Collin Gow, C.N.C.

Freedom: The End of the Human Condition

and The Beginning of a Loving

and Unconditionally Selfless World
 

            Freedom: The End of the Human Condition, by the Australian Biologist, Jeremy Griffith, is a complex, substantial, monumental work, and espoused, "breakthrough biological explanation of the human condition". It’s prime supporter, the former President of the Canadian Psychiatric Association, Professor Harry Prosen, has been quoted as saying, “I have no doubt that Jeremy Griffith's biological explanation of the human condition is the holy grail of insight we have sought for the psychological rehabilitation of the human race. This is the book we have been waiting for, it is the book that saves the world." In the book, Griffith reveals that the human condition is the sole psychological issue that humans deal with and the main reason for all of the problems on earth. He details the history of the development of the human condition and its biological causes, makes us aware of the havoc it has wrought upon us, then sets us free to live in line with our better natures. The theme at the center of the human condition, and consequently, of the book, is selfishness vs. selflessness. Jeremy shows us that we are naturally, biologically, loving and selfless, and that living selflessly...is in harmony with the true meaning of life. Some topics Jeremy covers in the book to get to that end are: negentropy, anthropology, the physiological, morphological, and behavioral differences between chimpanzees and bonobos and how those differences compare to humans, the morphology of ancient hominids, evolutionary psychology, the origin of our moral instincts, the ordinary limits of gene-based natural selection, instinct vs. intellect/conscience vs. conscious, the battle of the sexes, the problems with other pseudo-idealistic movements like religion, socialism, communism, feminism, political correctness, environmentalism, etc., and what he calls the "Transformed Lifeforce Way of Living".

            I found Freedom, and Griffith's explanation, to be interesting, long-winded, somewhat complicated and convoluted yet simple, yin within yang and yang within yin, dipolar or double-edged, counterintuitive at points, a tad contradictory, difficult, and confusing, rebellious, excessively repetitious, lacking some editing, bigheaded, overwrought, audacious, borderline vainglorious (the author is almost declaring himself a prophet or messiah), yet down to earth, anthropological, psychological, and as Griffith himself has said—"non-abstract, non-mystical, rational, scientific, and biological", as well as important and valuable. The pertinence of its message is reflected in the fact that I am writing this article on it. After all, I do think the world would be a much better place if we could all be more informed (especially about anthropology, psychology, science, and nature), more moral, and more selfless, as the author promotes, which is to say, in my opinion, more mature. Jeremy would agree with the maturity part, as the book professes to help the maturation of the human race. In this particular case, and in many other cases, I think that Jeremy's diction is spot on. I get the feeling that his word choice was carefully thought out. I wish there was a bit more hard science in Jeremy's book, though, to back up his arguments, instead of so many monotonous, unexciting quips and quotes from pop culture songs, films, and T.V. shows. Because of this, to me, the book leans towards the softer sciences, which almost lends itself to false advertising, being that it harps on the idea that it's a "biological explanation". I also find some of the missing, proper grammar and the very unconventional and super long compound words to be a little off-putting at first, but only at first (my grammar is never perfect nor totally conventional either). However, there are many positives. Anyhow, the Transformed Lifeforce Way of Living, which only makes up about 2% of the book, yet I liked nevertheless, has some admitted similarities with a religious movement. That, along with the book's down to earth focus on biology, primates, morality, soul, psyche, and human consciousness, is why this article about it has landed here, on my Naturotheology website. I can't blame Freedom for its somewhat bombastic style and verbose length, nearly all wannabe geniuses are puffed up with the self-importance of their work, how else would they have the chance of becoming legitimate geniuses if it weren't so? And, as a friend of mine said about the book, all scientists want to make an air-tight case for their proposition. I'm very long-winded myself, but probably a lot less repetitious than Jeremy. In the spirit of Freedom, however, I will not worry about being too loquacious or excessively repetitious in this article.

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Summary/Synopsis

            The premise and story-line of the book goes like this: humans once lived a Garden of Eden-like existence, as seen in matriarchal bonobo societies today and hominids of the past, where we were instinctively loving, nurturing, and relatively unconditionally selfless and had no shame of our nakedness. Bonobos are the closest living representation of that paradise before it was lost, as their morphology and behavior demonstrates these characteristics. This state we lived in was great until consciousness emerged around 2 million years ago, along with the subsequent human condition—the state we now find ourselves in wherein we are feeling/behaving, to various degrees, alienated, egocentric, selfish, angry, competitive, and aggressive. When the conscious mind, the intellect, emerged, our instinctive self, our conscience, unjustly condemned our intellect as "bad" for veering off the instinctual path. Our conscious mind's reaction to this condemnation has caused us to be egotistical, selfish, and angry, and to seek the wrong, vain pursuits such as power, fame, money, success, glory, and fortune to prove our worth and to prove that we are not bad. So, our animal instincts are not the evil side of us humans, as science would have it, they are not the cause of our alienated, egotistical, selfish, angry, and aggressive ways, the conscious mind is (though there's really no such thing as good and evil as commonly conceived of by religions, for instance). But our conscious mind had to search for knowledge to understand why we should do a certain thing that our instincts tell us to do, and this search, while it caused our human condition, was heroic and necessary. This conscious mind and instinct dichotomy has caused humans a lot of psychological trouble. Through the understanding of this human condition that Freedom brings, through recognizing that we are actually good, not bad, and through realizing that the search for knowledge was necessary, yet now over, because the book solves the human condition, we are free and ready to live in the way that reflects our true, unconditionally selfless selves.
 

The Human Condtion

            As I said, the human condition is defined by Griffith as a situation where humans are, to various degrees, feeling/behaving in an alienated, upset, angry, egotistical, savage, ruthless, competitive, aggressive, and selfish way. This condition defines our species. In a nutshell, it came about when consciousness emerged around 2 million years ago and a war broke out between our conscious mind and our instincts.

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Adam Stork

            Griffith illustrates the human condition and the psychological duress brought about by it with the story of a stork named Adam. Imagine a stork named Adam instinctively migrates north each summer with other storks along the coast of Africa to Europe to breed, as some storks do. Normally he would just follow his instincts and do exactly that. But what if Adam stork was capable of conscious thought? He would begin to think for himself, but the ideas he has would be in contrast or conflict with his instincts. For example, while migrating north he may spot an island full of apple trees and make a conscious decision to veer off course to go eat those apples. When Adams’ instincts realize that he has strayed from his instinctual migratory flight path, they will chastise him and dogmatically try to pull him back on course. His instincts are going to condemn him as being bad for going against them. But Adam can’t go back to just obeying his instincts because his instincts are orientations, they are not understandings, and the conscious mind requires understandings. At this point, a war will break out between Adam’s conscious mind and his instincts. And Adam, being only in the beginning of his search for knowledge and learning how to cope with having a conscious mind, isn’t fully aware that what is being explained here is the cause of his psychologically distressed condition, he just vaguely knows that he feels bad. In searching for understanding, Adam is either going to retaliate against the criticism from his instincts, seek out reinforcement to relieve himself of the negative feelings, or deny the criticism and block it out of his mind/resign himself to denial. Adam’s ego or intellect will become “focused on the need to justify itself” and “selfishly preoccupied, aggressively competing for opportunities to prove he’s good and not bad”, to validate his worth and bring him relief from his accusing instincts. These approaches, along with not having sufficient knowledge to explain why he is defying/denying his instincts are going to make him angry, egocentric, and alienated—the psychologically upset state that is the human condition. This is the price humans had to pay to undergo our heroic search for self-understanding. We had to lose ourselves to find ourselves and “march into hell for a heavenly cause”.

The Meaning/Purpose of Life

            In Jeremy’s ethos, the purpose of life, or, the meaning of existence, contrary to the conventional view in science, is “to develop ever larger and more stable wholes of matter”/"the ordering or integration or complexification of matter into larger and more stable wholes". According to Griffith, Negative Entropy (negentropy), also known as the Second Path of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, 'states that in an open system, where energy can come into the system from outside it, matter integrates; it develops order. Thus, subject to the influence of Negative Entropy, the 94 elements from which our world is built develop ever larger and more stable wholes.' Griffith lists the following examples of negentropy: two hydrogen atoms came together with one oxygen atom to form the stable relationship that is water, then larger molecules and compounds developed, eventually marcro compounds formed, and these integrated to form virus-like organisms, which integrated to form single-celled organisms, which integrated to form multicellular organisms, which in turn integrated to form societies of single species that continue to form stable, ordered arrangements of different species.' Here's the kicker: being loving and unselfish is integrative, it maintains wholes, whereas being selfish is divisive and disintegrative. So, the purpose of life is to "live in accordance with this integrative, order-of-matter-developing, cooperation-and-selfless-behavior-dependent theme or meaning of existence." We came from a place of being naturally loving and unselfish, and should return to that, now that Jeremy's work has ended the search for the understanding of the human condition and the battle is won.

            Where does God fit into this picture? To Griffith, "God" is simply our personification of the Negative Entropy-driven truth of integrative meaning. Knowing this, we demystify God and instead of being God-fearing we become God-confronting. Furthermore, the instinct vs. intellect explanation of the human condition can account for, and reconciles, all of the unresolved manifestations of the polarities of the human situation such as good vs evil, religion vs science, conscience vs conscious, communism vs capitalism, altruism vs egotism, etc. Because the human race is now afflicted with a psychologically upset, competitive, aggressive, and selfish condition, the negentropy-driven, integrative, cooperative, loving, selfless, order-developing theme/purpose of existence has been an almost unbearable, unconfrontable, condemning truth. We have been so unable to face this truth and deal with it on any equal footing that we deified the concept as "God". And since we couldn't understand our human condition, we had to leave the religious concept of God in a "safely abstract, undefined state". Meanwhile, human-condition-avoiding, mechanistic science came along and denied the condemning truth of integrative meaning and God by saying that there is no meaning or purpose to existence, and that change is random, purposeless, directionless, and meaningless. While science denied the human condition, at least religion exposed it, but, at the same time, made other mistakes. Therefore, so far, "in the absence of the explanation as to why we, as a species, appear to be so at odds with the integrative meaning of life, we humans have sensibly taken one of two options: we either practiced denial of Integrative Meaning, and even of God, and thus of the issue of our self-corruption, or we indirectly acknowledged our self-corruption by acknowledging the existence of God and embracing some expression of faith that a greater dignifying understanding of our divisive condition does exist and would one day be found. To cope with our less-than-ideal human condition there has only ever been either denial or faith." We no longer need to pick one of those routes, however, now that the human condition has been revealed and that negentropy or God found a way to integrate us into a larger, more stable whole. We can now choose to let go of our angry, aggressive, competitive, egotistical, selfish ways and be our all-loving, altruistic, moral instinctive selves.

            It is normally not possible for sexually reproducing individuals to become fully, unconditionally selfless and integrated to form the next, larger, more stable whole, the "Specie Individual", because each individual normally has to compete and fight selfishly to ensure the reproduction of its genes (gene-based natural selection). Genes can’t normally select for unconditionally selfless, fully cooperative traits because such traits normally are self-eliminative. Selfish natural selection will always exploit selflessness. However, our ape ancestors, the bonobos, were able to achieve the feat of selfless integration through maternalism—nurturing and love-indoctrination. And we humans are more similar to bonobos than we are to competitive, aggressive, angry, selfish, warring, brutal Chimpanzees, whom obviously did not achieve the feat.
 

The Origin of Our Moral Insticts, Nurturing, and Love-Indoctrination

            Our loving, moral instincts, Jeremy argues, backed by historian and philosopher John Fiske, were spawned from our prolonged, nurtured infancy. Bipedalism, ideal nursery conditions (such as plentiful food and lack of predators), and more maternal mothers allowed for the prolongation of infancy and nurturing and aided in the completion of love indoctrination and the development of our moral instincts. Without these 3 components, love-indoctrination would not have been achieved. When nurturing an infant you take care of it, you feed it, you protect it, you play with it, you teach it, and to the infant this is all seen as unconditional kindness or unconditional love. This is love-indoctrination. It’s not that love-indoctrinated humans’ or human ancestors’ nurturing was actually totally loving and unselfish, on the contrary, maternalism is actually selfish because the mother is maintaining the survival of her genes by caring for her infant. But, the key is, this nurturing APPEARED to be unconditionally kind and selfless from the viewpoint of the infant. The fact that we were love-indoctrinated and have more developed moral instincts, is the principal element that makes humans and bonobos great and different to other animals. "The moral sense perhaps affords the best and highest distinction between man and the lower animals" —Darwin. We achieved or nearly achieved complete love-indoctrination in the past, and that is an extremely difficult and rare thing to achieve among species. Even though we are afflicted with our human condition, we are still, along with bonobos, representations of good cooperation. The cooperative behavior of ants and bees is different than humans, however. Those colonies can be explained by kin selection theory, while humans cannot.

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Chimpanzees, Bonobos, and Humans

            Griffith rewrites the narrative that science has drilled into us, that our natural, animal instincts are to be selfish, aggressive, competitive, egotistical, brutal, in essence, bad. Instead they are unconditionally selfless, nurturing, kind, and cooperative, good. He blames some of this brainwashing, that our animal instincts are bad, on the fact that science, in the past, has looked at the Chimpanzee as our closest relatives and compared our animal instincts with them, while it has ignored the Bonobos, once called Pygmy Chimpanzees, on the opposite side of the Congo river. While the Chimpanzees are egotistical, selfish, aggressive, killing, patriarchal-ruled animals, the bonobos maintain a matriarchy and are more cooperative, selfless, and human-like. There are a number of biological explanations for this situation and for these differences and similarities given in Freedom, which I enjoyed. A few other explanations I found a bit weak, shaky, contradictory, convoluted or overly-simplistic, or lacking in hard evidence.

            It was fascinating to me that bonobos and humans' canines are smaller and more similar to each other than to Chimpanzees’, due to females having begun positively selecting less aggressive males around 7 mya-4.4 mya who would aid in nurturing. Canine size is apparently an indication of how aggressive and competitive males are with each other for females, and male bonobos, unlike chimpanzees, do aid a lot in nurturing their young. Reduced sexual body size dimorphism in our human ancestors and bonobos, compared with other animals, probably shows less aggressive competition and conflict between males as well. Also, selection for neoteny (youthful, child-like features such as a rounded, dome-like head, snub nose, large eyes, relatively hairless body, and weak prognathism) can be seen in the skulls and morphology of bonobos and humans and not so much in Chimpanzees. Younger mates were selected for as far back as Ardipithecus ramidus 4.4 MYA and among bonobos, because the younger the bonobo/human ancestor, the more love-indoctrinated, i.e. the more cooperative and selfless. Neotenous features, therefore, became seen as beautiful, and being selected for, led to the neotenous features present in humans and bonobos today. I learned that further evidence of bonobos being less aggressive and more cooperative can be seen in the fact that they can coexist in much larger disparate groups than chimpanzees, like humans can. Chimpanzees are too savage and warring to tolerate too many outsiders. Hunting, physical violence, and infanticide are rare among bonobos too. These, along with other biological explanations are evidence of the love-indoctrination process and a more cohesive social structure that occurred in our human ancestors.

            I also enjoyed that the whole, coming-out-onto-the-grasslands-of-the-African-savannah-coincided-with-the-big-changes-in-humans idea was thrown out the window and flipped on its head as well. Jeremy and other scientists he mentioned hold that we actually were living more in woodland-type, forest habitats, with open countryside in the vicinity, during this time.

            I didn’t know that Bonobos are the most vocal and the most bipedal of the great apes either.

            Probably the most common thing known about bonobos is the ample amounts of unashamed sex they have and the tabooness of its many forms and combinations it occurs in, compared to how repressed that is in humans. Adults have sex with juveniles, homosexual relations occur, incest happens, and heterosexual relations occur too. Bonobos seem to solve a lot of their problems and keep the peace through sex. I had my own biological thought while I was reading this part about bonobos in the book. I thought to myself, “I bet the amount of sex that bonobos have contributed greatly to the love-indoctrination process because they would all have so much serotonin and oxytocin flowing through their bodies, as these chemicals are released in higher quantities after having sex”. Oxytocin is referred to as the “bonding hormone”, “the moral molecule”, and the “orgasm hormone”, it stimulates bonding and nurturing. PEA, which can be found in chocolate and blue-green algae, can also increase oxytocin. I was recalling the research I had done for a video I made on the subject of oxytocin a few years back, which can still be watched on my Collin Chi youtube channel. Hugs also increase oxytocin. One thing that puzzled me about all this sex, however, is that the author states in the book that bonobos only have offspring once every 6 years. I'm not sure how that's possible if there's so much sex going on. Maybe there are a lot of times during the year when the females just aren't fertile or something. I do not know.
 

The Battle of the Sexes

            According to the author, prior to the emergence of the conscious mind and the human condition, things were more matriarchal where males were living more in harmony with females. Post emergence, males were tasked with finding the answers that the conscious mind required, to finding understanding, and were perhaps more psychologically tormented by their instinctual self, and later by women, than women were, because of this. While men have been cast as the villains, they were actually the heroes of society and had to champion the ego, the intellect, until understanding could be found. It is now found. Meanwhile, females needed to stay innocent and loving in order to nurture the next generations and so were left out of the search and left in a more naive or unaware world of their own. The search men had to undergo corrupted them in a way, not in the sense that it made them bad, but it made them bad in the eyes of their conscience and the eyes of women and to themselves; it corrupted them in that they lost their innocence. Not knowing directly the cause of this, they became very upset. Women being left out of this battle couldn’t understand what the battle entailed and the horror it did to men and so were unsympathetic towards the battle and towards the frustrated anger and egocentricity it produced in men. This situation caused women to misunderstand men on the whole and unjustly condemn them. Men were cast as the villains, as I said. Men, in turn, now spend all of their time trying to appease the guilt of their corrupted, or perceived corrupted, state through seeking power, glory, fame, fortune, success, etc. to prove their worth. Men took up the battle against the ignorance of the instinctive self, within the conscious mind, to master the conscious mind, when consciousness emerged, and they eventually became the leaders of society and built skyscrapers. No great works of art, literature, or music have been produced by women for these reasons, according to Griffith. A quote was offered, “If civilization had been left in female hands, we would still be living in grass huts.” —Camille Paglia. Men eventually began to hate and oppress women (though women weren't the original victims of men's upset, animals and nature were) because women represented the conscience, the ignorant instinctive self, soul, innocence, integrative meaning, selflessness, which was always chastising and threatening the conscious mind (men) and its search for knowledge. Men, being the protectors they are from marauding leopards and such, took up the role of protecting the conscious mind, the ego, from the threat. Winning the battle against ignorance became our species' priority and, slowly but surely, society became patriarchal.

            It should also be mentioned, as Griffith said, that, innocence was "two-sided". While innocence condemned and upset men, who therefore had to attack it, "it was also an inspirational reminder of the soulful, true world they were fighting to reinstate by finding the understanding that would stop the upsetting criticism of them and the human race as a whole." Sex was an attack on innocence on the one hand, an act of aggression, yet it also released a lot of frustration and on a nobler level became an act of love and women a source of inspiration. The beauty of women came to be powerfully attractive and inspiring for men because women, with their now neotenous features, represented innocence, represented our now lost pure world, but men were only falling in love with the image of innocence, as women are no longer truly psychologically innocent because their innocence, their souls, have been corrupted and destroyed by sex/men. So, it's been a terrible predicament for women too. While their image of innocence was being cultivated for 2 million years, their actual innocence was being destroyed. Their situation has been difficult because "they have had to try to 'sexually comfort' men but also preserve as much true innocence in themselves as possible to nurture the next generation." "Having to inspire love when they were no longer loving or innocent, and attempt to nurture a new generation—all the while dominated by men who couldn't explain why they were dominating, what they were actually doing or why they were so upset and angry—was, in truth, more than extremely difficult, it was an altogether impossible task, and yet women have done it for 2 million years." "So while men's situation has been horrible, so has women's; and, just as men have yearned for freedom from their oppressor, ignorance, so women have yearned for freedom from their oppressors, men". To Griffith, feminists have been wrong about men and have exacerbated the gulf between the sexes and only superficially improved a woman's lot. Through the necessary role that men and women had to play to win the battle against the ignorance of our instinctive moral soul (men=intellect, ego, conscious mind | women=soul, instinctive self), and with the battle now won, the sexes and their horrible situation can be reconciled and "peace can begin". A dreamed of society that is neither matriarchal or patriarchal can now start. If it sounds like I am saying "with the battle now won" or "with the battle now over" a lot, it is only because Griffith says it a million times throughout the book himself, so I'm writing from the Griffith consciousness. Also, a caveat here is, while I agree with a lot of what Griffith says about the major problem between men and women, I don't entirely agree with everything Griffith states about the subject; he goes off the deep end a little bit towards the end of the chapter on men and women in his book, I think.

            

The Transformed Lifeforce Way of Living

            98% of Freedom discusses the evolution of the human condition, particularly the psychological and biological history of it, while repeating that it has solved the human condition and we are “free at last”, while the last 2% discusses how to transform into living with the new understanding that the solution brings. The author refers to this next step as the Transformed Lifeforce Way of Living. While this name sounds a little “woo”, the book on a whole is not woo at all. As I said before, according to Griffith, it is a non-abstract, non-mystical, rational, scientific, and biological explanation, which I mostly agree with.

            According to Griffith, The Transformed Lifeforce Way of Living is not just another false start to a better world, to a world where our better nature’s, our souls, our love-indoctrinated, nurturing, compassionate, unconditionally kind, selfless instincts take over, as many other previous pseudo-idealistic movements have proclaimed to be, such as Religion, the New Age Movement, Socialism, Communism, Feminism, Civilization, Politics, Political Correctness, Postmodernism, Environmentalism, Drugs, Multiculturalism, and Aboriginalism. Rather it is the real start to that future world because it is a human-condition-solved world. To Griffith, these other pseudo-idealistic movements/approaches have been/are "fundamentally irresponsible". Let me explain. Even though the Transformed Life Force Way of Living shares a few commonalities with religion and other pseudo-idealisms, as confessed by the author, it is also different for a few reasons. The TLFWL is all about knowledge, not faith or dogma. Only knowledge, understanding, can heal upset, faith and dogma cannot, nor the de-braining that must be done to follow these paths. That is why Griffith says these other approaches are fundamentally irresponsible—they gave up the upsetting search for knowledge/self-knowledge, before it was over, before the understanding of the human condition was reached. They tried to dogmatically insist that everyone should be cooperative and loving, without first completing the understanding that was needed, and, while that was somewhat relieving to people, it oppressed and denied them the freedom they needed to continue the all-important, upsetting search for knowledge, which was the search that was necessary to free them from the human condition. For instance, while Christianity is human-condition-relieving, the TLFWL is human-condition-resolving. Now that the search for understanding is complete, it is irresponsible NOT to give up the search. The ONLY responsible way to live now is to abandon that search and leave the “old resigned, embattled, competitive, aggressive, egocentric way of living behind in favor of living in support of the new, reconciled, human-condition-understood world.” And it's as simple as choosing to do so. The TLFWL differs from some religions also because it declares humans fundamentally good, rather than bad, there is no deity or deference to one person/prophet, nor any worship, nor emphasis on guilt, nor any notion of good and evil in the common sense. Good and evil are men and women, ego/conscious mind and soul/instinctive self. Religions are about the EMBODIMENT of ideals whereas this is about the UNDERSTANDING of those ideals and of our species’ unavoidable historical lack of compliance with those ideals. The biblical story of Adam and Eve falling from grace (from a cooperative, loving existence), defying God, and eating the apple from the tree of knowledge is the story of the emergence of consciousness and the angry, egocentric, alienated, human condition that followed from that.

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Conclusion

            Once again, because the book proclaims that it has solved the human condition, the necessary battle to search for knowledge/self-awareness/understanding of the human condition is over. So, we no longer need to search, instead we can now begin living our new reality, the Transformed Lifeforce Way of Living. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say—that is easy for the author to say, he completed his life's great work, he completed his search for knowledge and understanding. It is my opinion that most people will feel the need to complete their own search before they can go on living the way that Jeremy proposes. Many are not ready to live in an unconditionally selfless way, or just follow someone else. Jeremy acknowledges that many are not ready for the information he provides, but he does not really acknowledge what I am saying here. Even though he has added brain to us, through his work, what he is still hoping or calling for us all to do is to de-brain ourselves, the very thing he advocates against, and just accept that his prophetic, part-the-red-sea-work is the ultimate truth and we are all saved. Or, to use a different religious metaphor, he expects us to obey his ten commandments he is delivering to us after having talked to God and come down from the mountain-top. But what if we want to talk to God too? Regardless of the fact that Jeremy says he knows that this new reality will take many generations to achieve, his expectation still isn't totally realistic. We are supposed to say okay, this guy solved the situation, now we don't need to fight a philosophical or intellectual battle of any kind anymore. Of course, that is probably my ego talking. Ego can be more easily released in old age once you have finished the battle you came here to fight. And Griffith is an old man. I'm a young man. It is natural for ego to be slowly let go of over the course of one's lifetime. My ego disappears more and more the older I get. It has to, otherwise, it destroys you and those around you, especially if you're a well-informed man, but even if you're an ignorant man. I have already won a few very major battles I had to win in my life and that has afforded the letting go of some of my selfishness recently. But I still have a few battles in the intellectual world left. So, it is not entirely over for me. The reason this book came into my life is because I asked a friend for a book like it. I asked for a book that heals the divisions between people and that reminds us that unconditional kindness and selflessness are the only things that matter in life. I asked for something that transcends all of the refined, specific, individuated, hyper-individualized opinions that everybody has that only separate people from each other. I asked for a title that champions fundamental things like love, righteousness, magnanimousness, compassion, and so on. I asked for a book like this because I was ready for it. I had recently made a conscious decision to be less selfish in my life, though, at the same time, I am now reminding myself that I have to have some self-care thrown in there as well. Pisces people (I have Pisces rising) often slip into sacrificing themselves for others. Every now and then, however, they must pull back a little bit, especially if they are natural introverts, to take care of their own needs. Introverted, intellectual, philosophical, spiritual men will probably always need to fight for ideas that come from the conscious mind, and I'm not entirely sure that that is the only place those ideas are coming from anyway. I'm not sure I entirely accept the dual, instinct vs intellect dichotomy Jeremy proposes either. Nevertheless, the ideas being wrestled with by smart men are deep and interesting and feed a part or parts of themselves that need feeding. There are other parts that need feeding too, the parts that Jeremy is trying to describe. It's easy for an old, accomplished man to live unselfishly, to live for helping out his sons or hanging out with his grandsons, for instance, for what do most old men have left to do other than this and other than to make amends and repair the mistakes of their earlier life? My advocation would be a bit different than Griffith's. While he might say it's time to give up the fight and live unselfishly, from soul, from conscience, rather than conscious mind, I'd say it's time to realize the difference between the two, to realize that we probably have at least 4 brains, not just two, and strike a balance between them all. Our conscious mind isn't going away any time soon. But we can live more lovingly and unselfishly. I'm usually all about both/and in my philosophy and life. That is my knowledge and understanding. We need to see what is subjective as what is subjective and see its importance, and see how we are all different from each other, yet also see the importance of transcending all of that with unconditional love and see how we are all the same. To me, in some cases, in some stages of life, it is morally superior to be selfish, in other cases, at other times, it is morally superior to be selfless. Freud would probably call Jeremy’s book a giant "reaction formation" to the idea that we are instinctively bad. But Freud was from a more primitive time. Humanity is more refined and has more knowledge today than it did in Freud’s day. And a different time calls for a different philosophy. I am thankful to have read Jeremy's book and I believe that it is time for many to be less selfish and be more cooperative. However, I do think that the Transformed Lifeforce Way of Living needs to be thought out a bit more so that people can be better guided on that path. For all the effort that Jeremy put into the rest of the book, it seems to me that the last few chapters about how to live the way Jeremy says to, were not very well elaborated. But Jeremy has done enough. I can't expect him to write any more than the colossal book he wrote. It is the job of future generations to pick up the torch that Jeremy dropped and carry it forward. I guess, if one is truly ready for his message, then it really is as simple as just deciding to be less selfish. This takes so much maturity and growth and knowledge and wisdom, however, that I'm afraid too few people will be capable of it, hence why I think there should probably be a bit more guidance or elaboration about that. But I'm doing my part. I'm writing this article and I already made the decision to be less selfish prior to reading the book. Now it's your turn.

            I've asked the question on this website before, that, if one is already a good person, and one is not scared of going to hell, and one knows the history of religion, then of what use to one's spirituality is a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion? I concluded that it is not of much use. However, it's one thing to think you're a good person, it's another thing to be a good person, and yet another thing to be an unconditionally selfless person. Selflessness is probably the final hurdle on the spiritual journey, the hardest mountain to climb, and some Abrahamic religions do endorse selflessness. If you climb that mountain, then you're probably either a god, or a prophet, or dead, or on drugs, or you're deluding yourself into thinking you're on the mountain when you actually are not. So, maybe Jeremy is a prophet, or one of the other possibilities mentioned, but remember, Jeremy doesn't expect embodiment or worship of ideals, it's only about understanding to him, yet at the same time I get the impression from the book that he does expect embodiment. He is a biologist, after all. I told you his book was a tad contradictory, yin within yang and yang within yin, convoluted, counterintuitive, and confusing. But that's how life is. What appears as bad is sometimes good and what appears as good is sometimes bad. Maybe his understanding of the human condition dispels all that confusion. It doesn't matter. Good luck on your journey towards selflessness; selflessness is the point, and maybe remove the word your in this sentence, maybe don't. I do believe that it is inevitable that we are all either headed there, towards selflessness, if we are going to survive as a species, or we are all headed to destruction and desolation. It's your choice. And as always, no matter what religion you follow, I believe that we can all agree that kindness matters. Kindness without understanding, however, as Jeremy alludes to, is probably ineffective and maybe even dangerous. So perhaps I should just shut up now and say thank you Jeremy, for contributing to understanding and for supporting kindness. Seek knowledge and understanding, but also seek to be kind and selfless just as much, no matter how "good" of a person you think you already are. Again, it's your choice, and according to Jeremy, it's that simple.