Thoughts on Jeremy Griffith's "Freedom : The End of the Human Condition" - Part 15

His Psychosis

Presumably being well-nurtured would make it easier for values of cooperativeness to be imprinted on the blank slate of a child’s uncritical acceptance, because frustration would not have yet built up in such a way as to lead to rebelliousness against this programming.

But eventually life does provide frustrations to the growing individual. If Griffith tried to hang on to his “good innocent little boy” persona, then the source of frustration would be two-fold - that others didn’t behave according to these principles, and that his own frustrations, including anger at others for not behaving cooperatively, threatened to undermine his own ability to be cooperative himself.

These kinds of insecurities would require the adoption of a form of character armour, so the “good innocent little boy” became his increasingly rigid embattled perception of himself. It was how he would prove himself.

This persona needed to be maintained by self-nurturing - remaining close to nature, for instance. If it were really the genetic basis of the human individual, as he would come to believe, it would be far less fragile than that. You might block out your genetic orientation mentally, but it would be much stronger, and any time the mind lost its strength it would return to that orientation.

When our psyche becomes split - when we hang onto one aspect of ourselves in such a way that it requires us to repress all that is contrary to that aspect, e.g. cling to cooperativeness by repressing feelings of anger, those contrary feelings will only tend to build up more strongly in the subconscious.

So “good little innocent boy” Griffith gradually became more troubled by the aggressive and uncooperative behaviour of those around him, because their aggressiveness and lack of cooperation resonated with his own repressed aggressive feelings and resentment towards his cooperativeness-demanding character armour.

And the “good little innocent boy” isn’t sexual, so Griffith became increasingly troubled by other people’s sexual behaviour and felt the need to repress his own sexual feelings in order to hang onto that persona. Thus he came to view sex as essentially an “attack on innocence”, because other people’s sexual behaviour resonated with his repressed sexual desires which threatened to undermine his “good little innocent boy” persona.

Eventually, if he were to live in the world, and not hide himself away in a monastery somewhere, he had to seek some kind of reconciliation between the extreme idealism of his character armour and the contrary tendencies which he saw all around him and felt within him.

He built a theory, but it was a biased theory intended to normalise his position. He took his own position as the normal inborn condition of all humans and tried to work out why everyone else had diverged from that.

His battle to transcend selfish tendencies is evident throughout his theory. “Love-indoctrination” overcame the horribly competitive nature of other animals. What is “indoctrination” but learned alienation? In just such a way, the “good little innocent boy” persona Griffith has nurtured in himself alienates him from acknowledging the selfish impulses which lie beneath it.

Of course going down this path has made Griffith angry, egocentric and alienated, so when he looks into the mirror of the world he sees his own face staring back at him. And he rails against what he terms “pseudo-idealism” because his own idealism is “pseudo”, i.e a cultivated form of egotism. He also identifies now strongly with the right wing, because their embattled state, in a world in which their selfishness is causing great suffering and endangering the planet, resonates with his own.

In his first book Free : The End of the Human Condition, 1988, Griffith predicted, about its reception : “We will suspect it to be an expression of some form of disguised psychosis and will see its authority, its sense of conviction, as offensive arrogance.” Now we can see that that is what it was. The truth does carry its own authority, but that authority is intrinsic and does not need to be accompanied by big claims and promises.

The “Human Condition” Personified

Griffith says we set out seeking understanding of the human condition. In adolescence we resign ourselves to the fact that we are not going to achieve it. We adopt a false front and become angry, egocentric, selfish and alienated. Alienated in that we block out and angrily deny any truth which criticises us.

Griffith set off to find understanding of the human condition. He was unable to, because to do so he would have had to be able to confront the fact that the social phenomenon of idealism, which has no basis in our genes, was at the heart of the problem. He would have had to confront the fact that the idealism expressed by those he admired and the idealism he had been in the habit of expressing, was the source of all the manifestations of brutality and cruelty which troubled him. This is the central insight of any holistic systems view of the problem of good and evil, as Oscar Wilde acknowledged when he said : “It is well for our vanity that we slay the criminal, for if we suffered him to live he might show us what we had gained by his crime. It is well for his peace that the saint goes to his martyrdom. He is spared the sight of the horror of his harvest.”

Trying to reconcile his “extreme idealism” with “reality” he came up with an evasive explanation for the human condition, one which tried to reconcile the two by providing an appeasing excuse for the “non-ideal”, a “defence for humanity”.

This theory became central to his character armour. In his state of increasing insecurity about his own worth it became his way to prove himself. He became increasingly aggressive and egotistical about the way that he tried to push it on the world. And became more and more alienated, placing more and more effort into collecting bits of quotes from famous thinkers to reinforce the blocks that prevented him from truthful thinking.

All of this is evident in his projections. It is humanity which suffers from a “psychosis”. It is humanity which is “evasive”. He thinks that simply thinking about how the conscious mind works would be enough to quickly lead us to think : “‘Well, if I’m so cleverly insightful why can’t I manage my life in a way that is not so mean and indifferent to others; indeed, why, if I am such a brilliantly intelligent person, am I such a destructively selfish, angry, egocentric, competitive and aggressive monster?’” But is it not possible that this is what his subconscious mind is saying about himself? “What if my theory is wrong? What if my behaviour in support of that false theory has, in truth, been destructively, selfishly, angrily, egocentrically, competitive, aggressive and monstrous behaviour”?

He says that our attitude to the truth is : “‘I don’t believe the criticism is deserved, and in any case it’s too unbearable to accept, so I will never tolerate any insinuation that I am a bad person.’” But hasn’t that been his embattled response to criticism of his work or behaviour?

Griffith is not a bad person. He lacks insight into his own madness. The road to his Hell has been paved with good intensions.

An holistic systems view of the universe sees that everything unfolds in the only way that it can. Thus any judgement of individuals as “good” or “evil” is inappropriate. Griffith has done something which had to be done. Just as Jesus is reputed to have taken the sins of the world onto himself, Griffith has absorbed all of the destructive poison of idealism into himself, so that, by his downfall, he can forever end humanity’s contamination by that poison. In William Blake’s philosophy Satan was the Accuser (the accuser of sin), i.e. idealism. So Griffith, in this metaphorical sense, is possessed by “Satan”. And his battle to have his ideas accepted is “Satan’s” last stand.

But, as I say, nobody is evil. Evil resides in destructive ideas which “possess” us. In time, Griffith’s “demons” will be cast out, both to his relief and the relief of us all.

We can see that the mythological figure Satan represents idealism, i.e. the accusation of sin. “He” is known as “the father of lies”, and it is because of idealism (that original distinction between “good” and “evil”) that we first began lying. When the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis says that we became ashamed of our nakedness and began wearing clothes, I think this a metaphorical way of saying that we became dishonest, we began telling lies as a way of trying to protect ourselves from the criticism which idealism brought with it. Nakedness is a powerful symbol for honesty. Dishonesty to protect ourselves from criticism was the first kind of character armour. And today, still, what keeps us in our various “closets” is the fear that aspects of our thinking, emotions or behaviour will be exposed to criticism. (Of course idealism would eventually cause us to become afraid of our erotic feelings and part of the process of repression that led to would be the literal wearing of clothes because idealism’s intolerance of our natural bodies and natural sexuality eventually made us ashamed of them.)

We can see in religions that they contain intertwining threads of the “Satanic” (the accusation of sin) and the “Godly” (love and forgiveness). This has been religions great flaw, the reason that it has failed to heal or liberate humanity. The disease has generally been a part of what was offered as a cure.

Read Part 16

Thoughts on Jeremy Griffith's "Freedom : The End of the Human Condition" - Part 14

Love Indoctrination or Love Liberation

Sometimes when Griffith talks about his concept of “love indoctrination” it seems like something almost aggressive. “…all the other relatively developed/integrated/social mammals are still battling to develop and maintain love-indoctrination to the point where it has overcome selfish competition amongst males to reproduce their genes.” This concept of love as something you have to be “indoctrinated” into, that has to be controlled by dictatorial instincts, feels so wrong to me.

A mother loving her child is not “indoctrinating” it. She is accepting it unconditionally and responding to its needs. She is not trying to control it. Indoctrination is an attempt at control. I know Griffith isn’t trying to say that she is, but he is presenting this process as one controlled by the genes.

To me love is something which is liberated when the obstacles which impede it are removed. I can see where the need to compete in harsh environments or for breeding opportunities would act as an impediment to love. But surely social animals are not competing all the time. Are there not signs of love - of affection and cooperation between them - in those times when they are not? I don’t watch a lot of nature programs, so I can’t really speak from experience.

And if a food rich, relatively predator free, environment provided the opportunity for our proto-human ancestors to increase their nurturing time, would there have been a need for “indoctrination” in love, would love not have been liberated by the removal of its impediments. With the need to compete for food removed, and the mind - freed up by the longer nurturing period to no longer be rigidly focussed on survival issues and thus develop the power to self-manage - having the power to transcend the dictatorship of the genes’ insistence on competition for breeding opportunities, surely the potential for love, which lies buried under all those inhibiting influences in other animals, could have a chance to flower.

Griffith says : “No, the only accountable explanation for the emergence of the fully conscious mind in humans and for what is blocking its emergence in other species is the nurturing, love-indoctrination explanation…” But doesn’t my idea that all what was needed was the space and time away from competitive imperatives make sense? Why is there the need for nurturing to be seen as a process of “indoctrination” rather than liberation?

And I think that here there is a sharp distinction between my concept of love and Griffith’s concept of love. And between how he is going about trying to help the world and the way I am trying to go about helping the world. I believe we all have a virtually limitless capacity for love which just needs the impediments to it to be removed in order that it should flow forth and heal the world. Unconditional self-acceptance is the source of this love. The impediment to its expression is our armour. Our armour is defensive. To put it aside we need to feel safe. We can increase our own feelings of safety by cultivating unconditional self-acceptance and we can spread a feeling of safety through the world by spreading a practise of acceptance of other people as we find them. Idealism and other attempts to push people to change only make such change harder for them. Let freedom and acceptance reign and love will guide us towards a healing of our society and our world.

But Griffith, with his belief that a person’s capacity for love is, to a large extent, bound by the limitations of the nurturing that they received, the saving of the world involves our accepting of his theory, without spending too much time on confronting thought about it, and passing it on to future generations, who will gradually be healed by their ability to understand the world and the fact that, with the importance of nurturing acknowledged and the need for our previous aggression, egotism and alienation explained away, they will finally get the nurturing they need. But if his theory is wrong, as I believe that it is, doesn’t this sound a bit like “indoctrination”?

Where Is the “Human Condition” In Me?

Fundamental to Griffith’s theory is that there is a conflict going on within us between our supposed genetic orientation to selflessness and our ego. Now for much of my life there was a conflict going on within me. Do I send money to starving kids in Africa or spend it on myself? Do I watch porn or do I stop supporting this “shameless objectification of women”? Do I eat pork knowing that pigs are often kept in atrocious conditions or do I not?

So Griffith’s theory seemed to have relevance to my experience.

But over time I went through a process of introspection, much of it spurred on by a need to assess Griffith’s ideas.

One key point arose when I was troubled about the pig issue. I felt so guilty I considered becoming a vegetarian. But then I thought through my response. If I did give up eating pig meat, how would I feel about the fact that pigs were still suffering? “It wouldn’t bother me in the slightest,” I honestly admitted to myself. As long as I’ve got a clean conscience why should I care about the pigs? So I realised that my feelings of guilt were entirely selfish. I was walking around wondering if I were good enough. Someone hands me a brochure about suffering pigs. I eat pig meat. This sends me the message : “You aren’t good enough.” But it is all about my ego. It goes no deeper than that. My compassion for the pigs is virtually non-existent.

So I didn’t give a shit about the starving Africans or the pigs or supposedly exploited women. All I cared about was my own happiness.

But, what I’ve found over time is that all that guilt I’d been feeling about not being good enough had been sapping my enthusiasm for doing things for other people. Once I decided to give up on worrying about whether I’m good enough I was liberated to really enjoy the things I chose to do for myself and had a whole lot more energy to be more helpful to others. Guilt-driven attempts to do the right thing by others left me depressed and were always unsustainable. But unconditional self-acceptance means that when I do feel like making a contribution to someone else’s welfare I do so with full enthusiasm and no internal conflict or resentment.

Now I do what I like. I feel no guilt. I have no war going on inside me. I do whatever feels good and right at the time.

So where, I have to ask myself, is this “human condition” in me? Where is this bottomless well of anger I’m supposed to have deep down inside. Where is this condemning genetic conscience? If these things are real, why can’t I feel them anymore? Am I wrong to assume that that conflict I experienced was nothing to do with my genes, but occurred entirely within my ego?

The Emperor’s New Clothes Syndrome?

Griffith says : “Another malicious device that has been used to try to dismiss my work is claiming it puts readers in a ‘non-falsifiable situation’ where if you oppose this information you are said to be suffering from denial, leaving you no way to disprove or falsify the explanation being put forward — but the problem really exists at the superficial level because the ideas being put forward can be tested as true or otherwise. These are not untestable hypotheses that must be accepted on blind faith… In fact, since humans are the subject of this particular study, each person can experience and thus know the truth or otherwise of what is being put forward. Once the explanations are presented and applied you will discover they are able to make such sense of human behaviour that your own and everyone else’s becomes transparent.”

I’ve been living with these “insights” for about 25 years and they didn’t make my behaviour or that of others transparent. Initially I was attracted to the ideas because they resonated with a conflict which was going on inside me. But Griffith’s “explanations” of much of human behaviour, especially sexual behaviour, never rang true to me. It was the need to resolve that conflict inside, and the faith that his ideas could do that because he said they could, which led to my initial support. But later I would discover that the conflict that troubled me was within my ego - a battle between my ego’s need to maintain self-acceptance and various forms of idealism which threatened to rob me of it. Over time my need to have faith in Griffith’s ideas declined and my ability to find a grounding in my own conceptual framework increased. I stopped suffering from the depression which had plagued me off and on from the time of my adolescence, and the bipolar disorder, with which I had been diagnosed in 1995, so that now I have been happy and stable for at least eight years. And in the wake of abandoning belief in Griffith’s ideas, I feel that the world really has become transparent to me. Reader’s can judge for themselves whether my writings are insightful, but obviously they seem that way to me.

If Griffith’s ideas do represent a superficially credible but ultimately delusional belief system which has  the ability to latch on to us by virtue of our desperate need for a solution to humanity’s problems and an inability to deny them if they resonate with our internal ego-battle - if their “confronting” idealism undermines our self-acceptance and makes us need to hang onto their supposed “defence for humans” - would anyone who was on the inside of that condition be aware of it, or would it require someone who was now safely outside of it to point it out?

Read Part 15

Thoughts on Jeremy Griffith's "Freedom : The End of the Human Condition" - Part 13

Griffith’s Compassion for Animals

“Unfortunately, because animals’ innocence (lack of the psychological upset we humans suffer from) confronts us with our lack of innocence (our vicious angry, egocentric and alienated state), we humans so hated, despised and resented animals that we have hunted and shot them for ‘sport’ ; but one day we are going to have so much sympathy for animals because of what they have to endure trapped in a life of having to relentlessly compete with each other, often with their closest friends! (‘Friends’ in the sense of those with whom they have shared their life and developed emotional bonds.) Certainly the same extremely competitive state exists for plants and microbes, but, not having the developed nervous system that animals have, their awareness of the agony of that horrifically competitive existence could obviously not be anywhere near as great as it is for animals.”

If we tried to justify our anger and selfishness by comparison to the savagery and selfish competition we see in the animal world, why would animals (apart from gentle baby animals maybe) confront us with our “lack of innocence”? There are plenty of cases of deliberate cruelty to animals, but a lot of what we do to animals, like hunting, I think reflects indifference to their interests rather than hatred. If an animal is just an object to you, then testing your skill by seeing if you can shoot it makes sense. Hunters generally don’t look angry to me. Not like people shooting people. I think people hating other people is more common than people hating animals. But that isn’t something Griffith can so easily use to make us feel guilty.

I’ve expressed the view elsewhere that compassion is projected self-pity. This doesn’t mean it hasn’t been a wonderful thing, a motivation for us to respond to the suffering of others because it resonates with our own neurotic suffering, but we shouldn’t mistake it for a state of mental health.

It seems as if, historically, compassion for animals amongst humans has not been particularly strong, but it has become much stronger among many people in recent times, with the rise of animal rights and veganism. While this might lead to a reduction in suffering by animals, and there is nothing wrong with that, I see this as a byproduct of our neurotic suffering. We see in the animals a reflection of our wounded selves.

I don’t “hate” or “despise” animals, but I’m not going to lose any sleep at night over the fact that they need to compete with their “friends” for a fuck.

This tends to reinforce my view that idealism is not a natural expression of the psyche of a well-nurtured individual, but rather a characteristic which arises from severe neurosis, equivalent to obsessive compulsive disorder, in which anything which is perceived by the sufferer as “not right” causes them great discomfort. The healthy self-accepting individual is not selfish and is cooperative and generous, but is able to accept the world as it is, including any unavoidable suffering which goes on within it, with equanimity. In that way no energy, which might be used to make things better, is drained away.

Love-Indoctrination

The theory of love-indoctrination is probably the strongest element in Griffith’s work. This is his attempt to explain how a cooperative society of proto-humans could develop from out of the genetic selfishness of other animals. The idea is that mothers nurture their children for genetically selfish reasons, because the children contain their genes, but to the children it looks like selfless behaviour and so they are socialised into a culture of such behaviour.

I have no problem with that. It makes perfect sense. And it makes perfect sense that maternalism will be genetically selected as the more maternal the offspring the better the chances of their own offspring to survive.

The problem comes in the next step : “…the training of individuals in unconditional selflessness. And with this unconditionally selfless behaviour recurring over many, many generations, the unconditionally selfless behaviour will become instinctive — a moral soul will be established — because genes will inevitably follow and reinforce any development process occurring in a species; in this they are not selective.”

There are two problems with this. Griffith is saying that learned behaviour becomes instinctive if it continues long enough. I believe this is not the accepted view amongst most biologists. In this video, Richard Dawkins talks about some isolated instances where learned behaviour might develop into an inherited instinct, but note that, even in these rare cases, it only does so if what is learned confers a competitive advantage on the individual. Learned selflessness would be likely to be disadvantageous to the perpetuation of someone’s genes and so be self-eliminating :

https://richarddawkins.net/2015/04/darwin-day-2015-questions-6-how-does-learned-behavior-evolve-into-inherited-instinct/

Griffith does acknowledge the problem that selflessness would be self-eliminating if it wasn’t universal to the group. But this still doesn’t explain how it could become encoded in the genes. Natural selection is a process of the winnowing out of those less fit for their environment. If everyone is equally fit, there is no winnowing and therefore no reinforcement of any genetic traits. The only way I can see where cooperative traits would be genetically encouraged is if there were sexual selection for cooperativeness, for instance if the females refused to mate with selfish males. (Actually, Griffith says this later : “…females were not only not dominated by males, but dictated mate choice by choosing to reproduce with non-aggressive, cooperative males — hallmarks you would expect of a society highly focused on maternal nurturing of their infants.” But he mentions that only to make the point that the females were “more maternal” he doesn’t seem to acknowledge that this selective breeding is the only way a cooperative culture could become genetically reinforced.

I think Griffith is right about our extended nurturing period socialising us into being a cooperative species, and also that it was what liberated our fully conscious mind. But I don’t think we acquired a genetic programming for unconditional selflessness. I think our co-operative way of life was maintained because it felt good, and was only disrupted when we began to think about the disparity between our way of life and that of predators, and in so doing gave birth to the toxic concept of idealism.

I believe that the human mind itself liberates us from the dictatorship of the genes which affects other species. Using our mind we can see that cooperating with others is a way to achieve the things we want. It is through our ideas and imaginings, and the communication of them that leads to a confluence of our emotions, that we come together in meaningful ways. It is ideas which bring us together or tear us apart, depending on whether they make us more or less self-accepting and accepting of others.

Now you could say that, when I say that it feels good to cooperate, this is because we have a genetic orientation to it. But, even if that were true, I don’t think it is a dictatorial one. It is the learned conscience which troubles us. If I like eating chocolate more than I like eating potatoes, but for health reasons I have to eat potatoes and avoid chocolate, I may be unhappy because I’m missing out on the pleasure I crave, but I’m unlikely to feel guilty about the fact that I’m eating potatoes. I don’t see that a genetic orientation to cooperation, in a human with a fully-functioning mind, would be condemning of that mind’s experiments in not being cooperative. On the other hand, if at a vulnerable age, we are told we will go to Hell if we play with ourselves, that will tend to bring about major turmoil in the mind because we are being condemned by an authority figure for doing something natural. I don’t believe that anything inside our body is unforgiving in that way.

Bonobo Sex

Griffith says : “Indeed, it is an indication of how difficult it is to develop love-indoctrination that even bonobos, living as they do in their ideal conditions, and who ‘have developed a more cohesive social structure’ than chimpanzees, still find it necessary to employ sex as an appeasement device to help subside residual tension and aggression between individuals…sex amongst bonobos is like the ‘naked and they felt no shame’ sex that Moses described our innocent Adam and Eve/bonobo stage-equivalent ancestors as practising, not the anti-‘social’ sex that humans currently practise, where…it is used to attack/fuck innocence…”

What he seems totally unwilling to even consider is the possibility that the sharing of pleasure, sexual or otherwise, is literally the making of love, that it is through the mutuality of our pleasure that we nurture each other and open the bonds of loving communication.

Nurturing

Griffith is right that nurturing is very important to the development of the individual, but his explanation of why is bullshit. He believes that we are born expecting an ideal world and ideal behaviour from those around us. Since “selfless” nurturing behaviour is what we expect, we are hurt if we don’t get it, and we can never recover from that hurt.

Not only is there no evidence, as far as I can see, for this idea, it is an idea which is itself positively toxic to the nurturing process.

The basis for mental health is unconditional self-acceptance. Ideal nurturing then would be unconditionally accepting nurturing. This would give the child a sound grounding in self-acceptance. But to be unconditionally accepting of her child, a woman will need to be unconditionally self-accepting. If she believes that the child is born expecting her to be perfect in her behaviour, then that is liable to put pressure on her, make her feel guilty. She will therefore not be able to give her child unconditional love.

Griffith feels that an ideal mother needs to have had as little as possible exposure to sex. So any mother who reads Griffith’s work and believes him, and who has a normal enjoyable sex life, is liable to worry about the effect that this will have on her child.

To make it worse, even though Griffith knows that people have trouble understanding his “defence for humans” he still goes around promoting his nurturing-sabotaging views on nurturing to those who haven’t understood it.

He also promotes the idea that we can never fully recover from insufficient nurturing, but the problem with insufficient nurturing is that, like encounters with corrosive - and thus corrupting - idealism, it leaves us with highly conditional self-acceptance. But this can be repaired by learning the habit of unconditional self-acceptance.

In a sense, what Griffith is unwittingly doing is crippling people and then giving them wheelchairs.

Development of the Conscious Mind

Griffith believes we had to be selfless to become fully conscious because selflessness is the theme of existence and we can’t acknowledge that and think truthfully if we are not selfless. So other animals, being genetically selfish, could not develop reason.

I think it makes more sense to consider that other animal’s minds have had to be focused on the struggle for survival. A longer nurturing period provided our minds the chance to develop in a less focussed way, freeing us up to have the complex pathways needed to think more deeply about the world around us.

It is true that selfishness blocks us from thinking  holistically, because to see the whole picture we have to be relatively free of personal bias. If we are unconditionally self-accepting then we can acknowledge all aspects of the world around us without any of those aspects having to be blocked out or exaggerated to meet the needs of our self-acceptance.

No doubt our proto-human ancestors were unconditionally self-accepting before the arrival of corruption in the form of idealism. And, if we reject idealism and cultivate unconditional self-acceptance now we can once again learn to think truthfully.

Selfishly Unselfish?

If we did have a genetic orientation toward selfless behaviour which makes us feel bad when we go against it, does it not follow that we would feel better if we went with it? So doesn’t it follow that, whether we go with it or against is determined by our own good or bad feelings? In this case, if returning to selfless behaviour will make us feel good, are we not being selfless for a selfish reason?

Integrated Bonobos

Griffith’s description of the social integration of the bonobos, the way a troop seems almost like a single connected organism, is impressive. His love of the animals comes through just as strongly as does his disappointment in we humans. But Griffith is not like those bonobos. He is not integrative. His idealism makes him divisive. It forces us to put up our armour - to become more selfish than we already where.

This is the problem with idealism. What we want is to be able to accept ourselves unconditionally. Idealism and being confronted about our “non-ideal” nature in the presentation of a highly dubious theory meant to provide a defence for us and a chance at healing, is liable to undermine that self-acceptance even more. So if I were not such an accepting individual, when Griffith says how the possibility that the bonobos might end up being made extinct “is truly unbearable to think about” I might feel like taking a gun and killing every one of the cute little creatures just to make the self-righteous prick feel as bad as he makes others feel. O.K. So I’m being deliberately extreme there, but I think the point I’m making is an important one. To withhold acceptance from someone, or to make it conditional on them supporting your theory about the human condition, is liable to push them towards more aggressive and selfish behaviour, whereas unconditional acceptance soothes. If he really wants to save the bonobos, he needs to recognise that the lack of acceptance he embodies is what is pushing people towards more and more destructive acts. If they practice evasion of truths they find painful to confront that is a sensible containment. Better that than that they confront them and be made either hostile or self-destructive.

We do need to be able to know ourselves and to look at the realities of the world head on, but we can only safely do that when the psychological infrastructure is in place, when we have learned to practice unconditional self-acceptance.

Read Part 14

Thoughts on Jeremy Griffith's "Freedom : The End of the Human Condition" - Part 12

Appeals to Authority

When I use a quote I do so for one of two reasons. I either believe that the idea expressed in the quote is illuminating or otherwise useful in its own right, or it is a quote from someone like Jesus whose ideas have a great importance for many people which makes an interpretation of what they may mean culturally significant. (I don’t believe that just because Jesus said something it is necessarily true. Being a human being like the rest of us, he was presumably not without his flaws.)

I make great use of concepts I take from the work of the psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich, such as character armour, but I don’t expect anyone to find these ideas more credible because he was the one who first expressed them. In fact, he is not widely respected. In his day and now most people who are familiar with his writings consider him to have been a bit of a nutcase. If the concept of the character armour carries weight it is because of its inherent explanatory power, not because of who expressed it.

For Griffith, worldly authority means a lot. When trying to persuade us that Don Quixote is profound he points out that it was “voted ‘The Greatest Book of All Time’ by the world’s most acclaimed writers in a poll arranged by the Nobel Institute”. He points out that Professor Harry Prosen, who wrote the introduction to his book is “the former president of the Canadian Psychiatric Association”. Of Plato he says : “Alfred North (A. N.) Whitehead, himself one of the most highly regarded philosophers of the twentieth century, described the history of philosophy as being merely “a series of footnotes to Plato.” And he always makes sure to put “Sir” in front of the names of those who have been knighted - “Sir Laurens van der Post”, “Sir James Darling”, “Sir David Attenborough”. (Is this simply a mark of respect or does he expect us to take what they say more seriously because this honour has been bestowed upon them?)

The worth of a piece of writing is intrinsic. If it has truth or beauty, it has them regardless of what some group of famous authors say about it. Academic credentials mean that someone has met certain intellectual criteria, but as Griffith would have to admit, given his contempt for the ideas of fellow biologist E. O. Wilson, they are no guarantee of sound thinking or judgement. If those scientists who reject Griffith’s work have no credibility in his eyes, why should a scientist who supports him necessarily have any credibility in the eyes of the rest of us?

And what is a knighthood? It is an “honour” conferred by the British monarchy, a pathologically hierarchical manifestation of our social neurosis. The monarchy is just a bunch of people with the same kinds of strengths and weaknesses as the rest of us. The status which is conferred upon them has no intrinsic basis. It is not based on them being wise or virtuous or psychologically healthy. Truth carries its own authority which has nothing to do with the human mouthpiece through which it is expressed. The only reason we respect authority, as opposed to such intrinsic values as truth, justice and the inherent value of all humans, is because we are neurotic. Cowering within our own armour, we kowtow to those whose egotism is more dominant than our own. Or, we compensate for our own unjustified feelings of inferiority by vicariously participating in the illusory superiority of another. When Jesus said : “Do you see all these great buildings? Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.” Mark 13:2, he wasn’t talking about physical buildings, he was talking about neurotic structures of authority.

If Plato and Cervantes’ are worth reading, and I think they probably are, it is because of what their works actually are in themselves not how they are viewed by others.

Why all of these appeals to authority? It is the Trojan Horse strategy. If you try to convey your message to the world of authority and they reject it what do you do? You clothe it in a coating of things which that world does respect.

But if the central message is not true, this strategy too will fail.

Development of Order of Matter

Griffith says : “From the fundamental ingredients of our world of matter, space and time, matter has become ordered into ever larger (in space) and more stable or durable (in time) arrangements.”

In fact the opposite is often, if not generally, the case. Living things, which are more ordered, are generally smaller and less durable than simpler forms of matter. Rocks can be very big and very durable. A redwood tree is more complex, but smaller and less durable. And a human being is even more complex than a redwood tree, but once again smaller and less durable.

He says that the law that governs the development of ever more complex forms of matter is the “‘Second Path of the Second Law of Thermodynamics’, or ‘Negative Entropy’, which states that in an open system, where energy can come into the system from outside it (in Earth’s case, from the sun, and, in the case of the universe, from the original ‘big bang’ explosion that created it)…” Now I don’t know much about the big bang, but can it be said to be a source of energy from outside? Certainly the energy released could drive negative entropy, but if the amount of energy in the universe is fixed, it would still be a closed system now and thus this process of negative entropy would not be infinitely sustainable.

From Erwin Schrödinger : “What an organism feeds on is negative entropy…” I don’t get that. Surely an organism is negative entropy and what it feeds on is entropy. It is the breakdown of other forms of matter which provides the energy for the building up of the organism’s living matter. It is the breakdown of matter in the sun (entropy) which provides us with heat and light and it is the breakdown of the other organisms we consume in our stomach (entropy) which provides us with the energy we need to do things.

Is the universe not a chaotic system in which order arises naturally through the interplay of the forces of creation and destruction? It does not arise, as human hierarchies arise, by deference to a higher authority, but by an anarchic confluence of self-interest. Surely single-celled organisms formed communities and later became incorporated into multi-celled organisms because there were survival advantages to the individual in doing so. Order among we humans can be either naturally occurring - a group of stamp collectors are brought together by their love of stamps - or hierarchically imposed - as in the case of the nation state with its laws and authoritarian institutions. I worry that Griffith’s concept of the development of matter leans towards the authoritarian - i.e. deference to the dictatorship of our “selflessness-orientated” genes. I see no need for that. My vision of a united humanity is more like the group of stamp-collectors. Love feels good. Self-interest, once we are liberated from our neurosis, propels - rather than compels - us to it.

Bruce Lipton gives a much better presentation of the idea of the development of order within living systems on the way to a united humanity than Griffith does. You can find it in his book Spontaneous Evolution: Our Positive Future (And a Way to Get There from Here) : https://www.brucelipton.com/books/spontaneous-evolution

Asking for Everything Is the Best Way to Get Nothing

Griffith goes on and on about how the theme of existence is “unconditional selflessness”. All the wonders of nature are only possible because the parts of each organism are willing to die in service of the whole. Little if no acknowledgement of the benefits the whole provides to the part. Who would want any of this depressing view of existence?

The desire to cooperate and be in loving communion with others arises naturally. We go down that path, when our character armour doesn’t stand in the way, because it feels good to do so. But what if someone told us that that road led to martyrdom - to the sacrifice of our life for the common good? We might shrink back from it altogether. Sure, people do give their lives for others. But we needn’t expect a willingness to do that from all in order to benefit from their capacity to cooperate in less extreme ways.

This is the nature of idealism - to hold up the ultimate and, in so doing, to drive us away from the centre and towards the other extreme. Most of us can be reasonably cooperative and loving. To what degree depends on our level of self-acceptance. When the words “unconditionally selfless” are bandied about our self-acceptance is liable to be undermined. Reasonably co-operative and loving doesn’t seem to be enough. So we are driven away from our midway position, perhaps into the state of depression (a form of suffering which makes us more selfish) or into a state of defensive hostility against the one who implicitly criticises us by holding up this, for us, unreachable ideal.

Now Griffith is not simply advocating “unconditional selflessness” (or any ideal). He believes that deep down we want to be ideal. What he is trying to do is to remove the impasse to that by providing a defence for our historically non-ideal behaviour. This all makes sense from the point of view of his theoretical concept of the world. It doesn’t work in practice though, because his theory is wrong.

Maybe we will one day have a truly united humanity in which all of the members are willing, if necessary, to give their life for others. But it won’t be because we saw that as a worthy end and strove for it. Love and cooperation bring their own rewards. To be a member of a loving community is to be nurtured with bliss like a baby at it’s mothers breast. It is that bliss that makes the members of that community strong, and only then, with that strength, can come the willingness to give oneself back to the whole.

Read Part 13

Thoughts on Jeremy Griffith's "Freedom : The End of the Human Condition" - Part 11

Is the Conscience the Soul?

Is it our instincts which tell us we are hungry? Isn’t a feeling of hunger transferred directly by our nervous system without any instinctive input? I know that the suggestibility of our mind can effect the process. If we see an ad on television for a food we like we may feel hungry sooner than if we don’t. But does it have anything to do with the instincts? I’m not very knowledgeable in the field of biology so I really don’t know.

But Griffith says :

“I should clarify that that while instincts are hard-wired, genetic programming and as such cannot actually criticise our conscious mind, they can in effect do so. Our instincts let our conscious mind know when our body needs food, or, as our instinctive conscience clearly does, wants us to behave in a cooperative, loving way, and certainly our conscious mind can defy those instinctive orientations if it chooses to. Our conscious mind can feel criticised by our instinctive conscience; it happens all the time.)”

We can certainly feel pangs of conscience, but where is the evidence that that feeling originates in the genes? Guilt is the feeling we have when our self-acceptance is undermined. Is it not a better explanation that our conscience is learned, that it is that part of our ego where we store the moral principles which are instilled into us. When we are unable to meet the dictates of our conscience, the integrity of our ego is to some degree compromised. This is very similar to the experience of having a hurt ego when someone insults us.

And the conscience is not the source of our capacity for love. Far from it. It can be a useful guide to us as long as it isn’t too oppressive, but self-acceptance is the source of our capacity for love. And unconditional self-acceptance brings with it the natural ability to love all others unconditionally. The conscience, being part of our armouring tends to act as a block to the free expression of love, and to the extent that it criticises us it can undermine our self-acceptance and thus limit the love we have to give.

Of the developing child Griffith says : “Imagine, for instance, a situation where a young boy sees a birthday cake on a table and, being new to this business of reasoning thinks, innocently enough, ‘Why shouldn’t I take all the cake for myself’, before doing so. While many mothers actually witness these grand mistakes of pure selfishness that young children make when they first attempt to self-manage their lives, they still have to be reasonably lucky to do so because, once done, the child usually doesn’t make such a completely naive mistake again due to the criticism it attracts from its moral instincts, from its own conscious mind’s awareness of the very obvious integrative, cooperative, selfless theme of existence, and from others present.”

Now I’m not a parent. I don’t remember ever having the opportunity to witness a situation like this. Children certainly respond to criticism of their behaviour from others, but what is the evidence that they experience an internal sense that they have done something wrong before the stage at which, having experienced the criticism of others, they have learned to internalise and second-guess that criticism?

Later he says : “At this point, the intellect also begins experimenting in ways to deny the unwarranted criticism, which, in this initial, unskilled-in-the-art-of-denial stage, takes the form of blatant lying : ‘But Mum, Billy told me to do it’ or, ‘But Mum, the cake accidentally fell in my lap.’ These apparent misrepresentations weren’t actually lies, rather they were inadequate attempts at explanation.”

Sorry. Those are lies. They are not attempts to explain anything. But so what? The pleasure principle propels the child to take the cake (he lacks the insight to realise that there is more pleasure to be had in sharing the cake than in taking it all and getting both a belly-ache and an ear-bashing) and his desire to avoid the suffering involved in being criticised propels him to lie about it. Later he may learn that there is a heavy price to pay for lying as it impedes our ability to experience the pleasure of love, which is far more delicious than chocolate cake.

Griffith is saying that this genetic orientation to selflessness is our “soul” and then he says this about this soul’s reaction to our increasingly “bad” behaviour : “Imagine then what a shock it was for our all-loving, moral instincts when our conscious mind began searching for knowledge and became angry, aggressive, selfish and competitive - our soul would have been mortified, as children are today by the extreme imperfection of human behaviour. Our soul would have been utterly bewildered and distressed, completely overcome with shock and disappointment, absolutely devastated: ‘Why, when all our behaviour has been so cooperative, loving and perfect, and our world so happy and content as a result, are you, our conscious mind, doing this? - this is SO wrong!’”

Now remember, this is a bunch of DNA feeling and saying all of this!

This is a massive imaginary guilt-trip Griffith is trying to load us with here. Yes, he’s given his supposed compassionate defence for why we “had to” become angry, aggressive, selfish etc., but since that is itself based on this bullshit about a genetic conscience, it is not a real defence at all. And since many of us can be very sensitive to criticism regardless of whether or not it has a rational basis, it is this kind of attitude which is liable to impede some people’s ability to think clearly or open up to their capacity for love, as both require unconditional self-acceptence which this kind of stuff is liable to undermine.

It is true that defenceless people can be hurt by our anger, aggression, selfishness, etc. But I think that children are far more tolerant of “imperfection” in human behaviour than adults generally are. It is generally neurotic insecurity which makes us particularly vulnerable to being disturbed by other’s behaviour. Of course we are all liable to be disturbed by aggressive behaviour directed at ourselves or at defenceless individuals. But it is insecure adults who are offended by someone else’s sexuality, manner of dress, etc. There is an interesting passage in the Bible : “To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are corrupted and do not believe, nothing is pure. In fact, both their minds and consciences are corrupted.” Titus 1:15 I don’t believe that the soul is a genetic conscience. I believe that it is the consciousness which inhabits our armoured selves. It is the fearless “I” that looks out through our frightened selves. And to this “I” all things are pure. Fear and disgust and shock and disappointment are functions of our armouring. The naked soul accepts that life unfolds in the only way that it can. Nothing can ever harm it. It will always be there undiminished waiting to bless us when we stop insisting on being unworthy of such a blessing.

Death By His Own Dogma

Griffith expresses great contempt for what he calls “pseudo-idealism”. Because he believes we have a genetic orientation to ideal behaviour and that it has been our responsibility to battle against its repressive insistence on ideal behaviour in order to find self-understanding, he sees three kinds of behaviour - the genuine idealism of the innocent (those not yet corrupted by the search for knowledge); the angry, egocentric, combative behaviour of those engaged in the battle; and the “pseudo-idealistic”, those who have either transcended the battle and adopted some form of non-combative behaviour or those who have adopted some form of ideology based, according to him, on insistence on some kind of ideal behaviour. This might include religion (although he goes easy on that because of its “honest” acknowledgement of “sin”), socialism, feminism, environmentalism, the New Age Movement, political correctness, etc. He sees this behaviour as incredibly selfish because he feels it is driven by the desire for the good feelings which can come by fooling yourself that you are “on the side of the angels”, whereas the responsible thing is to fight against the oppressing ideals even though it makes you feel bad. He has elsewhere, though, claimed that leaving the battle was the responsible thing to do when we become “too upset”.

He has a very stereotyped view of the left wing : “…dogmatic, condemning, ridiculing, escapist, deluded, arrogant, dishonest…” Each of these adjectives applies to some left wing individuals. But some fit none of those labels. Some are orientated around pragmatic attempts to address injustices. How is someone who fights against cutbacks to the education system, interfering with the search for knowledge by doing so? How is someone who fights to expose government corruption being “dogmatic”? How is someone who supports gay marriage being “condemning”? How is someone who tries to draw attention to the problem of global warming being “escapist”? Griffith may say that they are trying to escape from addressing the psychological roots of the problem of global warming. But are those who deny that global warming is even a problem doing any more to address the psychological roots of our condition? And are there not right wing individuals who are “dogmatic” in their religious beliefs, “condemning” of those who chose to have an abortion, “ridiculing” of the left wing, “escapist” in their pursuit of personal wealth at the expense of the wider community and the planet, “deluded” about any number of things, “arrogant”, and “dishonest” in their business dealings? There is no high ground in politics. There are virtues and failings in the individuals on both sides.

But Griffith rails and rails about the dangers of the left wing : “We can now at last appreciate that when we vote this way we are not participating in the true democratic process that human advancement has been dependent upon, we are exploiting it and subverting it. And while many people think that even if feel-good pseudo idealism is not a real form of idealism it is surely harmless, that is most certainly not the case. No, it is extremely bloody-minded, totally selfish and dangerously destructive behaviour that says, ‘I no longer care about the human race, only about finding personal relief from my condition… Certainly, the upset behaviour that resulted from right-wing participation in humanity’s heroic search for knowledge was increasingly bringing about immense human suffering and environmental devastation, but it was the knowledge-oppressing left-wing that posed the real threat to the survival of the human race because only through successfully completing that search for knowledge could humanity be liberated from the upset state of the human condition.”

Let’s compare this to his take on politics in his first and second books :

“In politics, one side of the balance is represented by socialism and the left wing, where obedience to absolutes is stressed, the other by capitalism or the right wing which stresses freedom from absolutes. It is only the dialectic or oscillation between these excesses which reveals the middle ground. At the same time, these oscillations have given rise to alternating bouts of excessive freedom and excessive oppression and thus conflict and argument and polarisation.” Free : The End of the Human Condition, 1988

“There is no longer a left and right wing in politics, only a new form of left wing, completely free of pseudo idealism with its denial of exhaustion. (I stress that these changes won’t be forced. They will happen naturally as we digest and share our new-found understandings. Revolution is not necessary. All we need to do to overcome resistance and suffering is spread the understanding. it will create, not impose, the changes we seek, in ourselves, in others and in the world, and alleviate the world’s distress.)

“What was missing from the New Age, Environment and Women’s Liberation movements was the means to self-confront.” Beyond the Human Condtion, 1991

This comparison reveals the degree to which a refusal on the part of the world at large to accept his “understandings” has caused Griffith to become increasingly angry and embattled.

The Griffith of the 80s might have looked at our current political situation and been able to see that, even from the perspective of his incorrect explanation for the human condition, any of the behaviours he decries in the left wing, in those instances where they apply, are as one would expect. If those he terms “pseudo-idealists” are in a state of alienation as he says, then of course we would expect them to be either escapist (not acknowledging the severity of the world’s problems) or angry and condemning of the right-wing, after all, as he acknowledges, the behaviour of the right-wing is causing tremendous suffering and endangering the planet. If they are alienated, transcending their embattled ego, then of course they are not going to be consciously aware of the underlying psychological reason why right-wing behaviour is meaningful or necessary. The old Griffith addressed himself to everyone. He wanted everyone to understand each other. But more and more he appears to have abandoned attempts to reach the left or those he calls “pseudo-idealists” generally. His tirade against the left may appeal to right wing individuals, but is hardly likely to encourage the left to believe that he has a genuinely compassionate understanding of their position.

How did this change take place? Griffith set out to find a liberating understanding of the human condition. As he once said, a lot of people set off across that mine-field, and they reach some mine which blows them up, something in their character which acts as a barrier to them going any further. (I’m paraphrasing. I can’t remember his exact wording.) He felt that he made it all the way across that mine-field and could lead the rest of us after him. He didn’t. There was one final step which would have blown him up. He was an extreme idealist. He could accept the idea that we might have an idealism-demanding genetic orientation which was oppressive to the search for knowledge, and that the egotistical, aggressive and selfish behaviour he saw around him was a necessary defence against that oppressiveness. After all, that was what he was looking for. He knew we weren’t bad. And that certainly seemed like a viable explanation. But he didn’t call it a theory. He called it “the understandings”. And he didn’t try to disprove it. In fact he enthusiastically declared that it was the final and be-all complete understanding we had all been looking for. That kind of declarative faith can often be a defence. Subconsciously, we know there is something else out there. Something the existence of which we don’t even dare allow ourselves to contemplate. After all, if someone did achieve a complete understanding of the human condition they would have a quiet confidence in its effectiveness. They wouldn’t declare to the world that it was the be-all and end-all explanation. They would present it as an interesting theory confident that, if it were the truth, then, as Teilhard De Chardin said, it would be impossible for “anything ever to prevent it from spreading universally and setting everything ablaze.” 

That final step, which would have destroyed him, was the realisation that we don’t have an idealism-demanding genetic orientation, that idealism itself as a social phenomena was the root of the problem. What he really needed was a defence for himself. He could deal with the idea that he had, with his idealism, unwittingly been causing those around to have to be egotistical, aggressive, selfish etc., as long as he could defend himself by blaming his idealism on his genes. Not only did he not have to feel personally responsible, he could believe that the problem would still be there without him as we all had something like him inside us, doing the same thing. How he became an extreme idealist if we don’t have a genetic orientation to it, I don’t know, but his theory has been built as an elaborate way of trying to evade that question.

So Griffith tied himself in a knot. He needed the world to accept his theory because if it didn’t he would end up confronted with that self-destroying truth he couldn’t face. The more embattled he became the more he saw his dilemma projected in the world around him. Unable to acknowledge his need to evade the truth, he told the rest of us that we were being evasive. The more his unworkable hypothesis rigidified into a dogma the more he saw the world facing “death by dogma”. He saw the world giving way to “exhaustion”. From 1999 to 2009 he suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome.

The good news is that, with the unravelling of his psychosis, all the world’s madness can unravel, as the idealism of which he has been an embodiment has always been the central problem.

Read Part 12

Thoughts on Jeremy Griffith's "Freedom : The End of the Human Condition" - Part 10

Darwin vs. Wallace

Griffith points out that “Darwin’s associates, Herbert Spencer and Alfred Russel Wallace, persuaded him to substitute the term ‘natural selection’ with the term ‘survival of the fittest’” in this letter from Wallace : http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/entry-5140

He says that this made possible the “Social Darwinism” excuse for our competitive behaviour.

I’m not very well-informed on Darwin, Wallace and Spencer, but from what I have been able to discover via Wikipedia, and a reading of Wallace’s letter, the attribution of such a motive to Wallace seems inappropriate. Spencer was the proponent of Social Darwinism. It was his term which Wallace recommended to Darwin, but Wallace’s stated reason was that too many people interpreted “natural selection” as implying that Darwin was saying that there is a conscious spirit within nature which makes a selection. They didn’t understand that talk of nature “choosing” something was merely metaphorical. “Survival of the fittest” has an inevitability about it which in no way suggests the involvement of an intelligence.

One could argue that that was Spencer’s stated argument, but that subconsciously he wanted something which would enable us to feel more comfortable about our competitive behaviour. The problem with such an interpretation is that Wallace’s articulation of the theory of natural selection which was formulated simultaneously and independently of Darwin’s and presented jointly with it, did not emphasise competition between individuals in the way that Darwin’s did. According to Wikipedia : “Darwin emphasised competition between individuals of the same species to survive and reproduce, whereas Wallace emphasised environmental pressures on varieties and species forcing them to become adapted to their local conditions, leading populations in different locations to diverge.”

Maybe Griffith’s argument would be more consistent if he said that our need to find an excuse for our competitive behaviour is why the sounder articulation of Wallace was supplanted by Darwin’s more “evasive” competition-emphasising version.

Are We Genetically Selfish or Genetically Selfless or Neither?

I feel no compulsion to perpetuate my genes. And I am just as likely if not more likely to do something to help someone I’m not related to than someone I am. So the idea that genetic selfishness is a major factor in my behaviour, as it supposedly is in other animals, seems unsupported.

If other animals are genetically selfish, and we are not, then how did this occur? Griffith has an explanation, but it seems to be more than is really needed.

Our nurturing period is longer than other animals, presumably because our ancestors lived in a food-rich environment which provided them with more leisure time to care for their infants, as Griffith suggests. He claims this led to the development of a hardwired genetic orientation toward loving selflessness.

Why would that be necessary?

In other animals a harsh environment means that they have to begin concentrating early on the battle to survive. There minds have to be focused on this. Only many many generations of relative freedom from the battle to survive, living in a leisurely nurturing environment, provided the space necessary for the brain’s potential to form new pathways not strictly limited to the needs of day-to-day survival. So we developed intelligence and the ability to reason.

Now animals have to blindly follow their instincts. They have no choice. Having an intelligent brain means we don’t have to follow our genetic impulses if we don’t want to. We can breed or not breed. It’s up to us. The brain brings with it other things to do which can be equally, if not more meaningful. To discover something which is helpful to the group, such as a new source of food, may give us a more meaningful kind of heritage than simply breeding. Finding understanding and communicating on a higher level are imperatives which come from the mind which can smoothly coexist with or over-ride a genetic imperative to perpetuate our genes.

Why would a cooperative past for our species require a genetic orientation towards cooperation? Cooperation is what feels best when we are not selfish. It can easily be motivated by the pleasure principle. Now selfishness is the natural self-directedness of the suffering individual. That suffering can be from an injury or physical sickness, it can be from hunger, thirst or cold, it could be from frustration in our attempts to perpetuate our genes, but for we humans, as often as not, the suffering which makes us selfish is neurotic suffering. Neurotic suffering arises from compromised self-acceptance. The most powerful underminer of self-acceptance is idealism which tells us : “You are unacceptable in some way.” Because the kind of behaviour which idealism criticises is generally defensive behaviour, with offence sometimes seeming the best defence, idealism sets up a negative feedback loop which generates more anti-social behaviour.

Of course things like food shortages, harsh living environments and physical disease might compromise our cooperativeness to some degree, but in the absence of idealism-bred neurosis we would have a good chance of maintaining our solidarity in the face of such challenges, because love - open, honest, spontaneous and generous communication - is such a richly rewarding pleasure-giving experience that we would sacrifice much to maintain access to it. At its deepest level it makes us know that we are life itself, so we may feel we will really lose nothing if we have to give our life because of it.

So no genetic orientation to selflessness is needed to explain the human condition. It all began with a single “mistake” which our conscious minds made. That mistake was deciding that it was meaningful to try, by an act of will, to avoid certain behaviours which we called “evil” and pursue other behaviours which we called “good”. We placed conditions on our love of ourselves and others and thus undermined the unconditional love which is the normal healthy state of any intelligent mind.

Idealism can be understood as a conceptual virus which has plagued humanity and in Griffith’s defiant attempts to “confront us” with our “non-ideal state and behaviour” we see it in its most virulent form. We humans have arrived at a desperate place. Conflict, social breakdown, ecological collapse… These are all real. But Griffith’s ideas are not the solution, they are the very distillation of the problem. What he brings us is poison labelled as medicine.

Read Part 11

Thoughts on Jeremy Griffith's "Freedom : The End of the Human Condition" - Part 9

Confirmation Bias

This is how science works. We look at an accumulation of data. We try to come up with an hypothesis to explain that data. And then we try to disprove our hypothesis. This is how we test it. We hunt for any possible data which might be an exception to our rule. And we ask ourselves if any other hypothesis might better explain the data.

What we don’t do is to set out to find evidence for our hypothesis. The process of trying to disprove it will provide extra evidence in every case in which we fail to disprove it. But if we want to arrive at the truth we have to apply the principles of the survival of the fittest. We have to make it harder for our hypothesis not easier if we want to really test it.

When someone comes up with an hypothesis and then sets out to find evidence to back it up or to help them persuade others of its truthfulness, that is what we call confirmation bias. Because we already have the tendency to filter the information coming in to us from the world around us through our character armour, and our belief system is a part of that armour, we are very prone to confirmation bias. This is why conspiracy theories are often so persuasive. We see the data which tends to support the theory, but we filter out all of the data which contradicts it.

Griffith takes confirmation bias to new extremes. He has sifted through our culture looking for brief quotes which he can present, often incomplete and out of context, to back up his hypothesis. While he does give his own spin to scientific data gathered by others, he spends an awful lot of time in the realms of philosophy and religion. These are valid realms of human thought, but they rely largely upon the test of whether the statements they contain resonate with the psyche of the reader. Given the unreliability of the psyche, they lack the objectivity we look for, but don’t always find, in science. Something said by Plato or Jesus may correspond with our beliefs, or contemplation upon it may open up new vistas of insight to us, but this is a personal experience which cannot necessarily be transmitted to others. Science deals with empirical facts not metaphysical descriptions.

And the case of Goya’s The Sleep of Reason shows that Griffith is not just committed to sifting data in search of support for his hypothesis, and evading any data which contradicts it, but is capable of actually misreading the English language in order to do so.

The divided self sees in others a projection of its own denied nature. When anyone tries to criticise Griffith’s hypothesis - for instance pointing out, as one critic has, that Griffith’s claim that the Bushmen of the Kalahari are “Christ-like” is thrown into question by the fact that they had a very high murder rate before coming under the influence of missionaries - he will accuse them of being “evasive” and “embattled”. But is he not the one being evasive and is he not the one who is embattled, desperately scrabbling for anything he can use to fortify his hypothesis and attacking the credibility of anyone who disagrees with him?

He may not be wrong that scientists and science journals to whom he has sent examples of his work are “confronted” by it. The criticism of idealism has a tendency to undermine our self-acceptance. They may have looked at his work with the distaste many of us show for Bible tracts full of declarations of our sinful nature.

But they are right to reject them because Griffith is a very poor scientist who places too much emphasis on ideas from outside the realm of science - philosophy and religion - and allows confirmation bias to contaminate any of his attempts to interpret genuine scientific research.

The Difference Between an Explanation and a Defence

The human neurosis is a disease. If someone comes to a doctor suffering from cancer, what does he do? Does he tell them how brave they were to develop cancer? Of course not. He uses his understanding of the condition to cure it.

Our neurosis consists of our insecurity and the armouring we adopt to protect ourselves in the light of it. The condition itself is a defensive one.

Griffith feels that what we need to cure the human condition is a “defence for humanity”. He feels that what we need to know is that we have been tremendous heroes for defying our genetic conscience’s oppressive insistence that we conform to the ideals, something which, had we done it to too great a degree, would have kept us from ever finding liberating understanding of our condition.

This is a problem. The part of us which may want to believe we are heroic is our character armour. Griffith’s approach to liberating is to reinforce the cage which is holding us prisoner in the first place. What we need is to feel that the self within the armour is securely acceptable, then we won’t need it. When Griffth tells us we are heroes he is pumping us up just like Anthony Robbins. When Griffith expresses contempt for the human potential movement that Robbins and others represent, he is projecting onto them the disowned truth that he is using the same strategy.

But someone like Anthony Robbins just tries to pump people up. He doesn’t think that, by doing so, he can get them to give up being competitive and selfish. He doesn’t put people in a double bind situation. Griffith does. By confronting us with his extreme idealism he undermines our self-acceptance and increases our need for our armour. Then he makes an appeal to that armour - telling us how brave we are to be wearing it. And he wonders why his acknowledgement of its validity hasn’t allowed us to take it off.

This situation arises because Griffith misdiagnoses our condition. He believes that criticising idealism comes from our biological nature and that the mind is the source of our antagonism against idealism, and he believes that our erotic impulses are a product of the mind’s insecurity in the face of that biological nature, a way to attack it for its criticism of us. But idealism arises from the mind. Antagonism to it arises both from the mind and from the body. Idealism restricts free thought and thus it does have to be resisted to find understanding. Idealism can also become intolerant of the body’s natural drives, such as the erotic, which is not principally the drive to reproduce, but rather the prime motivating force of life itself, the seeking of pleasure and love. So there are two impasses to us achieving liberation from the human condition. One is the need to recognise the toxic nature of idealism, which promised to be the road to heaven but was actually the road to hell. The other impasse, resulting from the first, the need to embrace the healing power of the erotic, distinguishing it from the twisted forms which sex has often taken due to our armouring.

Jesus had insight into this situation. In emphasising that God forgives us he recognised that our “sinfulness” was defensive. He didn’t say that we were heroic for being sinners. He said we were forgiven. An acquittal ends a court case much faster than a better defence lawyer.

If our aggressiveness, egotism, selfishness and alienation are heroic, was Jeffrey Dahmer expressing heroism when he raped, killed and dismembered seventeen men and boys and indulged in necrophilia and cannibalism with their corpses? Of course Griffith will talk about the need to exercise restraint and to “leave the battle” when we are too upset. But if someone like Dahmer was capable of restraint or “leaving the battle”, wouldn’t he have done so? What kind of defence of humans is it which leaves some humans, even those whose deeds are as extreme as Dahmer’s, undefended?

But Dahmer’s behaviour doesn’t have to be defended any more than cancer has to be defended. As William Burrough’s pointed out “The face of “evil” is always the face of absolute need.” We can know that the circumstances of Dahmer’s life - his experiences and the ideas with which he came in contact - eroded his self-acceptance in such a way that he was forced to adopt an extreme form of character armour which compelled him to commit these crimes. We need only know what the disease is and how to treat it and prevent it in future.

I think the importance Griffith puts on our “immense heroism” is once again a case of projection. He has committed himself to hanging onto what he believes to be the truth in the face of all temptations to compromise. Deep down he must feel that he is a hero for doing this. Yet he insists that we are the battling heroes. And the appeal of supporting him may often lie in the same direction. His supporters can clothe themselves in the armour of the warriors for a new and unpopular idea.

Read Part 10