Part 2 Since this instinct vs intellect explanation is reasonably obvious, why haven’t we been taught it at school?

 46

Craig: Hello, I’m Craig Conway and I’m talking with Australian biologist Jeremy Griffith about how we can end all the turmoil and trauma in the world through explaining and understanding the human condition—which is the instinct vs intellect explanation Jeremy has just given us in Part 1 of this interview.

47

I do have some questions Jeremy. Firstly, while it seems an obvious explanation that when we became conscious a psychologically upsetting battle must have broken out with our dictatorial instincts, but if it is so obvious, why weren’t we taught this at school? And secondly, how were our bonobo-like ape ancestors able to become cooperative and loving, which, as you said, must be the origin of our instinctive moral conscience that Darwin said distinguishes us from other animals? And my third question is, how does ‘the psychological rehabilitation of the human race’ that Professor Prosen describes actually take place; I mean do we all have to go into therapy or something?

48

Okay, by the way, I want to mention also that since there’s quite a few new—and very interesting—concepts to think about, Jeremy has said that he’ll make both the video and the transcript of this interview available at the top of the website that promotes this understanding of the human condition, which is the World Transformation Movement’s website at HumanCondition.com. Now this interview will be there as a video, and the transcript as a little free book, so you can re-listen to, or read the interview again there, because, as I said, with this big subject of the human condition, there is quite a bit to take in and think about.

 

49

Jeremy: Okay, they are very good questions Craig.

50

So, to begin with your first question, which is that if this instinct vs intellect explanation is so obvious why haven’t we been taught it at school?

51

The answer is that while it has been recognised—even from ancient times—that the emergence of our conscious mind somehow caused us to ‘fall from grace’, or however you want to describe the corruption of our original innocent cooperative, selfless and loving instinctive state, it wasn’t until science revealed the difference between the gene-based and nerve-based learning systems—which is that genes can orientate but nerves need to understand—that we were finally in a position to explain the good reason for our angry, egocentric and alienated human condition.

52

The Biblical story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden that Moses wrote so long ago in about 1,500 BC actually perfectly describes the psychologically upsetting battle that emerged between our instincts and conscious intellect. It says Adam and Eve/​we humans took the ‘fruit’ (Genesis 3:3) ‘from the tree of knowledge’ (Gen. 2:9, 17) and were ‘disobedient’ (the term widely used in descriptions of Gen. 3). In other words, we developed a conscious mind and free will. But in that pre-scientific story it says Adam and Eve then became ‘evil’ (Gen. 3:22) perpetrators of ‘sin’ (Gen. 4:7) because they became angry, egocentric and alienated, and as a result Moses said they were ‘banished …​from the Garden of Eden’ (Gen. 3:23) state of cooperative and loving innocence.

 53

You see, not knowing how naturally selected instincts differ from cause and effect-operating consciousness, this story of Adam and Eve becoming conscious could only conclude that the angry, egocentric and alienated condition that emerged when we became conscious was a bad, evil, sinful state, but this scientific presentation says, ‘No, no, that story got it wrong’. Adam and Eve are actually not just good but the heroes of the whole story of life on Earth—because surely the conscious mind is nature’s greatest invention and to be given the task of searching for understanding while the whole world’s condemning you was the hardest and toughest of tasks—because that condemnation was universal. All the other innocent storks are condemning the search for knowledge, and since all of nature—the rain, the clouds, the trees, and other animals—are all associated with our original instinctive self that was condemning us, the whole world, in effect, ganged up on Adam and Eve, i.e. us humans—and yet all the time we were good and not bad but we couldn’t explain why, but now at last through the benefit of science, we can.

54

Craig: Yeah, I hadn’t realised that, but it is true, I mean Adam and Eve taking the fruit from the tree of knowledge is a metaphor for becoming conscious, and then they were thrown out of the Garden of Eden of original innocence because it appeared that they were bad for doing so, but now thankfully we can explain that they, we humans, weren’t bad at all; in fact, we are the heroes of the story of life on Earth!

55

Jeremy: That’s right, we can now explain and understand that we conscious humans are immense heroes, and not villains after all. How relieving is that!

56

And with regard to recognition of the upsetting conflict between our moral instincts and our conscious intellect, the Biblical story of Adam and Eve is far from the only recognition of it from ancient times. Indeed, as the researcher Richard Heinberg summarised in his 1990 book Memories & Visions of Paradise (underlinings are Jeremy’s emphasis), ‘Every religion begins with the recognition that human consciousness has been separated from the divine Source, that a former sense of oneness…​has been lost…​everywhere in religion and myth there is an acknowledgment that we have departed from an original…​innocence and can return to it only through the resolution of some profound inner discord…​the cause of the Fall is described variously as disobedience, as the eating of a forbidden fruit [from the tree of knowledge], and as spiritual amnesia [forgetting, blocking out, denial, alienation, which is our psychosis]’ (pp.81-82 of 282). So all our religions and most of our mythologies have recognised the basic conflict within us—that the emergence of ‘consciousness’ caused our ‘Fall’ from ‘innocence’.

 57

Way back in about 800 BC, the Greek poet Hesiod wrote of our species’ pre-conscious time of living cooperatively and lovingly in his epic poem Works and Days: ‘When gods alike and mortals rose to birth / A golden race the immortals formed on earth…​Like gods they lived, with calm untroubled mind / Free from the toils and anguish of our kind / Nor e’er decrepit age misshaped their frame…​Strangers to ill, their lives in feasts flowed by…​Dying they sank in sleep, nor seemed to die / Theirs was each good; the life-sustaining soil / Yielded its copious fruits, unbribed by toil / They with abundant goods ’midst quiet lands / All willing shared the gathering of their hands’ (The Remains of Hesiod the Ascræan, tr. C.A. Elton, pp.17-18). So yes, they didn’t have a troubled conscious mind, and they lived a sharing, gentle life.

58

Craig: Yes, I’ve heard of the idea of a ‘golden race’, but I didn’t actually know where it came from. So what you’re saying then, Jeremy, is our distant ancestors had a ‘calm untroubled mind’—no human condition yet!

59

Jeremy: Yes, that’s right, and in 360 BC Hesiod’s Greek compatriot Plato gave this very similar description of our species’ pre-conscious time in innocence. He wrote: ‘there was a time when…​we beheld the beatific vision and were initiated into a mystery which may be truly called most blessed, celebrated by us in our state of innocence, before we had any experience of evils to come, when we were admitted to the sight of apparitions innocent and simple and calm and happy, which we beheld shining in pure light, pure ourselves and not yet enshrined in that living tomb which we carry about, now’ (Phaedrus; tr. B. Jowett, 1871, 250).

[Triptych showing marble bust of Plato and the covers of his books Phaedrus and The Statesman

Plato, c.428–348 BC; Phaedrus; Statesman]

60

Plato also gave this other description of the innocent ‘Golden Age’ in our species’ pre-conscious past, writing of a time when we lived a ‘blessed and spontaneous life…​[where] neither was there any violence, or devouring of one another, or war or quarrel among them…​In those days God himself was their shepherd, and ruled over them [in other words, our original instinctive self was orientated to living in an ideal cooperative, loving way]…​Under him there were no forms of government or separate possession of women and children; for all men rose again from the earth, having no memory of the past [in other words, we lived in a pre-conscious state]. And…​the earth gave them fruits in abundance, which grew on trees and shrubs unbidden, and were not planted by the hand of man. And they dwelt naked, and mostly in the open air, for the temperature of their seasons was mild; and they had no beds, but lay on soft couches of grass, which grew plentifully out of the earth’ (The Statesman, c.350 BC; tr. B. Jowett, 1871, 271-272).

61

The thing is, Hesiod and Plato, like Moses, were living at a time when science still had to be developed, so they weren’t able to provide the redeeming, instincts-can-orientate-but-only-nerves-can-understand, good reason WHY we departed from ‘innocence’ and seemingly became ‘evil’, bad people.

62

Craig: Yes, because there was no science back then. 

63

Jeremy: Precisely, it’s only in the last 150 years or so that science has given us A: the ability to know that the gene-based natural selection process gives species orientations to the world; and B: the knowledge of our nerves and how they are able to remember events, which, much developed, has led to our mind being able to sufficiently understand the relationship between cause and effect to become conscious of, or aware of, or intelligent about those relationships. So that’s only happened in the last 150 years, but since the fossil record of our ancestors suggests that our large association-cortexed, thinking, fully conscious brain appeared some 2 million years ago, that means for almost all of the 2 million years we have been conscious we have had no ability to explain and understand why we corrupted our original innocent instinctive self or soul. And without that redeeming explanation the only way we could cope with the astronomical guilt of having destroyed ‘Eden’, has been to deny we ever lived in a cooperative and loving innocent state—and that’s exactly where the excuse that we have savage competitive and aggressive instincts like other animals came to our rescue.

64

And, false as it is, it’s been an absolutely brilliant excuse because instead of our instincts being all-loving and thus unbearably condemning of our present non-loving state, they are made out to be vicious and brutal must-reproduce-your-genes instincts like other animals; and, instead of our conscious mind being the instinct-defying cause of our corruption, it was made out to be the blameless mediating ‘hero’ that had to step in and try to control those supposed vicious instincts within us! And those who dared to admit the truth of our cooperative and loving past, like Hesiod and Plato, were dismissed as deluded romantics, and the whole idea of an innocent, Edenic past was said to be nothing more than a nostalgia for the security and maternal warmth of infancy, that it was ‘never an historical state’ as the Jungian psychologist Erich Neumann said in his book The Origins and History of Consciousness (1949, p.15 of 493).

[Portrait photograph of psychologist Erich Neumann

Erich Neumann (1905–1960)]

[Front cover of Erich Neumann’s book ‘The Origins and History of Consciousness’ ] 

65

Craig: Yes, and we couldn’t face the truth that we had turned utopia into dystopia, into a dreadful place of conflict and suffering, yes?

66

Jeremy: Yes that’s right Craig, and I should point out that while most contemporary thinkers have clung to the savage instincts excuse for our divisive behaviour, there have been some who, like the ancient thinkers, truthfully recognised the basic instinct vs intellect elements involved in producing the human condition. Eugène Marais, Paul MacLean and Arthur Koestler are a few who come to mind.

[Collage of covers of books about biology based on the ‘savage instincts’ excuse]

[Some of the many science books accounting for human behaviour using the false ‘savage instincts’ excuse.]

[Eugene Marais, Paul Maclean, Arthur Koestler beside covers of their books]

[Eugène Marais (1871–1936), Paul MacLean (1913–2007) and Arthur Koestler (1905–1983)]

67

But while all contemporary thinkers have had the benefit of science having revealed the difference between the gene-based and nerve-based learning systems, and have therefore had the means to truthfully explain the human condition, those who did recognise the basic instinct vs intellect elements didn’t take their thinking far enough to actually explain the human condition. And those who have been attached to the false savage instincts excuse—which is the great majority of scientists—obviously haven’t been thinking truthfully, so they couldn’t hope to explain the human condition. Which is all why it has taken the truthful thinking of the pre-eminent South African philosopher Sir Laurens van der Post, and following him, myself, to finally present the complete, true explanation of the human condition.

68

Craig: Okay. And Jeremy, I assume that people can read about the contemporary thinkers who recognised the instinct vs intellect elements involved in the human condition, and those who clung to the savage instincts excuse, on the World Transformation Movement’s website at HumanCondition.com?

[The most famous book by Sir Laurens van der Post (1906–1996) (left) is The Lost World of the Kalahari, which is about the relatively innocent Bushmen or San people of the Kalahari Desert. Its title can be interpreted as ‘the lost world of our soul’.]

69

Jeremy: Yes, they can, in particular in the fourth video at the top of the homepage.

70

Also, how Sir Laurens van der Post and I managed to address and solve the human condition is described in my 2020 book How Laurens van der Post Saved The World, which is also freely available on that website. Basically, what is explained in that book is that since everyone is naturally variously psychologically upset from their different encounters with humanity’s battle to find knowledge, there was always going to be a few who were fortunate enough in their infancy and childhood to escape encountering the angry, egocentric and alienated effects of that upsetting battle, and it is these few who could look into the human condition without being overly confronted by it—and Sir Laurens and I were two of these extremely fortunate denial-free thinking people, which is how we were able to find understanding of the human condition.

71

I should also say that while there is growing support for this now absolutely desperately needed understanding of the human condition, mainstream science is yet to recognise and support it—but that’s what happens with paradigm-shifting, breakthroughs in science. When the physicist Max Planck said ‘Science progresses funeral by funeral’ (Marilyn Ferguson’s reference to a comment by Planck in his Scientific Autobiography, 1948; New Age mag. Aug. 1982; see www.wtmsources.com/174) he was recognising how attached each generation of scientists becomes to the way of thinking they grew up with, and therefore how slow science as a whole is to move to a new paradigm of understanding. And the playwright George Bernard Shaw also warned of how difficult it is to introduce a new paradigm of thinking—especially one that dares to confront the historically unbearably confronting and off-limits subject of the human condition—when he said that ‘All great truths begin as blasphemies’ (Annajanska, 1919). So yes, confronting the human condition when everyone has been living in fearful denial of it, even though it has finally been explained and made safe to confront, represents the biggest of all ‘blasphemies’.

72

Craig: Yeah, I understand completely. I mean from my limited experience, Jeremy, I know how difficult it is to get people to change their way of thinking. But your basic point is that science’s discovery of the way genes and nerves work has finally made it possible for the liberation of humanity from the horror of the human condition.

 73

Jeremy: Yes, that is the essential truth: science is the liberator, the so-called ‘messiah’ or ‘redeemer’ of humankind, as we always hoped it would be!

74

Craig: And all this is in the nick of time Jeremy, because I actually don’t think the world can cope with any more upset behaviour from us humans—but of course we still need the scientific community to get on board and support this understanding.

75

Jeremy: Absolutely. While we’ve had to live in denial of our corrupted, psychologically upset condition while we couldn’t explain it, the truth is that on a graph showing the ever-increasing levels of upset in humans, those levels, especially of psychosis and alienation, have been increasing so rapidly lately that the line tracking their rise is near vertical with the amount of upset virtually doubling now in each new generation! Freedom Essays 55 & 59 on our World Transformation Movement’s website describes this terrifying end play threat of terminal levels of psychosis. Basically, we had virtually lost the race between self-destruction and self-understanding.

[Graph showing the ever-increasing levels of upset in humans and the threat of terminal psychosis]

[The race between self-destruction and self-understanding]

76

Indeed, early last century the author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote that ‘We are living through deeply anxious days, and if we are to relieve our anxiety we must diagnose its cause…​What is the meaning of man? To this question no answer is being offered, and I have the feeling that we are moving toward the darkest era our world has ever known’ (A Sense of Life, pub. 1965, pp.127, 219 of 231), and the ‘deeply anxious days’ have very greatly increased in the century since then, so we are now very much in the midst of ‘the darkest era our world has ever known’—so this world-saving, ‘reliev[ing]’-of-the-‘cause’, understanding of ‘the meaning of man’, has definitely only arrived in the nick of time—which means the scientific community definitely, definitely needs to get its act together and support this breakthrough!

[Portrait photograph of author Antoine de Saint Exupery

Antoine de Saint Exupéry (1900–1944)]

77

So now I’ll address your other questions Craig, but I should mention that the first of the videos on the World Transformation Movement’s website warns of the difficulty not only scientists have had, but almost everyone has had trying to confront and think about the historically unbearably confronting subject of our corrupted condition which has finally been explained and made safe to confront and admit.

78

Craig: I’m Craig Conway and I’m speaking with Australian biologist Jeremy Griffith.

Part 3

How did we humans acquire our instinctive cooperative and loving moral conscience?

< click here for Part 3>>