Below I quote bits of "THE most important interview of all time" (!) and as usual interleave my comments. See here for Part I of this series.
***
CRAIG CONWAY: So Jeremy, thank you for talking with us. Tell us, how does your work bring about ‘the psychological rehabilitation of the human race’ and end all the suffering and strife, and, as Professor Prosen said, ‘save the world’
JEREMY GRIFFITH: Thank you very much for having me on your program Craig. Finding
understanding of our psychologically troubled human condition has actually been
what the efforts of every human who has ever lived has been dedicated to
achieving and has contributed to finding. As Professor Prosen said, finding
understanding of the human condition has
been ‘the holy grail’ of the whole
human journey of conscious thought and
enquiry. We humans have absolutely lived in hope, faith and trust that one day,
somewhere, some place, all the efforts of everyone—but of scientists in
particular—would finally produce the completely redeeming, uplifting and
healing understanding of us humans. I know it must seem outrageous to claim
that this goal of goals has finally been achieved, but it has. In fact, the
human condition is such a difficult subject for us humans to confront and deal
with that I couldn’t be talking about it so openly and freely if it hadn’t been
solved.
MY COMMENT: I think you will find that these people see themselves as having no pretentions of invoking an other-worldly solution to the human predicament: That is, they are likely to claim that their diagnosis of the human condition and their proposed (or should that be "asserted" rather than "proposed"?) solution to it are purely secular and scientific. And yet they express themselves with the superlative language of religious aspiration, epiphany and certainty. In the above quote we hear that humanity has lived in hope, faith and trust that out there somewhere, somehow there is a solution that remedies their difficult lot, a final answer which classifies as a kind of salvation. In fact, Jeremy Griffith, clearly borrowing his language from the Western Christian tradition, describes his revelation as “the completely redeeming, up lifting and healing understanding of us humans”. It is the “holy grail” which according to Craig “...ends all the suffering and strife and as Professor Prosen said 'saves the world'”. Gasp! This isn’t a tentative statement fielded as a proposal for comment as one might expect from scientists, but this “goal of goals” has finally been achieved according to Griffith. He has been enlightened by the ultimate epiphany!
Griffiths and his followers are in fact
admitting something that many theists have said for a long while: Namely, that
human beings aren’t like the beasts of the fields who have little more than an
idle curiosity about some of the superficial aspects their world; as far as we know animals, unlike humans, do not question the fundamentals of their lot. For them life is an unquestionably given state of affairs, like it or lump it. In contrast, many humans have that deeply probing curiosity about
the numinous and resist an unquestioning acceptance of the status quo. They don’t readily accept the cosmic state of affairs as a brute given; for them a cosmos which is just
there and where further questions are regarded as futile because it is all meaningless and
purposeless is an absurdity. (But see here)
Though
it may be deeply buried there is among humans an existential yearning for meaning and purpose
that is not easy to get over. Humans not only have an unquenchable curiosity about deeper matters but also proactively
seek betterment of the secular status quo, and more; they have a soteriological
hope in their hearts. The surprise is that Jeremy and his followers, who I
suspect purport only to seek solutions in the secular realm, have effectively admitted the existence of these deep existential yearnings and motivations: Viz: a soteriological
faith & hope which perhaps hints at that residual hankering after the Divine.
CRAIG: Okay then Jeremy, solve the human condition for us, we’re all ears!
MY COMMENT: We’re all ears? You can say that again!
JEREMY: Firstly, I’m a biologist, and that’s important because I think everyone will agree that what we need is a
non-abstract, non-mystical, completely rational and thus understandable, scientific, biological
explanation of us humans. So how are we to explain and understand the human
condition, understand why we humans are the way we are, so brutally
competitive, selfish and aggressive that human life has become all but
unbearable. In fact, how are we to make so much sense of our divisive behaviour
that the underlying cause of it is so completely explained and understood that,
as Professor Prosen said, the whole of the human race is psychologically
rehabilitated and everyone’s life is transformed?
CRAIG: Yes, that’s what we want; the human condition finally explained, fixed
up and healed forever!
MY COMMENT: As I’ve already said Jeremy, in spite of his quasi-religious expressionology, is not claiming to
offer any more than a scientifically accessible explanation of the human
predicament. This is clear in his first statement above where he says that being a
biologist he seeks a non-mystical, scientific biological explanation of the human
predicament. Fair enough, but this to my
mind clashes with the sensational fanfare we are getting from his World
Transformation Movement. Where’s the studied scientific detachment? Where’s the “Let’s try this hypothesis and see
where it takes us”? Can they be so confident when their solution hasn't been tried
& tested yet?
Humanity
has a very poor track record when it comes to implementing what they believe to be comprehensive solutions to the
human predicament. Let’s recall those
many failed ideologies & their intoxicated ideologues who have promoted them: From the French revolutionaries
to Marx’s followers, from Hitler to Donald
Trump**, from the Inquisition to Islamic state, we've heard from their respective ideologues who have made loud and emphatic claims about proffering comprehensive solutions to humanity’s problems but look where
their deluded followers have taken the human race. Such unquenchable and convinced
confidence starts the alarm bells ringing. The studied detachment and
caution of scientific and rational attitudes are being thrown to the winds
here.
Jeremy
continues to lay on the religious archetypes with a trowel as he goes on to
describe in strong terms what I, as a Christian, would call sin (That word with
the “I” in the middle) and its effects: He tells us that We are so
brutally competitive, selfish and aggressive that human life has become all but
unbearable. Yes, I think I can just about agree with that!
Jeremy’s
last sentence in my quote above alludes to his solution to humanity's rampantly divisive behaviour. Using the language of psychology, he hints that the solution is also scientific by saying that the whole human race needs
psychologically rehabilitating. He continues with his melodramatic tone by assuring us that this rehabilitation will mean everyone’s life is transformed! Gasp! But will a bit of psychological
tinkering & rehab be the holy grail solution which heals us and fixes us up forever? In fact are
there enough psychoanalysts in the world with the level of skill to fix us up? I think we need more details here!
Let’s
face it, Jeremy's demeanor is that of a modern-day Scientific Apostle of Salvation and this appeals to those recrudescent religious archetypes we find
in our hearts. In fact, he seems to have succeeded in planting the faith in quite a few
people; enough to form the World Transformation Movement, a strongly self-publishing movement which leaves me with the impression that it is a sales organization rather
than a scientific think-tank. Well, if the WTM is chiefly about advertisement then the self-praising sales talk is understandable; but
that doesn’t amount to a recommendation. *
JEREMY:
Exactly Craig. So, to start at the
beginning, I know everyone listening is living with the belief—well it’s what
we were all taught at school and are told in every documentary—that humans’
competitive, selfish and aggressive behavior is due to us having savage,
must-reproduce-our-genes instincts like other animals have. Certainly, while
left-wing thinkers do claim we have some selfless, cooperative instincts, they
also say we have this selfish, competitive ‘animal’ side, which Karl Marx
limited to such basic needs as sex, food, shelter and clothing. I mean, our
conversations are saturated with this belief, with comments like: ‘We are
programmed by our genes to try to dominate others and be a winner in the battle
of life’; and ‘Our preoccupation with sexual conquest is due to our primal
instinct to sow our seeds’; and ‘Men behave abominably because their bodies are
flooded with must reproduce-their-genes-promoting testosterone’; and ‘We want a
big house because we are innately territorial’; and ‘Fighting and war is just
our deeply-rooted combative animal nature expressing itself’.
CRAIG:
Yes, that’s exactly what I’ve understood is the reason for our competitive and
aggressive nature—that we have brutally competitive, survival-of-the-fittest
instincts, which we are always having to try to restrain or civilise or try to
control as best we can; I mean that’s what I was taught in school
MY COMMENT: Speak for yourselves chaps! My
schooling was long enough ago for me to not be taught any significant evolutionary theory
at school. And when I got into higher education (A levels and beyond) I
specialized in maths, physics, chemistry and computing. So, I didn’t start grappling
with evolutionary texts until quite late in life. For example, I read the book Sociobiology: The Whisperings Within (David Barash) and The Blind Watchmaker (Richard Dawkins) when I was in my
thirties, In these books I heard about the selfish gene and how even altruism was a manifestation
of this selfishness. On top of that I had also pondered those survival of the
fittest notions as promoted by Social Darwinists such as we find among the fascists
and Nazis. I assume that it is this sort of thing which Jeremy is referring to in his
first sentence. But by the time I was seriously considering these topics not
only was I already a Christian but
predating that, I believed I had located the core problem with human nature. Let
me explain…
I
can remember a time at first-school when I would walk around the playground by
myself convinced that those other young human beings were robots without feelings –
it took time for it to sink in that that wasn’t true. It took me time to sample
human behaviour sufficiently for me to realize that their behaviour was entirely consistent
with they too being conscious beings and that they were not just some kind of façade like an
unfeeling computer simulation: This was the awful discovery that they had
pains, pleasures and fears like myself. Obviously, this didn’t mean that I then
started experiencing other people’s conscious feelings; their first-person
perspective remained hidden: Rather via an extrapolation of my own feelings I inferred (but did not feel) other people’s
first-person perspective. It’s what I called in later life an empathic
extrapolation or empathic construction.
Therein lay the rub: That I had at last acquired the ability to empathize certainly didn’t mean I would necessarily act on it in a morally acceptable way: I didn't suddenly become free of the temptation of putting myself at the centre of my universe; after all I didn’t feel others feelings, I only inferred them and consequently it was too easy to ignore those other first-person perspectives all around me and get on with my own life in a very self-centred and selfish way; frankly, that is how my inner nature is skewed even today. I had the choice of affecting other people’s pains and pleasures for either good or bad, but there was no automatic switch which suddenly turned me from a naturally self-centered person to an unselfish one; choice, especially the potential for bad self-centered choices, loomed large: If I kept my self well insulated from the social world around me, I wouldn’t even hear about those feeling other beings. In short, I had discovered “sin”; the word with “I” in the middle. So, when Christianity came along and told me I was a sinner I said, “Of course I’m a sinner!”. This personal discovery needed no evolutionary theory about that competitive struggle in the survival of the fittest or teaching about the selfish gene. My first-person perspective meant that I was always tempted to choose self-first and neglect others; As Saint Paul said in Romans 7:14-20:
14 We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. 15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18 For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
That sums up my experience of the power of the self.
The information in our genes is the recipe,
which when baked in the right environment of the womb, generates what ultimately
turns out to be a humanoid structure with that private first-person perspective of
consciousness. (I have made some guesses as to what physical conditions might be required to give rise to first-person consciousness; see here).
It is this first-person perspective which entails the potential for those bad self-centered
choices we identify as sin. It is irrelevant just how the population of
conscious beings has come about via the genetic code and some kind of evolution. Moreover,
it is irrelevant whether or not those physical processes which entail sentient choosing beings are deterministic; choice is always entailed
(See my posts on free-will and determinism). We cannot escape choice and choice opens the possibility of choosing self at the
expense of other selves. The genes & evolution are just mathematical generators; they
don’t rid or excuse the final human product of the responsibility of choice and the potential to sin - that is, to make selfish choices.
What may be confusing Jeremy and his followers is that the objects of scientific study are conventionally described purely in the language of the third person; that is, as if there is no such thing as the first-person experiencer and observer of those objects described by science. This linguistic trick has confused many, so much so in fact that some people have even taken onboard the absurd idea that there is no such thing as consciousness; these people have read the third person language of science far too literally. The irony is that the touchstone of reality for the objects of science is that they deliver observation, conscious observation, enabling those hypothesized objects to be tested for reality. The reality of those highly regular laws is underwritten if they reify a rational ordered conscious experience. The reality of a cosmos which doesn’t deliver this world of organised experience is under question. Exactly how those laws create our first-person experience we are still discovering, but it seems that the potential for temptation and sin is built into the cosmic physical regime because that regime generates the first-person experience, regardless of whether or not we’ve been taught about competitive survival instincts being written into our genes. Summarizing then, my conclusion is that Jeremy and his followers, in spite of their confident and over-hyped sales talk, have got their diagnosis of the human predicament fundamentally wrong.
Well, be all that as it may, what about the WTM's proposed treatment of the human condition? That will be my consideration in the next parts of this series: Does humanity, as the WTM suggest, simply need to have some psychological rehab and then its problems will all be fixed up forever? The straight answer to that, as we will see is “No!”. Moreover, compounding the problems of the human tendency toward the self, as I hope to show, are some very significant epistemic issues concerning the physical & social constraints on the way we interrogate and form opinions about the world we are in: This makes harmonizing our opinions far from straight forward This is why in my estimation we need the accountable open government of democratic forums. Psychological rehab isn’t going to make those challenges go away, because again, psychology isn’t able to change the status quo of the physical regime.
Footnotes:
* It can be fairly objected that the Christian sub-culture of which I am part is all too often given to the hype and bigotry of certainty. True. In my case however my faith is less than certain: I take epistemic responsibility for having pieced together my own sense-making explanatory structure around meaning and purpose - being a clay vessel myself (2 Cor 4:7-9) whose epistemic technique and morality are flawed I acknowledge the strong possibility of error and that my faith is subject to futility. It's an interesting paradox that Christianity, which is so clear on human imperfection, should consequently have a self-referencing conflict, an almost self-undermining effect. Christianity has clauses that lead faith to doubt itself and indulge in self-examination (2 Cor 13:5). But if there is a Biblical God why worry? He is the giver of faith no matter how small and therefore we should not think of ourselves more highly than we ought to think (Romans 12:3). But faith as small as a mustard seed means nothing is impossible. (Mat 17:20)
** Hitler lived for the evil Nazi ideology, Donald Trump's ideology is ..... Donald Trump.
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