Section 4:2 The TRANSFORMATION of the world, by Jeremy Griffith

The brief description I’m about to give of just how exciting and world-changing this new TRANSFORMED LIFE for humans is going to be is mostly a condensation of what I have presented in Section 2:3.

A number of founding members of the WTM, including myself, my brother Simon and Tim Macartney-Snape, benefited from the influence of Australia’s greatest ever educator, Sir James Darling, as students at Geelong Grammar School (GGS) in Victoria. Described as ‘a prophet in the true biblical sense’ in his 1995 full-page obituary in The Australian newspaper (view Sir James’ obituary at <www.humancondition.com/darling-obituary>), Sir James was certainly an extraordinarily profound, denial-free, truthful thinker whose words I refer to often in my writing. In one of his famous speeches, Sir James said, ‘selfishness is, as it has ever been, the ultimately destructive force in a society, and there are only two cures for selfishness—the regimented state which we all profess to dislike, and the change of heart, which we refuse to make. That is the choice, believe me, for each one of us, and we have not much time in which to make it. The need for decision [to have a ‘change of heart’ and live selflessly] is serious and urgent, and the sands [of time] are running out’ (GGS Speech Day address in 1950, Light Blue Down Under, by Weston Bate, 1990, p.219 of 386).

Sir James has, in this passage, identified selfishness as ‘the ultimately destructive force’ and stated that historically there have only ever been ‘two cures for selfishness—the regimented state which we all profess to dislike, and the change of heart, which we refuse to make’. The ‘regimented state’ is obviously a reference to the dogmatically imposed and strictly enforced selfless, cooperative, communal, social state of socialism/communism. As has been emphasised, being fully conscious, self-managing beings, having to subordinate our thinking mind to dogma was never going to work. De-braining ourselves was no real solution to our problems. Ultimately, we needed brain food, not brain anaesthetic. Our thinking mind needed understanding—specifically, understanding of why we humans are fundamentally good and not bad, evil, worthless beings. In short, we needed the dignifying, redeeming and TRANSFORMING understanding of the human condition. But what Sir James also recognised in this passage was that, despite the urgency, we would ‘refuse to make’ the ‘change of heart’ from living selfishly to living selflessly until humanity achieved that breakthrough. And he was right—until the liberating understanding of why humans are fundamentally good and not bad was found we had no choice but to keep on trying to achieve some relief from the insecurity of our condition by finding superficial ways to prove we are good and not bad, such as through winning power, fame, fortune and glory. We had no choice but to be ‘ego-centric’—we had no choice but for our conscious thinking self (which is how the Concise Oxford Dictionary defines ‘ego’) to be focused or ‘centred’ on trying to prove it/we are not bad, worthless and meaningless. It is only now with the fundamental, trustable, knowable, first-principle-based, dogma-free biological understanding of why we humans are not bad that we can afford to stop trying to prove we are not bad all the time—that we can stop being egocentric; let go of being so self-worth-preoccupied; live for the human-condition-understood world FREE of that old insecure existence; TRANSFORM from being selfish to selfless; have the ‘change of heart’ that Sir James recognised was so ‘serious and urgent’.

Since materialistic luxuries, like glittering dresses, sparkling diamonds, bubbling Champagne, huge chandeliers, silver tea sets, big houses, swimming pools and shining, pretentious cars gave us the fanfare and glory we knew was due us, but which the world in its ignorance of our true goodness would not give us, materialism was one of the important means by which we could sustain our sense of self-worth while the upsetting search for the liberating understanding of why we are good and not bad was being carried out. In fact, when we only had our ability to win power, fame, glory and fortune (and, with that fortune/​money/​wealth/​capital, acquire materialistic luxuries) to sustain our sense of self-worth while the upsetting search for understanding of our worth was being carried out, those relieving artificial forms of reinforcement were the only engines driving the old insecure world—the only rewards sustaining the all-important search for self-understanding (which is why socialism, which sought to replace the engine of greed with the idealism of selfless cooperativeness before we had found self-understanding, couldn’t and didn’t work). So, this egocentric, self-centred, individualistic, selfish, greedy, competitive, power-fame-fortune-and-glory-seeking existence was also a ‘constructive force’ as well as the inequality-producing, human-suffering-causing, Earth-destroying ‘destructive force’ that Sir James so aptly described it as. Yes, there was truth indeed in the saying ‘Greed is good.’ The demonstrations against greed and capitalism that we have been witness to in 2011 and 2012 are in truth naive, pseudo idealistic, make-yourself-feel-good-but-don’t-solve-anything protests against the reality of the insecurity of life under the duress of the human condition. Of course, this constructive and destructive, ‘good and bad’ aspect of our behaviour is the core paradox (or ‘riddle’, as Banjo Paterson referred to it in Song of the Future) of the human condition that we are now at last able to explain and understand.

Nevertheless, while the ‘selfishness’ of the old egocentric, self-centred, individualistic, selfish, greedy, capitalistic, competitive, materialistic way of living was the driving force that kept the all-important search for the relieving understanding of why we humans are good and not bad going, and was thus a ‘constructive force’, it was, as Sir James said, the ‘ultimate’ ‘destructive force in a society’ because in the end only a selfless way of living works. Ultimately selfishness is destructive. No matter how much you try to control and regulate it, a society operating from a basis of selfishness will ultimately become dysfunctional. There was a limit to how long we could keep going under the drive of selfish greed. For human civilisation to survive, selflessness had to become the driving force in the world; ultimately, there had to be, as Sir James said, ‘a change of heart’. As many people have recognised and said over the years, ‘it’s not that humans lack the ability to fix the world, it’s that they lack the will’, which is the ‘change of heart’, the preparedness to live selflessly that Sir James recognised was needed.

So despite its precious contribution to the human race’s progress towards finding understanding of ourselves, the ultimate truth is that selfishness, especially insatiable materialistic, capitalistic greed, was poised to destroy the world. It was ‘insatiable’ because, as an artificial form of reinforcement, materialism was never going to genuinely make us feel we were good and not bad—only understanding of our fundamental goodness could and now does achieve that. Mahatma Gandhi was really making this point about the insatiability of trying to make yourself feel good by surrounding yourself with material luxury when he famously said, ‘Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed.’ Yes, and when F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in The Great Gatsby that ‘Living well is the best revenge’ (1925) he too was recognising that while we lacked the real ‘revenge’ for the injustice of the human condition, namely reconciling understanding, materialism was ‘the best revenge’ we had. So, it is going to be an enormous relief now for the planet and for humankind—in fact, it is going to make all the difference—that, through the finding of understanding of why we humans are good and not bad, we can finally let go of our selfish, egocentric, have-to-prove-our-worth, materialistic, power-fame-fortune-and-glory-seeking way of living and take up the TRANSFORMED, human-condition-liberated, selfless existence; again, have that ‘change of heart’ Sir James recognised we had to have.

Just to illustrate the change that is going to come to our old materialistic way of living, in front of me is a teaspoon—well, the monetary value of all the human-glorifying, egocentric content and effort that has gone into its ornate, embellished design, extravagant silver plating and competitive salesmanship and marketing to sell it to me, etc, etc, could feed a starving person for a week! Almost everything I see in front of me—my extravagant watch, my fancy shirt, my sophisticated pen—is in truth obscenely extravagant in a human-condition-free world. I should re-design all these items so they are not so extravagant, and it won’t be long before I and everyone else in the world will be doing just that. Imagine if all the car makers in the world were to sit down together to design one extremely simple, embellishment-free, functional car that was made from the most environmentally-sustainable materials, how cheap to buy and humanity-and-Earth-considerate that vehicle would be. And imagine all the money that would be saved by not having different car makers duplicating their efforts, competing and trying to out-sell each other, and overall how much time that would liberate for all those people involved in the car industry to help those less fortunate and suffering in the world. Likewise, imagine when each house is no longer designed to make an individualised, ego-reinforcing, status-symbol statement for its owners and all houses are constructed in a functionally satisfactory, simple way, how much energy, labour, time and expense will be freed up to care for the wellbeing of the less fortunate and the planet. These TRANSFORMATIONS are all going to occur.

Again, while we needed the individualistic, materialistic world to sustain our sense of self-worth while we couldn’t establish it through understanding, now that we have established it that old way of living is obsoleted. Recall how, having adopted the TRANSFORMED STATE, Doug Lobban’s only desire was to fix the world, starting with his shower curtain! He had let go of his egocentric mindset when he became TRANSFORMED. The finding of understanding of the human condition naturally brings about a whole new way of living. There’s no dogma involved, like there was in socialism—this is about the end of dogma and also of faith, and the beginning of understanding.

It will certainly take time, in fact, a few generations, for us humans to sufficiently absorb the understanding of the human condition for our underlying insecurity to be fully ameliorated or healed and thus the need for some artificial reinforcement from materialism, etc, etc, to completely disappear, but once you adopt the TRANSFORMED STATE, while you haven’t eliminated the insecure state of the human condition within yourself, you have completely changed your mind’s focus from living an ego-embattled, selfish life to living selflessly—you have had that ‘change of heart’, the fundamental change of direction, that Sir James recognised was so urgently needed to fix the world.

Importantly, the more this ‘change of heart’ TRANSFORMATION catches on, the easier it will be for people to move from the old insecure, ego-centric way of living to the new secure, ego-less way of living. The old egocentric way of living has had such a powerful hold on humans because while there was no understanding of the human condition all we had was the superficial reinforcement we gained from seeking power, fame, fortune and glory, but once that relieving understanding is found, as it has been, that old egocentric way of living quickly loses its power—so quickly, in fact, that everyone will be amazed by how quickly their need for the old artificial forms of reinforcement falls away.

The great ‘change of heart’ is on! Imagine when we no longer have to dress to impress, deceive and disguise—especially when women no longer have to be preoccupied with being sex objects—how much freedom that is going to unleash, and how much time, energy and resources it will save? Imagine when communication technology is used only to spread reconciling truth rather than truthless, alienated, escapist, superficial drivel, as it is currently doing—how much relief that is going to bring to humans and thus our world? End the human condition and you end all the big problems of the world—and thus all the little problems too.

The overall point I’m making is of the immense power of cooperative selflessness to solve all our problems. If we were all selfless we could solve the AIDS epidemic literally overnight because all it would take would be for everyone to agree to be tested for the AIDS virus and those who tested positive to agree to not have sexual relationships with anyone who doesn’t have the virus. When everyone is selfless we will be able to solve the greenhouse gases, global warming problem almost overnight by everyone agreeing to hold every third breath or something—that’s obviously not going to work, but the point is we will be able to do whatever it takes! Actually, the most effective control mechanism we have available to us is our ability to curb our numbers by not reproducing as much, at least until we have stabilised all the threats to our world. It is the capacity to be selfless that has been missing from the human situation.

Understandably, this power of selflessness has not been something we humans wanted to acknowledge or think about because it has been too confronting of our present massively embattled, ego-hungry, desperately-needing-self-gratification-and-glorification, selfish, greedy, materialistic existence. We have had to live an alienated, escapist, materialistic life because we haven’t been able to live a secure, honest, spiritualistic life, but now, with the human condition explained, we can. Earlier, I used the example of a Seventh-Day Adventist community to illustrate the power of cooperation, but its power is actually most apparent in ant and bee colonies—truly, as King Solomon advised, ‘Go to the ant…consider its ways and be wise’ (Proverbs 6:6). The 2004 award-winning documentary Ants—Nature’s Secret Power admitted the power of selfless cooperation when it concluded that ‘The secret of ant societies is their cooperation…[it’s what has enabled them to] act as a superorganism…[and become] nature’s true world power’ (produced by Adi Mayer Films, ORF Austrian Broadcasting Company with Docstar and WDR). It is us self-adjusting, conscious humans who—now that we no longer have to live an insecure, selfish existence and can live a selfless, cooperative existence—will now become ‘nature’s true world power’.

As I have previously said, the main reward for members of the WORLD TRANSFORMATION MOVEMENT is the anticipation and the excitement of being effectively free of the human condition—the joy and happiness of being liberated from the burden of your insecurities and self-preoccupations; the awesome meaning and power of finally being aligned with the truth and participating in the magic true world; the wonderful empathy and equality of goodness and fellowship that understanding of the human condition now allows you to feel for your fellow humans; the freedom now to effectively focus on repairing the world; and, above all, the radiant aliveness from the optimism that comes with knowing our march through hell has finally ended.

This WORLD TRANSFORMATION MOVEMENT has a slow beginning because humans initially find it difficult even taking in or ‘hearing’ discussion about the human condition, but it won’t be long before our website is discovered and then word of it and what it offers every human and the world will spread like wildfire—as de Chardin said, ‘The Truth has to only appear once…for it to be impossible for anything ever to prevent it from spreading universally and setting everything ablaze.’ Before long we will be marketing our own human-condition-free, world-saving products, providing our own all-exciting and meaningful, denial-free, honest, human-condition-understood films, documentaries and books, launching our own TV station—and our website will be the biggest in the world, bigger than Google or any other existing site. And all this is not deluded hubris, or wild guessing, it is simply the logical truth of what happens when the dignifying, redeeming and healing understanding of the human condition is finally found—as all the quotes from prophets, songwriters and poets included earlier testify.

The bottom line truth is that only the finding of the reconciling understanding of the human condition and the ‘change of heart’, TRANSFORMED STATE for humans that it finally makes possible can save the human race. The WORLD TRANSFORMATION MOVEMENT provides the only path forward for humankind. All else is ever-increasing, excruciating, unthinkable suffering and ultimately doom for our species. So become a MEMBER of the WORLD TRANSFORMATION MOVEMENT!