1. ABOUT THE HUMAN CONDITION
AND ITS RESOLUTION
WTM FAQ 1.21 Is Jeremy Griffith’s analysis of E.O. Wilson wrong, vengeful, unkind and/or egocentric? / Is there a contradiction where FREEDOM quotes E.O. Wilson admitting the truth that finding understanding of the human condition is all-important and then condemning him for presenting a false explanation of the human condition? / Was E.O. Wilson conscious of being the ‘architect of destruction of the human race’, and if not, should he not be condemned? Should FREEDOM condemn E.O. Wilson’s ideas rather than Wilson himself?
If you walk into the leading Centres of science anywhere in the world you will likely see a sculpture bust of Charles Darwin because he is the architect of the truthful biological idea of natural selection. This demonstrates that effectively he and his ideas are one. In the same way E.O. Wilson (1929-2021) is synonymous with his ideas, in his case, false biology; he is the lord of lying because he was the most dangerous exponent of the fundamentally dishonest savage instincts excuse, which he used to nullify the all-important issue of the human condition, stop it from ever being truthfully looked at and thus understanding of it ever being found (see par. 214 of FREEDOM). Jeremy Griffith and Professor Prosen and many others throughout history have made it very clear that bringing biological understanding to the human condition is the most important objective for the human race, the ‘holy grail’ of the whole human journey, so to have Wilson, the supposed leading biologist in the world up until his recent death, subvert that all-important objective with a totally dishonest supposed explanation of the human condition with his “some good instincts and some bad instincts” multi-level selection theory is the most serious attack on humanity possible! Just as Hitler was the architect of the destruction of Jews and much, much more, so Wilson was the architect of the attempted destruction of the human race because it is scientists—biologists in particular—that have to solve the human condition on behalf of everyone, but instead of fulfilling that responsibility, Wilson was subverting the whole human race from its chance of achieving freedom from the human condition. He needs to be called out for the extremely dangerous fraud he was. To mince words is to fail to call him out and the WTM is not in the business of dodging the truth. Serious attacks have to be met as strongly as possible (appeasing Hitler, for example, did not work), which is what Jeremy has done with regard to Wilson’s work, arguing very carefully from first biological principles what is so fundamentally biologically wrong and extremely dangerous with multi-level selection theory. To this point in time no-one has found flaws in Jeremy’s biological explanation of what is wrong with multi-level selection theory; Professor Scott Churchill even saying, ‘I have recommended Griffith’s work for his razor- sharp biological clarifications’ (as you can see on the Commendations section from thought leaders on our homepage). There are biologists and thinkers that Jeremy is standing on the shoulders of, and he regularly acknowledges them, but Wilson is definitely not one of them.
When Christ called academics ‘you brood of vipers!’ (see par. 611 of FREEDOM) there would have been people who said ‘Aren’t you being a bit tough on them?’, but history has upheld the beauty of Christ’s thinking by the fact that there would hardly be a window in the world today that you can’t look out of and see a cross on the top of a Christian church. Was Christ being vindictive or just telling the truth? He was certainly angry with the dishonesty of academia, and rightly so, but it was an anger of a defiant nature, not of malice. Where is the evidence of Jeremy or the WTM being vindictive? If Jeremy was carrying vindictiveness or revenge as a motivation, as opposed to truth as a motivation, he would not have been able to get anywhere near all the truth that he has reached. There is no evidence of Jeremy or the WTM being vindictive. When Jeremy calls out the left-wing, for example, for being extremely dangerous, he’s not being vindictive, just getting the truth up.
Wilson was not conscious of what he is doing, just as Hitler wasn’t conscious of the wrongness of what he was doing, they were just being who they were, living out their psychological condition. People live out and are an expression of their psychosis, so Wilson was not free of his psychosis and so for the most part could not help expressing it, it’s just who he was. However, he was considered the most famous contemporary biologist, and as such he had a huge responsibility to not mislead the human race, but instead of fulfilling that responsibility, Wilson was leading us all to oblivion by subverting the whole human race from its chance of achieving freedom from the human condition.
With regard to the seeming contradiction of eulogising Wilson for admitting the truth that finding understanding of the human condition is all-important and then condemning him for presenting a false explanation of the human condition, sometimes the only time people admit to a problem is when they are about to put forward a dishonest explanation of it. This is exactly what has happened; almost no one has admitted the human condition is the all-important issue for biology to solve because they don’t want to go near the subject, but when Wilson decided he wanted to dishonestly get rid of the subject he then let the cat out of the bag, admitted that the human condition is the all-important issue, allowing Jeremy to use that truth that he let out of the bag and then point out the lie that he then used to ‘explain’ the human condition. That is just what happens; in this case Wilson let the truth out in the cause of trying to dishonestly get rid of the issue, and that’s exactly what FREEDOM says happened. Jeremy doesn’t actually eulogise him, all Jeremy says is that he is the most famous contemporary biologist.
Being so condemning of Wilson, people may think Jeremy is an egocentric, insecure, vengeful person, that he is unkind, but ‘by their fruit you will recognize [what is sound and what is deluded because]…a bad tree cannot bear good fruit’ (Matt. 7:16, 18), and the ‘fruit’ is there in spades because Jeremy has been able to confront, explain and solve every aspect of the human condition. It’s a long, long time ago in Jeremy’s life when these sorts of accusations troubled him because he has just learnt again and again where real truth and with it real compassion comes from, and it’s not from caving into pseudo idealistic forms of sensitivity (see FAQ 6.5 for more on pseudo idealism).
Jeremy isn’t motivated by ego or bitterness or self-aggrandisement or defensiveness or any of those insecure behaviours. Those that work with him all the time have just never found any example of that kind of behaviour; all Jeremy is interested in is getting the truth up and stopping the suffering on Earth. In fact, one of the problems the WTM has with people when they meet Jeremy is they are expecting somebody that puts on the sort of airs and pretences that you normally expect academic experts and gurus of the new age movement to put on, but what they encounter is someone that is almost childlike in his lack of any pretence. If you watch Video/Freedom Essay 52: Jeremy’s children’s book, A Perfect Life! you will see this complete lack of any sort of arrogance or self-aggrandisement in Jeremy.