Part 2:3 ‘A joy without limit’, by Jeremy Griffith

Thank you so very much Professor Prosen and Tim for your appreciative words, and thank you all for coming along.

The issue of the human condition has been the real ‘elephant in the living room’ of our lives—the great unmentionable subject on Earth, the most important yet least acknowledged subject in human life. Indeed, it will be revealed that the human condition has been the dominating psychological influence in human behaviour since human consciousness fully developed and we became a self-managing species some two million years ago, and the underlying issue in all human affairs—so influential in our lives, in fact, that being able to explain the human condition, and by so doing understand and ameliorate or heal its effects, brings about a fundamental TRANSFORMATION of humans of the most dramatic and wonderful kind.

As Tim said, the issue of the human condition—our species’ capacity for what has been called ‘good’ and ‘evil’—is the agonising core issue that we humans have needed to understand about our behaviour. Essentially, human nature, as it has been, was not something immutable or unchangeable, as it is often thought, but rather the product of an underlying psychological condition that we humans have always intuitively held a hope, faith and trust would one day be able to be understood and thus alleviated, and it is that wonderful day of liberation from the agony of the human condition that has finally arrived.

I have used the word ‘intuitively’ because this underlying psychological condition is not something we humans have been able to openly admit to, even to ourselves, let alone discuss with each other. In fact, the human condition has been such a distressingly difficult subject for us humans to confront that, after being under some pressure to acknowledge its existence, I have heard it referred to as ‘the personal unspeakable’, and as ‘the black box inside of humans that they can’t go near’. And these are not outrageous exaggerations, for the truth is the subject of the human condition—the issue of the extreme imperfection of human life—has been so distressing and depressing that until it could be explained a practice of near total denial of the subject had to be adopted. For example, while ‘human nature’ appears in dictionaries, ‘human condition’ never does. It was only in moments of extreme profundity that we even mentioned the dreaded term ‘human condition’, and even then it was only ever a vague, glancing reference. For instance, the mission statement of the Fetzer Foundation, a philanthropic organisation in the United States, contains lofty words about its dedication to research, education and service, and spliced in amongst them are the words: ‘as we press toward unique frontiers at the edge of revolutionary breakthroughs in the human condition.’

(Note, this situation where the subject of the human condition has been virtually unmentionable changed significantly with the publication in 2012 of the American biologist Edward (E.) O. Wilson’s book, The Social Conquest of Earth, in which he claims to explain the human condition. But, as it is fully explained later in Part 4:12I, this ‘Theory of Eusociality’ (as E.O. Wilson has termed this supposed ‘explanation’ of the human condition) doesn’t truthfully explain the human condition at all, rather it attempts to dismiss it as nothing more than a conflict between supposed selfish and selfless instincts within humans. It is not a profound, fully accountable, truthful, real explanation of the psychological dilemma involved in the human condition, but a completely false—indeed fake—superficial trivialisation of the subject. What E.O. Wilson has done is put forward a supposed explanation of the human condition that nullifies it, that makes it appear benign, nothing profoundly distressing at all, when, as the author Olive Schreiner so honestly acknowledges in her writing that I will be referring to in a moment, the human condition is a fearfully distressing subject. Indeed, descriptions provided in Part 3:8 of adolescents going through Resignation, during which they try to face down the terrifying issue of the imperfect state of our human condition, make it more than clear that the human condition is, in reality, a profoundly deep, extremely dark and fearful—indeed terrifying—psychological issue. As will be described in Part 4:12, in devising such theories as Social Darwinism, Sociobiology, Evolutionary Psychology, Multilevel Selection and now Eusociality, mechanistic/​reductionist science has become masterful at finding new ways to avoid the true nature of the human condition. The unfortunate result of the fake trivialisation of the human condition in E.O. Wilson’s theory of Eusociality is that people will now be inclined to refer to the subject in a way that doesn’t recognise and respect its true nature. The issue of the human condition has been so belittled by this new dishonest account of it that it has lost its dread, but the true horror of this immensely dishonest interpretation of the human condition is that it has taken humanity to the brink of terminal alienation. That is how serious the repercussions are of misrepresenting this core issue in being human—this most profoundly important subject of all—as benign, virtually inconsequential, which is what this new theory of Eusociality in effect does. It leads us away from the truth about ourselves at the very time we need to be facing that truth and, by so doing, finding a genuine psychologically ameliorating understanding of it. As emphasised in Part 4:12I, E.O. Wilson’s dismissal of our human condition as inconsequential is the most sophisticated and thus dangerous denial to have ever been developed on Earth. More will be said about Eusociality shortly in Parts 3:2 and 3:4, but what I am concerned with achieving here is informing readers that while E.O. Wilson has now dismissively trivialised the subject of the human condition, what I said here in 2009, and what I say throughout my writings, about it actually being a fearful subject still holds true for humans whenever they truthfully engage with the issue.)

The fact remains, we humans have lived in such fear and thus denial of even the term ‘human condition’ that when people are asked what it means most say they don’t really know, while others who do think they know say it refers to our physical predicament, all the poverty, disease and pollution in the world, when in truth those problems are merely by-products of the human condition, which is our species’ psychological predicament—our inability to understand why we have not been ideally behaved, why we became corrupted, ‘fell from grace’ (derived from the title of Gen. 3, ‘The Fall of Man’), and as a result were ‘banished…from the Garden’ (Gen. 3:23) of our species’ state of original innocence.

The reality has been that as humans grew up they soon learnt to avoid, to block out, to put up ‘blinkers’ to the whole subject of the incredible imperfection of human life because to think about it has been far too distressing, and above all—until now—an answerless and thus futile exercise. Adults have learnt to live in denial of the whole depressing issue of the human condition.

So it is not surprising that we need a child’s innocence, with all its honesty, to reconnect us to the truth of the utter hypocrisy of human life and the fundamental question that had to be solved of ‘Why?’ The child I refer to is Olive Schreiner, a famous South African writer who, on her deathbed in 1920, wrote a deeply reflective essay in which she was able to recall her childhood struggle with the issue of the human condition. She told how, as a little girl ‘not yet nine years old’, she was overcome with distress about all the selfishness, meanness and cruelty in the world. Remarkably, while Schreiner wasn’t able to find understanding of all the wrongness in human behaviour, she did manage to achieve, through the inspiring beauty of nature, some peace of mind by realising that a greater meaning did lie behind all the apparent wrongness and suffering in human life.

I would now like to relate what Schreiner wrote because it not only reconnects us with the issue of the human condition, it also wonderfully illustrates what both Tim and Professor Prosen have said about how incredibly exciting it is that science has finally made it possible to explain the human condition and, through doing so, bring about the ‘rehabilitation’ of our species.

For brevity’s sake, I will read just the main passages from Schreiner’s essay: ‘When a child, not yet nine years old, I walked out one morning along the mountain tops on which my home stood. The sun had not yet risen, and the mountain grass was heavy with dew…I walked till I came to a place where a little stream ran…I had got up so early because I had been awake much in the night and could not sleep longer. My heart was heavy; my physical heart seemed to have a pain in it, as if small, sharp crystals were cutting into it. All the world seemed wrong to me…Why did everyone press on everyone and try to make them do what they wanted? Why did the strong always crush the weak? Why did we hate and kill and torture? Why was it all as it was? Why had the world ever been made?…The little sharp crystals seemed to cut deeper into my heart.

And then, as I sat looking at [the stream]…the sun began to rise. It shot its lights across the long, grassy slopes of the mountains and struck…[a] little mound of earth [at the water’s edge]…All the…flowers and grasses on it turned bright gold, and the dewdrops hanging from them were like diamonds; and the water in the stream glinted as it ran. And, as I looked at that almost intolerable beauty, a curious feeling came over me…I seemed to see a world in which creatures no more hated and crushed, in which the strong helped the weak, and men understood each other, and forgave each other, and did not try to crush others, but to help…And there came to me, as I sat there, a joy such as never besides have I experienced…a joy without limit…

[T]his feeling [that] came to me, a feeling…not easy to put into words…was like this: You also are a part of the great Universe; what you strive for something strives for…you are moving on towards something…

In the long years which have passed, the adult has seen…the greed, the ambition, the cruelty and falsehood of the individual soul…in so hideously enlarged and wholly unrestrained a form that it might be forgiven to one who cried out to the powers that lie behind life: “Is it not possible to put out a sponge and wipe up humanity from the earth? It is stain!”…[Very honestly, Schreiner also conceded that even ‘Within my own soul I have perceived elements militating against all I hungered for’.] [She went on]…I have tried to wear no blinkers…I have tried to look nakedly in the face those facts which make most against all hope—and yet, in the darkest hour, the consciousness which I carried back with me that morning has never wholly deserted me…

That which was for the young child only a vision…has, in the course of a long life’s experience, become a hope…which a growing knowledge of human nature and human life does endorse. Somewhere, some time, some place’ (Somewhere, Some Time, Some Place, from a 1987 collection titled An Olive Schreiner Reader: Writings on Women and South Africa, ed. Carol Barash, pp.216-220 of 261).

‘Somewhere, some time, some place’ is almost the same phrase Tim used.

I think that passage is as clean a take on the fundamental situation we humans have been in as you could hope to find.

Having, as Schreiner said, ‘tried to look nakedly in the face of those facts which’ seem unequivocally to deny ‘all hope’ of there being meaning in all the suffering and apparent wrongness in human life, she then, in that state of complete openness to all the possibilities, saw the sparkle on a stream in the early morning sunlight and, through that beauty, was connected to the greater truth that there is a purpose and destiny to human existence—that we have been ‘moving towards something’. That ‘something’, she said, was ‘a growing knowledge of human nature’ that will ‘somewhere, some time, some place’ bring about an incredible TRANSFORMATION of humans where ‘the strong helped the weak, and men understood each other, and forgave each other, and did not try to crush others, but to help’, and that the coming of that time would bring about ‘a joy without limit’.

Believe it or not, this ‘somewhere’ and ‘some time’ and ‘some place’ when ‘a growing knowledge of human nature’—science, in fact—would make possible reconciling, redeeming, healing and transforming understanding of ourselves—when, as Professor Prosen said, ‘the psychological rehabilitation of the human race’ could begin—is happening right now, and right here in what you are about to hear!!

I should emphasise again that what is to be presented is not another romantic, unrealistic, pseudo-idealistic, superficial, futile, got-us-nowhere, dogma-based Marxist, socialist, left-wing demand for utopia—or, for that matter, some think-positive, feel-good, motivational New Age treatment of our human situation. Quite the opposite. To reach the truth about our human situation we have to go, and indeed will be going, into the very heart of the darkness plaguing this planet, down into the depths of our species’ psychosis. We are going into that deepest, darkest and previously off-limits subject of the human condition and safely out the other side to our species’ FREEDOM. This will be no superficial account of humanity’s journey, or of our lives as part of it, but rather a deeply profound presentation of the biological origins, effects and, most importantly, resolution of the underlying issue in all human affairs of our species’ extraordinary capacity for both ‘good’ and ‘evil’.

Earth has certainly presented some extremely hostile and forbidding realms for humans to attempt to explore, such as the sulphurous volcanic vents recently discovered at the bottom of the oceans, but the REAL frontier for human endeavour to conquer was never the inhospitable parts of our landscape or even the remote reaches of outer space, it was always inner space, the domain of ‘self’, the realm of the human condition. Indeed, Joseph Conrad’s famous novel about an adventure up the Congo River into ‘the heart of darkness’, as the 1902 book was titled, was actually a metaphorical anticipation of this greatest of all journeys that we are now, in this very presentation, about to embark upon.

So this is some journey we are going on into the darkest of subjects, for we are going to be addressing the historically psychologically terrifying issue of the human condition, BUT, we are going to make it both successful and thus safe by, as Tim said, flooding it with the light of dignifying, uplifting, liberating, redeeming, relieving and TRANSFORMING biological understanding.

Importantly, this is about the fulfilment of humanity’s freedom-from-dogma-dependent, heroic search for knowledge, not about abandoning that heroic search by oppressively imposing unrealistic ideal values. Indeed, this is all about the end of dogma—even of faith—and the beginning of knowing. Olive Schreiner’s vision was dependent on the arrival of knowledge—‘knowledge of human nature’ is what she said—the ability to understand ourselves at last, and it is that particular knowledge, and nothing else, that could, and now does, bring about a new, TRANSFORMED world for humans.

In summary, what is to be presented is the most heroic story ever told, the story of us, the story of the human race: our species’ journey through the long cold night of having to live in a state of ignorance—most particularly, ignorance about our worthiness or otherwise—to finally reaching enlightenment. We humans had this awesome computer put in our heads, our fully conscious, thinking brain, but we were not given the program for it; instead we were left to wander this Earth searching for the program in a terrifying darkness of confusion and bewilderment. Well, as Tim said, from that terrifyingly cold darkness we can now emerge into the warm sunshine of dignifying, redeeming, relieving and TRANSFORMING understanding.

Yes, this journey that we are about to go on leads to the most astonishingly wonderfully FREE, peaceful, happy and exciting TRANSFORMED existence for all humans. In fact, it is the human-condition-free, exhilarated and empowered, truly alive lifeforce state that we have always dreamt of one day being able to achieve. Although we haven’t been able to acknowledge it, our psychological struggle with the human condition has been so dominating, so destructive and so oppressive of our lives that in solving it we are effectively solving all of our own problems and those of the world. It is that significant and impacting a breakthrough! Finding understanding of the human condition brings about the liberation of the human race and the TRANSFORMATION OF THE WORLD, a situation that is so wonderful that it brings us humans, as Schreiner said, ‘a joy without limit’!

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At this point, some of you watching this video, or reading this transcript, might wish to go straight to the biological explanation of the human condition and follow that main discussion, which is presented in Part 3.

Alternatively, you can continue with Part 2, where shortly I will put forward Five Propositions on what will happen now that understanding of the human condition has been found. Tim Macartney-Snape will then conclude Part 2 with a brief history of these ideas and of the World Transformation Movement.

Before either moving on to Part 3 or continuing with Part 2 I would, however, like to advise the reader and/or the viewer to be prepared to re-read and/or re-watch the presentations a number of times. This issue of the human condition has been so difficult for humans to look at that we have practiced almost total denial of it and this practiced denial makes taking in or ‘hearing’ discussion about the subject very difficult. What happens initially is that our mind goes into shock when discussion of the human condition begins and finds it very difficult to absorb what is being said, as evidenced by these reader responses: ‘When I first read your books all I saw were a lot of black marks on white paper’; and ‘When I read your book I found the content very difficult to absorb, so much so in fact I found it impossible telling someone what the book was even about’; and ‘please send me an executive summary of your book because I can’t understand what it’s about.’ This comment from an internet blog also summarises the difficulty: ‘reading Griffith is like reading another language—you know its English, you can understand the words, but the concepts are so basic and so different that they are almost incomprehensible—its a paradigm shift of a read.’ What is so ‘basic’ and ‘different’, and such a ‘paradigm shift’, is that the historically unconfrontable, off-limits, even toxic issue of the human condition is finally being addressed and explained. This response describes the problem clearly: ‘The words in your books have in my experience brought up emotional reactions in people and their minds reject the information, they are not able to get behind the words and experience the profundity of where you are coming from…Your insights are so head on as to cripple people.’

So my strong advice is to be prepared for what we call the ‘deaf effect’ that this information about the human condition causes when you first start to read/hear discussion of it, and to be prepared to continue to re-watch these presentations, and/or re-read these transcripts. In fact, the best way to overcome the initial ‘deaf effect’ difficulty of reading about the human condition is by taking the WTM Deaf Effect Course which can be accessed at <www.humancondition.com/freedom-essays/the-wtm-deaf-effect-course>. You’ll be astonished at how you do begin to absorb what is being put forward, when initially it is very difficult. Of course, once you are able to access the information sufficiently to evaluate its accountability, you then have to make sure you maintain a healthy balance between the extent to which you continue to study it and how much self-confrontation you can cope with. You can read more about this ‘deaf effect’ and how best to manage it in Part 3:13.