness. (Freedom Essay 21 on our World Transformation Movements

website, and chapter 5 of FREEDOM explain this love-indoctrination process, as

we call it, more fully.) So what youre saying is that mothers

nurturing of their infants is primarily genetically selfish because it ensures the reproduction

of her genes, but to the infant it seems like its being given unconditionally selfless

love. Yes thats right, and if we think about

primates, being semi-upright from living in trees, swinging from branch to branch, and

thus having their arms free to hold a dependent infant, its clear that they are especially

facilitated to support and prolong the mother-infant relationship, and so develop this nurtured,

loving, cooperative behaviour. And in fact, bonobos, the ape species who

live south of the Congo River in Africa, are extraordinarily matriarchal, or female role

focused, and extraordinarily nurturing. You can find photos onlineand Ill include

some in the transcript booklet and video of this interviewthat illustrate just how

nurturing bonobos are; they show bonobo mothers giving their infant their devoted and undivided

attention! And as a result of all this nurturing, bonobos

are the most cooperative and loving of all primates, which is evidenced by these absolutely

amazing quotes that I just have to read to you.

Bonobo zoo keeper Barbara Bell writes that Adult bonobos demonstrate tremendous compassion

for each otherFor example, Kitty, the eldest female, is completely blind and hard of hearing.

Sometimes she gets lost and confused. Theyll just pick her up and take her to where she

needs to go. Primatologist Sue Savage-Rumbaugh says, Bonobo

life is centered around the offspring. Unlike what happens among chimpanzees, all members

of the bonobo social group help with infant care and share food with infants. If you are

a bonobo infant, you can do no wrongBonobo females and their infants form the core of

the group. A filmmaker of the French documentary Bonobos

says, Theyre surely the most fascinating animals on the planet. Theyre the closest

animals to man [in that they share almost 99 percent of our genetic make-up]Once

I got hit on the head with a branch that had a bonobo on it. I sat down and the bonobo

noticed I was in a difficult situation and came and took me by the hand and moved my

hair back, like they do. So they live on compassion, and thats really interesting to experience.

And bonobo researcher Vanessa Woods gives this first-hand account of bonobos unlimited

capacity for love from her study of them in their home in the Congo basin: Bonobo love

is like a laser beam. They stop. They stare at you as though they have been waiting their

whole lives for you to walk into their jungle. And then they love you with such helpless

abandon that you love them back. You have to love them back.

Wow Jeremy, I mean these are astonishing quotes, they really are!

Yes, they truly are amazing quotesand bonobos are our closest living relatives, as mentioned

they share 99% of our DNA. So we can see that bonobos provide the perfect evidence for how

our distant ape ancestors became cooperative and loving.

I have another picture here of a group of bonobos resting in a grassy glade, which I

will also include in the transcript booklet, and it perfectly equates with the description

I mentioned earlier that Plato gave about what life was like for humans back in the

Golden Age of nurtured togetherness. Plato said, And they dwelt naked, and mostly

in the open air, for the temperature of their seasons was mild; and they had no beds, but

lay on soft couches of grass, which grew plentifully out of the earth. Clearly we have a perfect

instinctive memory (if we dont choose to deny it) of what life was like before the

fall because Plato didnt know of the existence of bonobos and yet knew exactly

what our bonobo-like life before the fall was like.

Now this quote is a bit long but its such a wonderful intuitive remembrance of our species

bonobo-like time in an alienation-free, all-sensitive and all-loving state of innocence that I just

have to read it out. Its from the great Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky. He wrote

of a time when: The grass glowed with bright and fragrant flowers. Birds were flying in

flocks in the air, and perched fearlessly on my shoulders and arms and joyfully struck

me with their darling, fluttering wings. And at last I saw and knew the people of this

happy land. They came to me of themselves, surrounded me, kissed me. The children of

the sun, the children of their sunoh, how beautiful they were!Their faces were radiantin

their words and voices there was a note of childlike joyIt was the earth untarnished

by the Fall; on it lived people who had not sinnedThey desired nothing and were at

peace; they did not aspire to knowledge of life as we aspire to understand it, because

their lives were full. But their knowledge was higher and deeper than oursbut I could

not understand their knowledge. They showed me their trees, and I could not understand

the intense love with which they looked at them; it was as though they were talking with

creatures like themselvesand I am convinced that the trees understood them. They looked

at all nature like thatat the animals who lived in peace with them and did not attack

them, but loved them, conquered by their loveThere was no quarrelling, no jealousy among themfor

they all made up one family. This description of being conquered by

their love is so like the description just given by the bonobo researcher Vanessa Woods,

when she said bonobos love you with such helpless abandon that you love them back.

You have to love them back. Again we see how accurate our memory is, if we dont

deny it, of what life was like before the fall.

That quote is so wonderful, its just amazing, thank you Jeremy, Im glad you read it out.

This nurturing explanation for our moral instincts seems reasonably obvious, and evidenced by

those quotes about bonobo behaviour and also by the photographs of the bonobos, so why

havent I heard about this until now, until you brought this information to me?

Well, just like the obvious truth that our species once lived cooperatively and lovingly,

this truth that we acquired our moral instincts through nurturing has been an unbearable truth

while we couldnt explain why we humans became angry, egocentric and alienated and

as a result lost the ability to adequately nurture our offspring with unconditional selflessness

or love. The truth of our species Edenic all-loving and all-sensitive innocent past,

and the truth that nurturing is what made us human, have both been impossible truths

to accept while we couldnt truthfully explain our present immensely corrupted human condition,

explain why our species became so corrupted and lost the ability to fully nurture its

offspring. As its been observed, parents would rather admit to being an axe murderer

than a bad mother or father! In fact, this reasonably obvious nurturing explanation for

our moral conscience was first put forward by the American philosopher John Fiske in

his book Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, which was published in 1874, only a few years after

Darwin published his theory of natural selection. And, at the time, Fiskes explanation was

actually recognised as being, and I quote, far more important than Darwins

principle of natural selection and one of the most beautiful contributions ever made

to the Evolution of Man. And Darwin himself went so far as to write to Fiske saying, I

never in my life read so lucid an expositor (and therefore thinker) as you are. But

again, while we couldnt explain our loss of ability to adequately nurture our offspring,

this far more important insight than Darwins principle of natural selection

was let die and eventually disappeared from biological discourse!

I might point out that Darwins natural selection explanation for the variety of species,

Fiskes and my nurturing explanation for our moral instincts, the instinct vs intellect explanation

that Ive given for the human condition, and the explanation I give in chapter 7 of FREEDOM for how we humans

became fully conscious when other species havent, are all reasonably obvious, straightforward, simple explanations

that bear out biologist Allan Savorys observation that whenever there has been a major insoluble problem for

mankind, the answer, when finally found, has always been very simple.

Thanks Jeremy. This is really amazing to learn about how science has denied our species

cooperative and loving heritage, and the nurtured origins of that cooperative and loving soul.

But it all really does make senseI mean we certainly needed the defence for our corrupted

condition before we could face the truth about it.

I am speaking with Australian biologist Jeremy Griffith.

Hello and welcome back to Part 4 of the interview. Im Craig Conway and Im here with Jeremy

Griffith, the biologist who has just explained how humans acquired our moral instincts. This

is an absolutely remarkable interview! So continuing on, Jeremy, what about my third

question for this final Part 4 of the interview, which is how does the psychological rehabilitation

of the human race that this understanding gives us actually take place; do we all need

to go into therapy or something? Well, what this realand actually very obviousinstinct

vs intellect explanation of the human condition fundamentally does is lift the burden of

guilt from the human race. It establishes that we humans are good and not bad after

all. While we are all inevitably variously angry, egocentric and alienated from our different

encounters with humanitys heroic battle to find knowledge, ultimately self-knowledge,

understanding of our corrupted condition, we can now know that every human is fundamentally

good. And this ability to understand and know there was a good reason why the human race

became psychologically upset, is the key, relieving understanding we have been in search

of ever since we became conscious some 2 million years ago and our corrupted condition emerged.

That is the key relief for our mindbeing finally able to understand that we are good

and not bad is what brings us the greatest psychological relief of all. The psychoanalyst

Carl Jung said, wholeness for humans depends on the ability to own our own shadow, and

since we can now own the shadow of our species 2-million-year-corrupted

condition, the human race is finally in a position to become whole. The word psychosis

literally means soul-illness and psychiatry literally means soul-healing (derived

as they are from psyche meaning soul, osis meaning abnormal state or condition

and iatreia meaning healing), but we have never been able to heal our soul,

explain to our original instinctive self or soul that we, our fully conscious thinking

self, is good and not bad and by so doing reconcile and heal our split selvesbut

now at last we can. Well, there is an adage that says The truth

will set you free, so what youre saying then Jeremy is that the truth of our fundamental

goodness is the truth that we needed to set us free from the human condition.

Precisely, and while that is the main relief our mind needed, obviously the more we digest

that relieving understanding, the more healing relief comes to every aspect of our upset

conditionand to have had to endure being unjustly condemned as bad for 2 million years

does mean there is a great deal of upset to heal.

To appreciate how much upset exists in us humans now, imagine living for just one day

with the injustice of being condemned as bad, even evil, when you intuitively knew but were

unable to explain that you were actually the complete opposite of evil, namely truly wonderful,

good and meaningfulin fact not just good but the hero of the story of life on Earth!

You would be hurt to the core and furious wouldnt you! Now extrapolate that experience

over 2 million years and we can begin to appreciate just how much volcanic frustration and anger

must now exist within us humans! While we have learnt to significantly restrain and

concealcivilise as we refer to itthe phenomenal amount of upset within us, under

the surface we all must be boiling with rage, and sometimes, when our restraint can no longer

find a way to contain it, that anger must express itselfhence our capacity for shocking

acts of cruelty, sadism, hate, murder and war.

And no wonder we have led such an evasive, denial-practising, lying, avoid-any-criticism,

escapist, alienated, superficial and artificial, greedy, egocentric, power, fame, fortune and

glory-seeking existence. We have had to smother ourselves with material glory while we lacked

the spiritual glory of compassionate understanding of ourselves.

So there is an enormous amount of upset to subside and heal in us humans, and that will

obviously take time. In fact, we have to expect that it will take a number of generations

to be completely ameliorated. But the good news, and this is very important, is that

while it will take a number of generations to heal all the upset in us humans, everyone

can immediately live free of their upset. The reason we can live free of it is that

while we lacked the real defence and reinforcement of understanding of our corrupted condition,

we absolutely needed the artificial defences and reinforcements of attacking any criticism

of our corrupted condition, of denying and blocking it out, and of finding any positive

reinforcement we couldanger, alienation and egocentricity are what sustained usbut

now that we have the real defence and reinforcement of our fundamental goodness, all these artificial

defences and reinforcements are obsoleted, they are no longer needed. In fact, to continue

using the old artificial defences of retaliation, denial and the search for relieving power,

fame, fortune and glory when our fundamental goodness has been established is not only

clearly pointless but also unnecessarily destructive of ourselves, everyone around us and our planet.

That way of living is now completely obsoleted, finished with.

That makes total sense; I mean our artificial ways of reinforcing ourselves are obsoleted

by the real reinforcement of ourselves. One way of living ends, a new one begins, free

of the human conditionphew, thank God for that!!

Thats for sure! Theres just one more thing I should explain, which is that socialism,

the new age movement, the politically correct movement, and all the other idealistic movements,

were actually all false starts to a human-condition-free world because the upsetting battle to find

knowledge, ultimately self-knowledge, understanding of why we are good and not bad, still had

to be completed. In fact, trying to impose cooperative and loving idealism on our upsetting

search for knowledge while we still had to continue that upsetting search, made carrying

on with it extremely difficult. These movements were pseudo idealistic movements that stifled

and oppressed the search for knowledge; they were regressive, not progressive as they deluded

themselves they were. It was actually the right-wing who have supported the upsetting

battle to find knowledge that held the moral highground, not the pseudo idealistic left-wing.

But this situation all changes now that weve finally found the redeeming understanding

of our condition that our upsetting battle was in search of. Suddenly its no longer

oppressively and destructively pseudo idealistic to abandon the corrupting search for knowledge

and take up support of cooperative and loving idealism, its now the only way of living

thats justified! Suddenly theres no longer any reason for the right-wing in politics

and everyone effectively becomes left-wing. In fact, the whole business of politics basically

ends with the finding of understanding of the human condition, and the whole human race

sets out as one united organism letting go the angry, egocentric and alienated part of

ourselves and supporting cooperative, selfless and loving idealism. (Much more is explained

about pseudo idealism in Video/F. Essay 14 on the World Transformation Movements website.)

Yes, ending the polarised world of politics will certainly be one of the biggest reliefs

imaginable! Absolutely Craig. It will be a massive relief.

So thats how the whole world suddenly, immediately changes from a psychologically

embattled angry, egocentric and alienated state, to a world where everyone has decided

to abandon their still-to-be-healed competitive and aggressive behaviour and takes up support

of a cooperative and loving existence. So finding understanding of the human condition

brings to an end the insecure, upset, artificial-reinforcement-dependent angry, egocentric and alienated world. A new

human-condition-resolved, cooperative, selfless and loving world now emerges. Light comes

streaming into the dark cave-like world of denial that we have been living in, and it

will all be like waking up from a nightmare! Basically, with the ability to understand

ourselves, we can return to our original cooperative and loving state, but this time fully conscious.

As the poet T.S. Eliot anticipated, We shall not cease from exploration and the end

of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first

time. Wow Jeremy, that has been absolutely incredible,

enlightening, enthralling, and I really cant thank you enough for sharing with us your

knowledge and your insight. To think about the human race being transformed just in the

nick of time is, I think, what everybody out there who has listened to this will be hoping

for. And your book FREEDOM, again, is available

on HumanCondition.com for everybody to accessand its free on there as well. So please follow

this interview up, listen to it again and again, try your best to understand what Jeremy

is saying here, but get online, get the information and keep studying, and lets hope we can

all enjoy and embrace a new change for the world, for all of us.

Jeremy, its been wonderful to talk with you. Thank you for joining us, and we will

hopefully speak to you againbut even better, that well be seeing your work in the lives

of everybody across the planet very soon. Im Craig Conway, this has been my interview

with Jeremy Griffith.

Everyone, dont forget you can learn all about this fabulous, world-saving

breakthrough understanding of the human condition at HumanCondition.com!

And I want to mention that what youll see there following this interview is a series of videos

that elaborate on whats been outlined in this interviewso there will be some repetition,

but going over the concepts in more detail does help with the understanding and absorption of them.

In the first of those videos Jeremy warns us of our historic fear of the subject of the human condition

and the resulting deaf effect that reading or hearing about the human condition often initially causes.