Introduction

This introduction consists of short extracts from the introductory presentations by Tim Macartney-Snape AM OAM and Sir Bob Geldof FRGS at the launch of Jeremy Griffith’s book FREEDOM: The End Of The Human Condition at the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) in London on 2 June 2016.

(Watch the film of the RGS launch at www.HumanCondition.com/RGS-speeches.)

Extract from the Introduction by Tim Macartney-Snape  AM OAM

(world-renowned mountaineer, biologist and twice honoured Order of Australia recipient ; Tim is also a Founding Member, and now a Patron, of the World Transformation Movement, the organisation established by Jeremy Griffith in 1983 for the study and amelioration of the human condition)

Welcome everyone to the launch of FREEDOM at the Royal Geographical Society (RGS), especially Sir Bob Geldof, who we are extremely honoured to have as our keynote speaker…Sir Bob will speak first about the crisis facing the world after which Jeremy will present the solution to that crisis—and I say the solution because what Jeremy is going to explain is so accountable and clarifying that it transforms our lives and fixes the world…

The most quoted author in FREEDOM is the great philosopher Sir Laurens van der Post and in his 1990 RGS Television Lecture of the Year he anticipated Jeremy’s book and its ultimate exploration, which is into the human condition. So it’s fitting that we’re launching here today with an honoured fellow of the RGS, Sir Bob Geldof. Before asking Sir Bob to speak I want to play a short extract of Sir Laurens’ lecture here at the RGS in 1990: ‘It’s been said that the explorers in mankind must be singularly unemployed because there’s nothing left in this world to explore. Well of course that depends on what you mean by exploration…​in the sense to which exploration is both an exploration into the physical and into the spirit of man there is a lot ahead in your keeping…​there is exploration in reverse to do. We must go sharply into reverse…​we must rehabilitate ourselves; get our old natural selves to join with our other conscious, wilful, rational, scientific selves [reconcile our original natural instinctive self or soul with our newer psychologically troubled conscious self]…​Your job is not over.’

(Watch & read Tim’s full introduction at www.humancondition.com/tim-launch-speech.)

Extract from the keynote address by Sir Bob Geldof  FRGS  (world-renowned humanitarian and musician)

I’ve never felt the world more threatening, more fractious, more fissiparous, more febrile, more fucked up than it is now…

If there is new thinking, or new ideas, from a scientist, from a biologist, from a man who has used his life on almost quixotic expeditions to find Tasmanian Tigers, but to prove they live or don’t live, that they exist or they don’t exist, to prove it, to be a scientist, then you have to pay attention to a person who thinks about what a genius like van der Post has considered which influences us, and the way we live and the way we think…

We need to think, we need new ideas, we need proselytisers, we need obsessed people, which I think Jeremy is. We need him to be questioned. We need FREEDOM to be argued, we need it to be read and talked about and understood…

Never before have we needed genius, magic and power more; and the word I’d add to that is thought and thinking…That is why I love the RGS, you talk to these thinking people, they may agree, they may disagree, but you know it and you’ll have set some little spark alight to make them think afresh and think differently. He did it with me, I hope he does it with you right now, ladies and gentleman, Jeremy Griffith.

(Watch & read Sir Bob’s full address at www.humancondition.com/geldof-launch-speech.)