1. ABOUT THE HUMAN CONDITION
AND ITS RESOLUTION
WTM FAQ 1.16 Why do I find this material impenetrably dense, repetitive, tedious and boring? / This material is so difficult to read surely it needs some serious editing? / Why can’t I understand what this is all about, please send me an executive summary so I have some idea of what you’re trying to say? / Shouldn’t this material be made more accessible, which I have some suggestions about? / Why am I struggling to read FREEDOM? / What is the ‘Deaf Effect’? / What is the solution to the ‘Deaf Effect’?
The short answer:
As is explained in Video/Freedom Essay 1, while, as the renowned biologist E.O. Wilson wrote, ‘The human condition is the most important frontier of the natural sciences’ (Consilience, 1998, p.298 of 374), and in another of his books, ‘There is no grail more elusive or precious in the life of the mind than the key to understanding the human condition’ (The Social Conquest of Earth, 2012, p.1), the subject of the human condition has historically also been the most terrifying of subjects for humans to face. So even though the redeeming and relieving understanding of the human condition has finally been found (see THE Interview and Videos/F. Essays 3 & 4), as soon as we start reading about the subject, our historic fear kicks in and our mind finds it difficult to take in or ‘hear’ what is being said or written.
As is explained in more detail in The Great Guilt that causes the Deaf Effect, the reason the human condition has been so terrifying is that trying to think about our seemingly horribly flawed, ‘good and evil’-conflicted human condition while we couldn’t truthfully explain it only led to suicidal depression. This is because we humans once lived in a nurtured-with-unconditional-love, cooperative, selfless and loving innocent state, and if we stand back and think about this original cooperative, selfless and loving state and then think about how competitive, selfish and aggressive we humans are now, the contrast between the two states couldn’t be greater. And if we think about that extreme contrast and then think about the situation we have been stuck in for some 2 million years where we haven’t been able to explain our so-called ‘fall from grace’, the corruption of our original all-sensitive and all-loving, innocent instinctive self or soul, then how deeply traumatised with guilt and shame must we humans have been all that time! So having had to live with this insufferable, unbearably depressing guilt and shame for having destroyed the magic world of our soul is what the human condition really is. Indeed, the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins described just how terrifyingly depressing trying to confront the human condition has been when he wrote, ‘O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall, frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed’!
So, as is described in F. Essay 30, the only sensible way to avoid this fearful depression from trying to think about the human condition while it couldn’t be truthfully explained or ‘fathomed’ was to ‘resign’ ourselves to living in denial of the subject, blocking the issue out of our minds. It follows that having practiced almost total denial of the human condition, what initially happens when discussion of it begins is that our mind goes into shock and our protective denial blocks the words and their meaning from entering our conscious awareness; at a certain point the words just wash over us, there is no absorption of them, and our minds effectively become ‘deaf’ to any more discussion of the human condition. Then, not knowing why we can’t take in what’s being written (because when we’re in denial of something we obviously can’t know we are in denial of it otherwise we wouldn’t be in denial of it!), we can’t help but blame the presentation, believe it’s badly written and needs editing.
We have found that what is needed to overcome the ‘Deaf Effect’ is a preparedness to re-read and/or re-listen to what is being written or said. This process erodes our historic denial and counters the Deaf Effect, allowing the compassionate and immensely relieving insights to become accessible.
We also provide a free WTM Deaf Effect Course—see Video/F. Essay 13—to help readers overcome the Deaf Effect difficulty of reading about the historically off-limits subject of the human condition.
The elaboration:
The situation described above is akin to giving someone who suffers from a fear of snakes a book that will free them of their phobia, but as soon as they open the book and see descriptions and images of snakes, they fearfully slam it shut; their fear blocks them from being able to access the book’s cure.
While this snake phobia analogy gives some idea of the problem of the Deaf Effect resistance that blocks access to the compassionate, reconciling and immensely relieving understanding of our species’ condition, there is a much better analogy and description of it—one that was given by that greatest of all philosophers, Plato, way back in the Golden Age of Greece, some 360 years before Christ. (The greatness of Plato as a philosopher—philosophy being the study of ‘the truths underlying all reality’ (Macquarie Dictionary, 3rd edn, 1998)—was attested to by A.N. Whitehead, himself one of the most highly regarded philosophers of the twentieth century, when he described the history of philosophy as being merely ‘a series of footnotes to Plato’.)
So what was Plato’s marvellously descriptive analogy of humans’ extreme fear of the human condition and the resulting Deaf Effect difficulty we have when reading about it—and what importance did he place on the difficulty of the ‘deaf effect’ in his profound contribution to philosophical thought? Well, Plato’s most acclaimed work is The Republic and the central focus of The Republic is ‘our human condition’ (all these quotes in The Republic can be viewed at www.wtmsources.com/227); and, most revealingly, in describing ‘our human condition’, Plato metaphorically depicted humans as being imprisoned deep ‘underground’ in a ‘cave’ hiding from the ‘painful’ issue of ‘the imperfections of human life’—these ‘imperfections’ being, as he said, the issue of ‘our human condition’. So the greatest of philosophers recognised that the central problem in understanding our behaviour is our fear of the human condition!
With regard to the problem of the Deaf Effect response the ‘cave’ ‘prisoners’ would have to reading or hearing about the human condition, Plato then described what occurs when, as summarised in the Encarta Encyclopedia (see www.wtmsources.com/101), someone ‘escapes from the cave into the light of day’ and ‘sees for the first time the real world and returns to the cave’ to help the cave prisoners ‘Escape into the sun-filled setting outside the cave [which] symbolizes the transition to the real world… which is the proper object of knowledge’. In The Republic Plato wrote that ‘it would hurt his [the cave’s prisoner’s] eyes and he would turn back and take refuge in the things which he could see [take refuge in all the dishonest, illusionary explanations for human behaviour that we have become accustomed to from human-condition-avoiding science—see Video/F. Essay 2], which he would think really far clearer than the things being shown him. And if he were forcibly dragged up the steep and rocky ascent [out of the cave of denial] and not let go till he had been dragged out into the sunlight [shown the truthful, real description of our human condition], the process would be a painful one, to which he would much object, and when he emerged into the light his eyes would be so overwhelmed by the brightness of it that he wouldn’t be able to see a single one of the things he was now told were real.’ So that’s how extreme Plato predicted the Deaf Effect would be—‘he [the cave prisoner] wouldn’t be able to see a single one of the things he was now told were real’!!!
Significantly, the whole problem of humans living in Plato’s ‘cave of denial’, and the resulting initial extreme difficulty people variously have of not being able to take in or hear any discussion of the human condition that comes from outside that ‘cave of denial’, has been experienced by all ‘out-of-cave’, denial-free thinkers. For example, the Bible contains descriptions similar to Plato’s, of the extent of the historic resistance, denial and block-out that now exists in the human mind to any discussion of the human condition, or of concepts that bring the issue into focus. The prophet Isaiah complained about the reception to his denial-free words, saying, ‘“You will be ever hearing, but never understanding; you will be ever seeing, but never perceiving.” This people’s heart has become calloused [alienated]; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes’ (Isa. 6:9,10, footnote). Experiencing the same reception to his denial-free, ‘out-of-cave’ thoughts, Christ repeated Isaiah’s words (see Matt. 13:13-15), saying, ‘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 [living in a resigned state of denial of the human condition causes you to suffer from a Deaf Effect where you’re unable to take in or ‘hear what I say’ about the human condition]’ (John 8:43-47); and elsewhere, that ‘The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness [those resigned to living in Plato’s dark cave of denial of the human condition] has not understood it’ (John 1:5) (see F. Essay 39: Christ explained). And referring to the words of the prophet Amos in the Bible, the great psychiatrist R.D. Laing summarised the situation as it exists today, saying, ‘There is a prophecy in Amos [Amos 8:11] that there will be a time when there will be a famine in the land, “not a famine for bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord [the denial-free words of truth about the human condition].” That time has now come to pass. It is the present age’ (The Politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise, 1967, p.118 of 156). The Lebanese-American denial-free thinker or prophet Kahlil Gibran lamented the deafness of people to his denial-free thoughts when he said, ‘I am a stranger in this world, and there is no one in the Universe who understands the language I speak’ (The Lonely Poet, in The Treasured Writings of Kahlil Gibran, p.152 of 902). So, the Deaf Effect is not just a problem that occurs when reading about the human condition, it also occurs when trying to listen to somebody talking about the human condition, as Jeremy Griffith does in the Main Videos—as Christ said, ‘you are unable to hear what I say’, and as Amos foretold, there will be, ‘a famine…of hearing the words of the Lord’.
In intuitive recognition of this problem of the ‘deafening’ or, depending on what metaphor we like to use, ‘blinding’ effect of the truth about our human condition when it arrives, on Dorothy’s arrival at her Emerald City destination in the story of The Wizard of Oz, she had to wear special green sunglasses because, as the gatekeeper to the Emerald City warned, ‘if you did not wear spectacles the brightness and glory of the Emerald City would blind you’ (The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Frank Baum, first published in 1900).
The rock band U2’s 1992 song Staring At The Sun (the evocative cover of which is shown above) contains these lyrics that reinforce what Plato said about the Deaf Effect: ‘It’s been a long hot summer, let’s get under cover, don’t try too hard to think, don’t think at all. I’m not the only one staring at the sun, afraid of what you’d find if you take a look inside. Not just deaf and dumb, I’m staring at the sun, not the only one who’s happy to go blind.’
So yes, for almost everyone, the Deaf Effect will be a very significant problem when trying to read the fully accountable and thus true analysis of the human condition—which means readers do very much need to be forewarned of, and shown how to overcome, the Deaf Effect.
Examples of the Deaf Effect
The following are typical responses from people when they first tried to access Jeremy’s explanation of the human condition:
● ‘I find this material impenetrably dense, repetitive, tedious and boring. It’s so difficult to read surely it needs some serious editing? Please send me an executive summary so I have some idea of what this is about!’
● ‘When I first read this material all I saw were a lot of black marks on white paper.’
● ‘Reading this is like reading another language—you know it’s English, you can understand the words, but the concepts are so basic and so different that they are almost incomprehensible—it’s a paradigm shift of a read.’
● ‘This stuff is so head on it can be crippling, which, initially at least, can make it hard to get behind what’s being said and access the profundity of where it’s coming from.’
● ‘I decided to have another look at Jeremy Griffith’s book, FREEDOM, after letting it sit as a lonely download on my smartphone for over 2 years. As I continued to read and digest Jeremy’s words, I was surprised to find myself having a completely new perspective on this book. What I once thought was boring and tedious was in fact, an incredibly illuminating and influential piece of work.’
● ‘At first I found this information difficult to absorb, in fact my wife and I would sit in bed and read a page together, and then re-read it a number of times, but still we couldn’t understand what was written there and ended up thinking it must be due to poor expression.’
● ‘Hello, I’m a first time poster [in the WTM Facebook Group]. Something weird is happening – I thought I’d share. I first came across this book [FREEDOM] in 2017 when I downloaded the free version. I couldn’t get past the first few pages. Just as we were going into lockdown in 2020, I bought the paperback versions for myself and my Dad. Still couldn’t get through the first couple of pages. It just didn’t make any sense, I felt that the sentences were too long and rambling. Reading it made me tired, my mind would wander away every time, so I put it down again. I’ve been seeing lots of content pop up on social media again recently so in the mornings, as I was getting ready for work, I’d play the main pinned interviews [in the Facebook Group]. A few tiny bits of information clicked into place, nothing mind blowing, but definitely a few “ah ha” moments. Today, I’ve been sitting at the bay waiting for my husband to finish a charity bike ride. I bought a coffee and thought it would be a good location to try reading the book again. In just over an hour, I’ve gone through 50 pages. I don’t even remember why I found it so difficult, all of a sudden it’s making sense and I’m enjoying it. It’s like I’m reading a different book. Does this mean I’m overcoming the deaf effect? I hope so.’
● ‘Initially when I talked to my family and friends about this the reception was such that I may as well have been talking to the dog!’
● ‘It saddens and frustrates me to say this but such is the wall of denial I have encountered when trying to tell people about Jeremy’s incredibly important explanation of the human condition that it has become very clear to me that I may as well be speaking Swahili!’
Unaware of our psychological denial of the human condition, we blame the presentation
As the responses above indicate, a consequence of being unaware that this resistance and block-out is occurring in the reader’s mind (because, as has been mentioned, when a person is in denial of something they aren’t aware they are in denial, since obviously if they were they wouldn’t be in denial of it!) is that they naturally blame the inaccessibility of what is being put forward on flaws in the presentation; they think it is, as readers of my books have so often said, ‘badly written’, ‘impenetrably dense’, ‘disjointed’, ‘confusingly worded’, ‘too intellectual for me to understand’, ‘it takes time to get used to Jeremy’s strange way of writing’, ‘it’s long-winded’, ‘unnecessarily repetitive of vague points’, ‘desperately needs editing’, is ‘tedious and boring’, and even ‘lacking in any substance or meaning’. Frustrated readers have gone so far as to request ‘an executive summary so I have some idea of what it is that you’re trying to say’!
Firstly, with regard to people finding Jeremy’s analysis of the human condition ‘repetitive’, which many people initially do, there actually isn’t unnecessary repetition of the same particular concept or material, rather it is the continual elaboration and analysis of long-forbidden and exiled subject matter that can cause people’s minds to become agitated because they want it to stop happening. As emphasised in The Great Guilt that causes the Deaf Effect and Video/F. Essay 1, the human condition has been an absolutely terrifying subject for humans, which means it’s only natural that the mind would want analysis of it to stop. In the ‘cave world’ of denial any references to subject matter that brings the issue of the human condition into focus was only ever done sparingly and obliquely, never full-on and directly, which is what Jeremy necessarily has to do in his denial-free exposure and demolition of the subject of the human condition. As Jeremy has written in Freedom Expanded, ‘at best, our [human-condition-avoiding] minds can only tolerate the subject of the human condition being alluded to remotely and briefly…The truth is, we humans have only been able to talk about the human condition in code, in ways that only the initiated can understand. We limit ourselves to esoteric inference and innuendo.’ Similarly, as Jeremy writes in paragraph 1103 of FREEDOM, ‘the whole point…was to avoid…the question of our self-corruption…the issue of our ‘good and evil’ human condition…While not overly confronting us with our upset, corrupted, fallen condition the great writers of our time have, through great literary skill and device, managed to throw light on it [without overly confronting us with it].’ Yes, as Jeremy summarises in F. Essay 31, ‘great literature, art, poetry and songs have…allowed the light of some honesty about our corrupted human condition to escape from that dark ‘tomb’ in which we have been hiding’. Scrutiny of Jeremy’s writings has always shown there isn’t any unwarranted repetition. Also, how could Jeremy be sound enough to plumb the depths of the human condition, as he does page after page in his writing, and at the same time be so unsound as to unnecessarily and stupidly waste words.
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VERY IMPORTANTLY, this difficulty that people typically initially have trying to read or listen to explanation of the human condition that leads people to blame the presentation such as in the examples above, can lead those trying to promote this world-saving understanding of the human condition to want to present our information in a less confronting, less direct way than the direct way the WTM presents it. We call this often-requested desire as wanting to ‘tone our messaging down’ or ‘dumb it down’.
This desire to ‘dumb our presentations down’ to supposedly make them more accessible is dealt with in the next FAQ, FAQ 1.17. What is essentially explained in that FAQ is that trying to make the information more accessible by not making it so direct actually amounts to wanting us to stop telling the truth, basically to wanting us to retreat back inside Plato’s dark cave of denial. But the whole point of Jeremy’s 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.
As emphasised in FAQ 1.17, 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. As Christ similarly said when his direct and honest words were said to be too truthful and confronting and people wanted him to back down from telling the truth directly and authoritatively, ‘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 present the truth about the human condition as directly and forcefully as possible and to tell 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 Jeremy was asked for his response to this, in particular to why he focused on more profound wording, he 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.
You can read more in FAQ 1.17 about the WTM’s resistance to ‘dumbing down’ our message.
The solution to the Deaf Effect
We have found that what is needed to overcome the Deaf Effect is a preparedness to re-read and/or re-listen to what is being written or said. Significantly, Plato, in describing how when the cave prisoner ‘emerged into the light his eyes would be so overwhelmed by the brightness of it that he wouldn’t be able to see a single one of the things he was now told were real’, went on to say, ‘Certainly not at first. Because he would need to grow accustomed to the light before he could see things in the world outside the cave’. This process of re-reading and re-listening to what in truth is a very clear presentation, of becoming ‘accustomed’ to the explanation, erodes our historic denial and counters the Deaf Effect, allowing the compassionate and immensely relieving insights to become accessible, as evidenced in the examples of the Deaf Effect provided above. The following response from a reader of FREEDOM demonstrates just how clear and accessible the presentation is once the reader/listener has overcome the Deaf Effect: ‘Wonderful book! Full of so much wisdom and yet the author was able to write it in such a way that I think a middle school student or a high school dropout or anybody that can read at any level would be able to understand it. Or in other words, it is not full of language and words written just for college graduates’ (see wtmsources.com/243).
In short, Jeremy suggested that if you tick that you understand each of the following steps you will have the reason for, and solution to, the Deaf Effect.
1. The human race once lived in a cooperative and loving state.
2. That we then became upset/corrupted when the human race became conscious and had to defy our instincts and search for knowledge.
3. It follows that the shame/guilt for having corrupted our cooperative and loving soul has been so immensely depressing that we had no choice but to block out/deny the whole utterly depressing issue of our corrupted condition.
4. And (as fully explained in F. Essay 30) almost everyone, when they were young teenagers, has gone through that encounter with their and the world’s corrupted condition and had no choice but to adopt that block-out or denial of the utterly depressing issue.
5. So virtually all adults have an immense hidden fear of ever going near the issue of our corrupted condition again, and instead constantly maintain that there’s no such thing as our corrupted condition—as the legendary psychiatrist R.D. Laing said, we are living in such immense fear of the issue of our corrupted condition that there is ‘fifty feet of solid concrete between us and our soul’ (see F. Essay 48).
6. So one day, which is now, when someone finally finds the good reason for our corrupted condition and starts talking about it, virtually everyone’s mind is so deeply committed to avoiding the whole issue of our corrupted condition that they won’t allow the discussion in, they are ‘deaf’ to it.
7. At least initially, because obviously if they patiently keep reading and listening to the discussion their mind will gradually realise it is now safe to go near the issue and they’ll begin to be able to take in or ‘hear’ it, and then they will become extremely excited with the freedom the insight brings to their life.
For further reading on the solution to the Deaf Effect see The Great Guilt that causes the Deaf Effect and Video/F. Essay 11, or read chapters 1:4 and 1:5 of biologist Jeremy Griffith’s book FREEDOM: The End Of The Human Condition.
WTM founding member Tony Gowing’s counsel on overcoming the Deaf Effect, as posted on the WTM’s Facebook Group
“My two cents for what they are worth are that when we first come across this information (or any sort of information at all), we try to place it somewhere in the ‘world view’ that we have all created for ourselves over the course of our lives. Basically it’s a view that we come to that allows us to live with the world as it is. The problem is that the human condition is outside our world view, we are totally cut off from it, we have blocked it out, in fact our ‘world view’ is 100% built on the premise that we want to totally block the human condition out from our lives.
The human condition is at its core a suicidally depressing insecurity about our worth. We all have a deep unanswered question of whether we are terrible, horrible, hideous, awful blights on the planet and shouldn’t exist. We can’t live with that question, or any feeling that takes us anywhere near that question because it’s just too hurtful to bare. So we live our lives and build our world view with a massive ‘50 foot wall of solid concrete’ (as R.D. Laing said) that blocks us from our true insecure selves.
What we find so hard to access is the horror in ourselves, not the horror in the rest of the world, and this is the true difficulty of accessing what Jeremy is presenting. We have built the most ‘happy’ ‘view of the world’ that we can possibly allow ourselves to believe and maintain to cope with life and have as good a life as we can while living in total fear of the human condition and our inability to explain it.
So when Jeremy Griffith comes along and starts to talk about the human condition, we are trying to place it somewhere in a view that is so finely attuned to resisting and blocking the exact subject that we are trying to take in information about and understand. It truly is a monumentally difficult challenge, we have to allow ourselves to go towards our very, very, very hurtful and scary worst possible fears.
BUT, BUT, BUT, with Jeremy’s explanation of the human condition, the whole point is what we have been so scared about, i.e., are we good, worthwhile humans, we now can understand that we don’t have to be fearful anymore, we are good, we are worthwhile, all the appearances that we are destructive blights on the planet are wrong! We are actually courageous, wonderful heroes!
So we now have a journey that we all must take towards our greatest fear, but with us we are taking rock solid, first-principle-base, scientific understanding that allows us to work deeper and deeper into that fear and quell it, and become comfortable with it, and as we do, our original world view starts to broaden and broaden and broaden. We can finally start to see all kinds of truths about the world. Free of this insecurity our minds can finally look and listen and hear and see so much wonder in the world that we have been totally blocked off from.
So it is a journey, but as everyone has said here, it is absolutely the most wonderfully exciting and liberating journey you will ever take!!
You may have already watched it but Jeremy’s Video/Freedom Essay 1 talks all about this.”
Bill McCaugherty of the WTM West Coast Canada Centre, on how he had been ‘deaf to the Deaf Effect’, as posted on the WTM’s Facebook Group
The following description from Bill McCaugherty of how he had been ‘deaf to the Deaf Effect’ as he so accurately puts it, is very informative.
“I thought it might be of use or of interest to some of you to relate my experience regarding introducing my wife to the instinct versus intellect explanation of the human condition. Not suffering from the Deaf Effect myself [rare individuals don’t ‘resign’ at adolescence to a life of denying the human condition, and as a result don’t suffer from the Deaf Effect—see Freedom Essay 60 about these ‘Ships at Sea’], I really did not understand why she did not love the information from day one like I did and was even more perplexed by her genuine inability to read or hear Jeremy’s writings for herself. Her attention would drift off or she would complain that it was poorly written or just plain wrong when some bits started to leak through. Regardless, I just kept at it and would read to her most days. In retrospect, I may not have been as charitable as I should have been, as on too many occasions I would admonish her for not understanding what seemed to me such basic and simple concepts. Oh what irony in the fact that I was deaf to the Deaf Effect! In the end with a combination of her patience and genuinely caring personality (I knew she cared about me and did recognize how important this information seemingly was to me) and my persistence (or obstinance!), after some months, she did have her breakthrough moment. I am not recommending this approach (especially the admonishment and inconsiderate part), as it likely will not work and may even back fire with the majority of people (especially loved ones or close friends or relatives) but the patience, persistence and perseverance part is what is important and what will in good time erode the Deaf Effect. Her ‘seeing the light’ moment was years ago and since then she has become a staunch supporter and promoter of this world saving understanding.
We now both love this information dearly and spend one or two hours almost every morning reading aloud to each other and discussing something Jeremy has written. It has become the highlight of our day!
I do think that it’s so true that once a critical mass of people realise that this understanding of the human condition is what the human race has been searching for, the Deaf Effect will no longer be a problem because there will be sufficient incentive for everyone to persevere enough to overcome the Deaf Effect. All new ideas take time to replace old ideas, but the more people there are who have adopted the new idea the less resistance there is to the new idea, that’s the basic principle at work.
As well, the pent-up demand for this understanding, hiding just below the surface of our collective awareness, must be astronomical and when realization that this all-important understanding of the human condition has at last been found becomes well known, there will be an unstoppable stampede for the exits from the dark cave world into the healing, redeeming and liberating light of truth. [This comment from Bill calls to mind the words of the exceptional denial-free thinking prophet Teilhard de Chardin, who wrote, ‘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.’]
Cindy’s and my video endorsement on our WTM West Coast Canada Centre that we made in 2019 of our two very different experiences encountering the explanation of the human condition may be of some help to others.”
Comment on social media about working through the Deaf Effect, as reproduced on the WTM’s Facebook Group
The following post was written on a social media platform by a sensible and informed person (who is unknown to the WTM but goes by the name of ‘gravityandpizza’) in which they described how keeping an open mind and following the rationale of Jeremy’s explanation allowed them to work their way through the Deaf Effect and some resulting difficulties that arise from not being able to access and appreciate the information.
[In response to ‘Is the deaf effect circular logic?’] “I agree, the deaf effect can feel like a bit of a cop-out when first learning about it, a duplicitous way of getting ahead of any criticism by claiming that any critics are just suffering from a psychological condition. My personal experience say that the effect is real, but I don’t expect you to blindly believe based on my words, nor would I want you to. My advice: continue studying the material, judge it by its own merits, and do not hesitate to ask for any clarifications on any aspects of it (either here or on the WTM Facebook page).”
[In response to ‘How does this idea change anything?’] “It unfortunately does take some time for the insights to ‘sink in’, as it were. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and changing the fundamentals of one’s worldview is no simple task. There is no shortage of personal commendations on the WTM website (https://www.humancondition.com/commendations/), but as compelling as many of those affirmations are the material should stand or fall on its own merit. The last thing I or anyone else would want is for people to treat the insights as religious mantras; it is the act of understanding that brings healing, not mindless acquiescence.”
[In response to ‘Is this ‘Science or Philosophy?’] “It is definitely science. The book Freedom goes into more detail regarding the scientific side of things, particularly Chapter 3 (the explanation of the psychological conflict that occurs when two behaviour management systems (instincts and conscious thought) coexist in the same brain), Chapter 4 (the principle of integration and the development of matter on earth from molecules to multicellular organisms), Chapter 5 (the evolution of cooperative instincts in humans, backed up by fossil evidence and behavioural studies of other primates) and Chapter 7 (how the evolution of cooperative instincts lead to the development of intelligence in hominins, again backed up by fossil evidence). If you want the scientific side of things, I’d start there.”
I’d recommend joining the WTM Facebook group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/worldtransformationmovementcommunity) as a place to get more eyes on any other questions you have. Good luck, and godspeed!”
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MOST SIGNIFICANTLY, for further explanation and examples of the Deaf Effect, and solutions to it, see The Great Guilt that causes the Deaf Effect and Video/F. Essay 11, or read chapters 1:4 and 1:5 of biologist Jeremy Griffith’s book FREEDOM: The End Of The Human Condition.
For advice on how not to become frustrated when the people you want to share this information with can’t get through the Deaf Effect, see FAQ 1.50.
And as has been mentioned, the WTM also provides a free WTM Deaf Effect Course—see Video/F. Essay 13—to help overcome the Deaf Effect difficulty of reading about the historically, but no longer, unbearably confronting subject of the human condition.
