Freedom Essay 59

 

Shouldn’t the WTM’s website be toned down,
all the ‘hyperbole’ removed and the ‘congested’,
‘loud’ and ‘aggressive’ layout replaced with
a gentler, more welcoming format & why do you make such seemingly outrageous and offensive claims in your marketing?

 

By Jeremy Griffith, 2018

(This essay also appears as FAQ 1.17)

 

The WTM receives responses, especially from the younger millennial or ‘Y’ generation (those under 35 in 2018 who were born between 1982 and 1998) and the subsequent ‘Z-generation’, complaining about our website having ‘imposing, even aggressive, big bold, garish fonts and text, and loud colouring, even flashing titles’, and a ‘congested, too intense, cluttered format’—and to be ‘too pushy with off-putting hyperbole, with big claims like “this is the book that saves the world” and “watch the human condition being solved and the world saved”’; and that ‘You are looking like you’re trying to sell something all the time with Jeremy holding his book up, etc—all features that our university lecturers tell us to look for as being signs of someone promoting the bogus, pseudo science that characterises dangerous, deluded, mindless, mind-controlling cυlts’; and that ‘You just need to let the reader or viewer discover for themselves the truth and importance of your work—basically your website needs to offer a little bit of comfort and trust, it needs to portray Jeremy and the message with elegant simplicity and utter integrity—you will be far more effective if you’re not so loud and pushy with your message.’

 

 

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Jeremy Griffith’s response (written in 2018):

Firstly, with regard to the problem of younger generations finding any mention of, or even indirect reference to, the issue of our corrupted human condition completely unbearable, I need to begin by acknowledging just how terminally alienated the human race is rapidly becoming.

Having lived in denial of our alienated human condition there has been no recognition of the ever-increasing levels of upset anger, egocentricity and alienation as humanity’s heroic but corrupting search for knowledge progressed, and, as a result, there hasn’t been any recognition that the ever-accelerating increase in upset has now reached terminal levels. As I mentioned in Video/​Freedom Essay 4, Plato broke the rules of denial when he recognised all of this when he described humans becoming conscious and able ‘to order their course of life for themselves’ and as a result ‘the separation [from our soul occurred], when the world was let go [when the corrupt state of the human condition emerged]’, after which ‘at first all proceeded well enough [our intellect mostly deferred to our instincts], but, as time went on, there was more and more forgetting [more and more dishonest denial with its psychosis-increasing alienated separation from our instinctive self or soul because it was criticising us more and more]…​and at last small was the good, and great was the admixture of evil, and there was a danger of universal ruin to the world’ (The Statesman, c.350 BC; tr. B. Jowett, 1871, 273). As I said in that video, that is clearly the situation we have arrived at today where the upset in humans is now so great we ARE facing the ‘universal ruin’ of the world. (I might mention that some 400 years before Plato, his compatriot Hesiod also truthfully recognised humanity’s deterioration from, as he described it, a ‘Golden Age’ of original innocence, to a ‘Silver Age’ when there was still some innocence, to a ‘Bronze Age’ when men were war-like, to a ‘Heroic Age’ when upset was civilised, and then finally to the completely corrupt ‘Iron Age’, which has now arrived, where ‘Corrupt the race, with toils and grief opprest / Nor day nor night can yield a pause of rest / …Speeds the swift ruin which but slow began’ (The Remains of Hesiod the Ascræan, tr. C.A. Elton, pp.23–24).)

 

 

The fact is that on a graph of the ever-increasing levels of psychosis in humans, the levels of psychosis 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! There has been a colossal change from the happiness and optimism of the 1950s and ’60s (as evidenced by the excitement of the music of those eras—‘the golden age of pop’ as U2 described it in God Part II), to the 1980s and ’90s when technology shrunk the world so that all the angst of the rapidly escalating alienation in people and all the resulting upset horror in the world massively spread and traumatised and virtually destroyed all the innocence of children from then on (as evidenced by the music of these subsequent generations, which changed from the 1950s and ’60s excitement to frightening head-banging angst, and now completely burnt out, muted music). In paragraph 944 of FREEDOM, it is reported that ‘96 percent of American families are now [in 1993] dysfunctional’, and that was 25 years ago! George Orwell wasn’t far off the mark when he titled his book about the arrival of terminal alienation Nineteen Eighty Four.

 

Insightful, terminal-alienation-revealing artwork for a recent stage production of 1984

 

Not only has music reflected the state of upset of current generations, so has clothing, with recent generations wearing only muted dark and dull colours on often torn and worn out looking fabrics, with minimalist t-shirts obligatory. No one wears decorative clothing or bright colours anymore. It’s like everyone is trying to out-do each other in how drab and understated they can dress. In truth they are making an honest statement about how psychologically exhausted and alienated they actually are, which their zombie street parades further reveal (see Video/​F. Essay 1). Yes, the truth really is that our streets are drudging dirges of psychological cadavers.

With regard to how burnt-out and muted the latest generations are, a 2018 study by ‘social scientists seek[ing] explanations for millennials’ moderate ways’ said that ‘something is up’, ‘teenagers seem lonelier than in the past’, and talked of ‘young people becom[ing] virtual hermits’, and of ‘taking it slow. They are slow to drink, have sex and earn money.’ It said that ‘teenagers are getting drunk [on mind-numbing alcohol] less often’ and ‘other [escapist] drugs are also falling in favour’, and ‘young people [are] harming each other much less than they used to. Fighting among 13 and 15-year-olds is down across Europe’, and ‘teenagers are also having less sex’. It said that ‘In short, young people are less hedonistic and break fewer rules than in the past. They are “kind of boring”’ (‘Teenagers are better behaved and less hedonistic nowadays but they are also lonelier and more isolated’, The Economist, 10 Jan. 2018). The truth is that the last refuge for the terminally alienated is dissociation from the world. In fact, the epidemic numbers of children now suffering from the extremely agitated mental condition of ADHD, and the completely-dissociated-from-the-world state of autism, shows how Plato’s predicted ‘universal ruin’ stage of upset is upon us.

The fact is the paralysed, can’t-cope-with-anything, aptly titled ‘snowflake’ millennials are now describing themselves as ‘The Burnout Generation’ (Anne Helen Petersen, ‘How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation’, BuzzFeednews.com, 5 Jan. 2019; see www.wtmsources.com/254)—although, unable to acknowledge their extreme psychosis from the end play state of the human condition as the real reason for their burn-out, they are blaming it on such superficial causes as stress from the overuse of ‘smartphones’ and from ‘the 2008 financial crisis’; to being ‘scared’ of the world due to ‘intensive’ ‘helicopter parents’; and in general to the ‘mental load’ produced by the ‘systems of capitalism and patriarchy’! (ibid). (Incidentally, with regard to blaming capitalism and patriarchy, now that we are able to explain the human condition we can at last understand that capitalism and patriarchy have been the saviours not the villains of the human journey because the materialistic relief that capitalism has provided for the upset human race allowed us to continue our upsetting search for knowledge, and the patriarchy that was tasked with finding understanding of the human condition has, as is described in Death by Dogma, actually now achieved just that.)

 

Zombie street parades (see Video/​F. Essay 1), which have become popular of late,
let the truth out about just how the endgame state of terminal alienation is upon us.

 

What is so significant about this extremely rapid increase in upset is how it has affected what the current completely exhausted, ‘universal ruin’-arrived, end-play millennial and Z-generations can cope with in terms of truthful, penetrating analysis of the human condition. The fact is these aptly titled ‘snowflakes’ find any, even remote, discussion of the human condition totally unbearable. And not only can they not cope with any penetrating analysis, they demand that, like their clothing, websites be designed to comply with their backed-off, intensity-turned-right-down, dissociate-from-the-world attitude. They want lots and lots of white space or ‘air’ on the pages, and the text to be as small and non-threatening as possible. This is such a contrast to members of the ’60s generation, and, to a somewhat lesser extent, members of the ’70s generation, who expect important statements to stand out and be emphasised, and don’t want to have to find their way through lots of space separating what’s being put forward, or have to struggle to read unnecessarily small text.

Some of our Sydney WTM Centre members have recently attended marketing seminars where they were told that anyone under the specific age of 35 can’t be reached with conventional advertising. They were told the under-35s require ‘a much more backed-off, minimalist, even oblique-messaging approach’. Reference to the crippled, so-called ‘snowflake’ state of those under the precise age of 35 has been mentioned a number of times in the media lately. For example, in an article in The Australian in August 2017 titled ‘The silly old buggers are voting in droves’, columnist Nick Cater wrote that ‘Seldom, if ever, has age been such an important determinant of political attitudes in Western democracies. Millennials—who for convenience we will think of as voters aged 18 to 34—behave very differently from the older generations in ways that political science has yet to explain [because, as mentioned, the resigned world can’t deal with the psychological aspect of human behaviour]…​[millennials have] a tyrannical devotion to political correctness [because their upset is so great they can’t trust themselves to live out their upset and therefore strict obedience to cooperative principles is all they can imagine ever working]…Had the millennials prevailed in Britain [in recent elections], for example, Jeremy Corbyn [the extreme socialist leader of the left-wing Labour party] would have won by a landslide’.

Our own analytics feedback from marketing our understanding of the human condition reinforces just how terminally alienated the human race is becoming, because we get virtually no response at all to our advertisements about the human condition from people under the age of 35 (in 2018). For all but a rare few of those under the age of 35, the subject matter of FREEDOM of the all-important issue of our species’ troubled human condition has become just too confronting and unbearable to think about. Indeed, so alienated are younger generations now that any deeper thinking at all has become impossible—which is why universities provide ‘trigger warnings’ on any confronting subject matter, ‘safe spaces’ for students to escape reality, and protection from ‘microaggressions’. In fact, as mentioned, millennials are being described as ‘snowflakes’ because they ‘melt’ if placed under any pressure. It certainly is endgame for the human race when humans completely give up on thinking, which is what has happened to those under 35. Universities have been places of learning, but how can you learn and seek truth if you aren’t prepared, expected or even challenged to think anymore?

 

 

An article titled ‘Coming to grips with the millennial mind’ provides another example of just how tragically alienated current generations are: ‘“I can no longer teach with these new brains”, says an exasperated…mathematics lecturer at the University of Sydney…The core problem, she says, is the diminishing capacity of undergraduates for “linked thinking”. And it’s not just a problem in the classroom…“they struggle to understand why they’re feeling the way they do. They’ve trained themselves in first-step thinking. Their worlds are constructed of disconnected moments”…​the digital revolution has come on so fast that the brain is being remade in decades, not eons…“They don’t turn up for lectures and they don’t ask questions. They have no idea about the interactive process.” She describes a sea of “glazed eyes”’ (The Australian newspaper, 30 Dec. 2018).

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Obviously the one subject that absolutely requires ‘linked’, ‘interactive’ ‘thinking’ is the issue of the human condition. So, the reality is millennials and subsequent generations cannot be reached by us, which is evidenced by the fact that, as I mentioned, our analytics show that we get virtually zero response to our advertisements from them. The extent of the ‘Deaf Effect’ our analysis of the human condition causes the resigned mind is complete in the case of millennials and subsequent generations. (See FAQ 1.16, for much more on the critical issue of the Deaf Effect and how to overcome it.)

What the comments we have received from millennials and subsequent generations amount to is a demand that we stop presenting truthful, confronting information. Basically they want us to ‘dumb it down’, stop telling the truth, retreat right back deep into the darkest corner of Plato’s cave of denial where they are living. While the inclination of all resigned minds is to want us to ‘dumb down’ our website, make it less confronting, millennials and subsequent generations absolutely demand that we do so. But the whole point of my work and indeed of the efforts of the whole human race has been to get out of that dishonest soul-dead cave of denial where the human race has been so horribly incarcerated.

So, the reality is that the initial appreciation and support of our work of bringing understanding of the human condition is going to have to come from people over 34, those who actually expect important statements to stand out and be emphasised, and don’t want to have to find their way through lots of space separating what’s being put forward, or struggle to read small text—which is why our website is designed the way it is. It caters for the over-34s, not at all for the under-35s.

The objective then, for the marketing of this world-saving understanding of the human condition, is for the over-34s to initiate appreciation and support of the understanding, and for that support to then encourage millennials and the following Z-generation to persevere with the explanation sufficiently to overcome the Deaf Effect and so also become appreciative supporters of the explanation. In fact, the millennial and Z-generations will love the Transformed Way of Living that understanding of the human condition makes possible (see F. Essay 15) more than anyone else because they more than anyone else want something to live for that is more meaningful than their own unfortunately wretched lives!

And, incidentally, having to depend on over 34-year-olds being able to access and appreciate understanding of the human condition is a real and frightening measure of the extremely serious, fast-running-out-of-time situation the human race is in. Since we know this information and its transforming ability IS the only thing that can save the world, it is an incredibly serious situation where we have to attract support from those older than 34 years old or all is lost for the human race. The already present terminally alienated state of the millennial and subsequent generations evidences just how the human race is on the very threshold of extinction! (See F. Essay 55 for more on the endgame state the human race has arrived at.)

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With regard to the ‘big claims’ being off-putting and smacking of hubris and a lack of ‘integrity’, that issue is responded to in F. Essay 54 and WTM FAQ 1.9 where it is explained that while our ‘big claims’ do attract extreme scepticism, they are actually true, and therefore should be stated. You don’t hide an illuminating lamp—in this case the understanding needed to save the world from fast approaching terminal distress and dysfunction—under a bed; no, you put it on a pedestal where it belongs.

 

 

Certainly, what appear to be outrageously hubristic claims can initially be off-putting, but in time they become appreciated for their forthright honesty in indicating where the solution to our problems lies.

For example, a sceptical person said that we shouldn’t ‘refer to THE Interview or FREEDOM with all capital letters. It’s just too evangelical. Book titles only need one capital. It’s like referring to Him with a capital H’. But imagine if the human race was about to die from a horrifically crippling and traumatising and sickening disease which humans were living in such denial of that they weren’t even aware of, but which you could see and not only that you had the cure for, what would you do? Hide amongst the masses or somehow shout your message from the rooftops? Putting FREEDOM in capitals and referring to the human-race-saving interview as THE Interview are among the least of the things we can do.

The comment about not putting an illuminating lamp under a bed but on its pedestal is actually a comment Christ made when he was accused of deluded hubris; Christ said: ‘Do you bring in a lamp to put it under a bowl or a bed? Instead, don’t you put it on its stand?’ (Mark 4:21). It is necessary to say the truth about how important this information really is—especially since it is bringing relieving understanding to the most important yet most denied subject of all of the human condition. Since it’s well known that denials fight back with a vengeance when faced with annihilation, and the human condition is the most denied of all subjects, it follows that the inevitable ‘vengeance’ against having the human condition exposed has to be met by extremely strong counter resistance or the ‘vengeance’ will win out. That counter resistance begins with an unequivocal defence of how important these understandings of the human condition really are. Socrates was given the option of either recanting his honest words—in particular his assertion that we have to face not avoid the issue of the human condition when he said ‘the unexamined life is not worth living’, and ‘the only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance’—or being put to death, and because he didn’t bow to his persecutors, and accepted death, that act of defiance set the stage for the great flowering of Western civilisation. The truth about the human condition has to be stood solidly up, put squarely on its ‘stand’, not watered or ‘dumbed down’ at all. Christ understood this principle. He knew that all his denial-free, human-condition-confronting-not-avoiding honest words about human life were going to meet extreme resistance and that he would have to totally defy that resistance and stand by the importance of his human-condition-exposing honesty even though the persecution was going to be so great it would mean his crucifixion (F. Essay 39 has a wonderful description of the life of Christ and its importance). Christ’s defence of truth against denial created Christianity, the most followed faith in the world. The WTM is not about creating a faith, but about ending the need for faith, belief and dogma, but the human-condition-confronting-not-avoiding nature of our work requires the same need for firm defiance of denial. Socrates didn’t bend to his persecutors who wanted to reimpose denial, force him to retreat back into Plato’s cave of denial, and Christ didn’t bend to his persecutors who wanted to reimpose denial and have him retreat back into Plato’s dark cave, and we in the WTM mustn’t bend to those who want to reimpose denial on us.

 

 

Yes, Christ experienced the Deaf Effect to all his human-condition-not-avoiding honest words when he said, ‘Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say…​The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God [you live in denial of such fundamental truths as Integrative Meaning]’ (Bible, John 8:43–47), and ‘The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness [the resigned] has not understood it’ (John 1:5). But, he didn’t dumb his truthfulness down, retreat back into Plato’s cave of dishonest denial of the human condition. No, he stood resolutely beside all his truthful thinking and kept telling the truth as directly and forcefully as he could. He didn’t water his truthfulness down, dumb it down, soften it; instead he did the opposite, he ramped his truthfulness up, saying, ‘You are of this world; I am not of this world [I am not resigned and living in denial of truth]’ (John 8:23); ‘I came into the world, to testify to the truth [to counter all the dishonest denial]’ (John 18:37); ‘I have spoken openly to the world…I said nothing in secret [I haven’t been intimidated by all the dishonest denial that owns the world]’ (John 18:20); ‘The world…​hates me because I testify that what it does is evil [I tell the truth about the human condition]’ (John 7:7); ‘You are ready to kill me, because you have no room for my word [unresigned truth]’ (John 8:37); ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness [in complete denial of the truth], but will have the light of life’ (John 8:12); ‘I am the resurrection and the life [through me, your ideal, soulful true self can live again]’ (John 11:25); and, ‘I have overcome the world [I have stood firmly by the truth and defied the world of denial]’ (John 16:33). Christ didn’t bend at all to everyone wanting him to dumb his direct truthfulness down.

So while we are forever being told to ‘dumb it down’, make what is presented less confronting, we mustn’t and won’t do that. This has to be the denial-free liberating truth that it is, because, as Christ also said, only ‘the truth will set you free’ (John 8:32). Sure, people will initially be hugely sceptical and deaf, but we mustn’t bend to that scepticism and deafness—and we haven’t bent and, like Socrates and Christ, we were also horribly persecuted, in effect killed/​crucified, for being so truthful and ended up successfully fighting what was at the time the biggest defamation action in Australia’s history against our persecutors. So we walk confidently and authoritatively through all the outrageously dishonest and vengeful accusations swirling around us, and by doing that, in time, the truth catches up with the lie, and everyone treasures the safe haven of truth that we have defended in the rapidly increasing sea of lies and madness everywhere else on planet Earth. (See F. Essay 56 on the defiant stand the WTM has taken against attacks on its work.) Yes, the WTM is an island of sanity in a sea of madness, and that fact is what will launch it on the world stage.

As an example of the above strategy of needing to put the truth on a pedestal and not cave into the Deaf Effect and ‘dumb it down’, in 2023 in a discussion about the messaging to put on the doors of WTM cars a supporter said that ‘Because we live in a “me, me” era and the attention span in people is so short, and everyone is preoccupied with themselves, maybe using the words “You or Your” in the wording would be more effective in engaging most people, particularly younger generations. And because younger generations have more resistance to engaging with this human-condition-confronting information, having more profound statements that talk about the human condition, such as the ones Jeremy has created for the car signs, might be good for some older generations or people who are deep thinkers and are searching for answers, but I think something less confronting, preferably something humorous, would be more effective overall.’ When I was asked for my response to this, in particular to why I focused on more profound wording, I said, ‘My focus is on promoting the key message that I think the world is getting more and more wanting the answer to, which is how can the human race be saved from the desperately distressed situation it’s increasingly become apparent that it’s in everywhere we look—basically the more that time goes on, the more “feel good” is being replaced by “let’s get serious”. More generally, my objective is to always “walk down the middle”, just tell the truth all the time and never deviate from that, which is why, for example, the WTM puts the words “human condition” front and centre in all our advertising, even though they are the most off-putting words in the human language.’

 

See this example of Jeremy’s unevasive messaging on our Displays, Signs & Stickers page.

 

Again, see FAQ 1.16, for much more on the critical issue of the Deaf Effect and how to overcome it, and on the importance of not dumbing down our message.

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With regard to any accusation or suspicion that what we are presenting is pseudo science. Certainly the world is awash with all manner of dishonest, deluded charlatans and irrational pseudo science, with, as explained in Video/​F. Essay 14, the current all-dominating practice of mechanistic science actually being one of the worst examples of deluded, irrational pseudo science, but any fair scrutiny of my human-condition-confronting-not-avoiding treatise will quickly reveal it is carefully argued and evidenced, and fully accountable, first-principle-based science. And with regard to the WTM having any similarity with cυlts that have been set up by deluded megalomanic charlatans to seduce those who are desperate for relief from the battle of the human condition (the ‘false prophet’ merchants of delusion and denial that Christ warned about who ‘come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves’, the ‘vultures’ who ‘gather’ ‘wherever there is a carcass [an exhausted human]’—see par. 1126 of FREEDOM), that accusation is dealt with in F. Essay 56 and WTM FAQ 3.12 where it is explained that the WTM is very easily differentiated from such mind-less organisations because, again, it is a movement based on mind-full science. In fact, what the WTM’s website presents has so much integrity it is the first truly scientific treatise about life since Darwin, and about human behaviour ever!!

 

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For further reading, see FAQ 1.24 ‘Why does the WTM allow seemingly absurd and offensive comments like “I really think this man will become recognised as the best thinker this world has ever seen, and don’t we need him right now” to be publicised on its website?’, in which it is explained that the evidence suggests such comments are true!; and FAQ 3.13 ‘Is there an unhealthy focus on Jeremy Griffith within the WTM?’ in which it is explained that the focus of all the work undertaken by the World Transformation Movement is not on Jeremy Griffith but the urgently needed biological explanation of the human condition that he puts forward. In fact, rather than venerating Jeremy (or any other personality), the WTM’s work is entirely logic-based and actually obsoletes the need for any adherence to faith and dogma and worship and egocentricity.

Watch Jeremy Griffith present the breakthrough redeeming explanation of the human condition in THE Interview; for a fuller explanation read chapter 3 of FREEDOM; and for a summary presentation of the key ‘instinct vs intellect’ explanation watch Video/​F. Essay 3.

 

Discussion or comment on this essay is welcomed—see below.