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Growing up on a farm in South Africa’s Free State, the idea of transforming the world into something more sustainable, more equitable, consumed my thoughts. But when those ideas met the real world, the seemingly non-negotiable reality of our selfish human nature always brought my idealism crashing down. A genuine path to fundamental change seemed impossible. However, a breakthrough biological insight into the source of our selfish behaviour has changed all that, and I can now see a clear path to social transformation.
To start at the beginning. Despite the farm I was raised on being a commercial operation, my mother instiled in my family the importance of protecting the environment through organic practices, as well as the health benefits of eating organic fruit, vegetables and free-roaming game. As a young man I left the farm to study economics and finance at the University of Cape Town, but a love of the land remained in my blood and so after a “gap” year in the United States studying the benefits and drawbacks of large-scale organic farming operations, I returned home to share what I had learned: farming produce that is indigenous (and thus best suited) to the area made financial sense; a chemical-free environment from “farm to plate” presented obvious benefits to workers, consumers and the environment; and when local produce supplies local businesses, there is invariably a greater community connection to the land and its bounty.
In short, I had a dream to bring more efficient, ethical and environmentally friendly practices to the industry. I was aware of the possibility that my approach might be perceived as naïve, but I hoped that it would prove financially viable and thus allow people to make healthier choices, and build a stronger sense of community.
And so I persevered, and it did become a successful venture. But underneath it all, the truth was I was driven by a personal preoccupation with trying to understand why, when better and sustainable farming practices are clearly beneficial to us as farmers, to consumers and to our planet, do we perpetuate damaging and outdated methods across our nation, and indeed the world? Why is profit deemed more important than people’s health? Why is the agricultural industry beset by unethical standards? Why do Africans have so much difficulty achieving organic certification? And why have people become so disconnected from their natural environment?
These are complex questions, as all questions pertaining to our human issues generally are, but the answer, for the most part I believe, comes down to human selfishness, greed and apathy.
This led, of course, to the deeper question begging to be asked: why are humans so selfish, greedy and apathetic, to the point that we seem determined to undermine and hurt each other and destroy our planet? Could there possibly be a good reason for it? It’s becoming clearer to me as someone who has spent my entire lifetime reading and thinking about our human situation that initiatives such as establishing more holistic farms are merely Band-Aids; in order to stop the destruction all around us, we desperately need to solve this deeper issue of why humans behave in such destructive and dysfunctional ways.
And the answer clearly isn’t to force people to be “good” or “ethical”. History has shown, often tragically, that dogmatic approaches do not work. No. We need a deeper understanding of what is driving us if we are to make genuine consensual change. In his book Jung and the Story of Our Time, the pre-eminent South African philosopher Sir Laurens van der Post wrote that “Man is everywhere dangerously unaware of himself. We really know nothing about the nature of man, and unless we hurry to get to know ourselves we are in dangerous trouble.”
For much of history, philosophers and then scientists, notably biologists, have sought to blame the selfish, often destructive “nature of man” on our evolutionary heritage – that our destructive and competitive behaviour is simply the product of “survival instincts” inherited from our animal ancestors. But, when thinking about it, this theory fails to reflect or address the full complexity of the human experience. Emotions like greed, anger, arrogance, meanness, guilt, shame, hatred, jealousy, depression, alienation, apathy, and so on, are not cut-and-dried animalistic responses to stimuli, but are obviously associated with our mental state, our conscious mind. They reveal a psychological dimension to our behaviour that is absent from the instinctive behaviour of other animals.
So, this journey that began as an attempt to understand why humans don’t readily embrace ethical farming practices led me to the question of what occurred in our species’ past to produce this destructive psychological state that defines us.
My search for an answer to this most profound of questions eventually led me to the Australian biologist Jeremy Griffith’s work on the human condition. I find his revolutionary explanation for humanity’s psychologically “upset” state fascinating and complete – and I might mention, and as I note later, many critical thinkers like the great South African conservationist Dr Ian Player, the aforementioned Sir Laurens van der Post, local community leaders like Reggie Khotshobe, an Igqirha (traditional healer) from Eastern Cape in South Africa, and other eminent scientists, have been similarly impressed.
Griffith – who is the author of numerous books on the human condition, most notably FREEDOM: The End of the Human Condition, and a patron of the World Transformation Movement (a non-profit organisation based in Australia) – asserts that the source of humans’ destructive and dysfunctional behaviour was our species’ development of full consciousness. Griffith says a psychological conflict emerged between the instincts that had ruled our species’ behaviour for millennia and the new, rational mind that emerged some two million years ago (which is when the fossil record shows the brain’s association cortex strongly developed), that was trying to manage our interactions through its ability to comprehend “cause and effect”.
A key element of Griffith’s explanation lies in recognising the difference between our instincts and our intellect. He argues that genetic selection, which favours one individual’s reproductive success over another’s (essentially selecting one idea or piece of information over another), provides species with instinctive behaviours and adaptations that guide their survival. These genetic instincts, however, do not equate to true understanding. In contrast, the nerve-based learning system, when sufficiently developed, has the capacity to comprehend change. Nerves, initially evolved for coordinating movement in animals, eventually gained the ability to store memories. This development laid the groundwork for understanding “cause and effect”. By recalling past experiences, we can compare them with present ones, recognising recurring patterns. This insight allows us to anticipate future events and adjust our behaviour accordingly. As we apply these insights, the feedback from our modified behaviour further sharpens our understanding. We test predictions against outcomes, and the process evolves. As the nervous system becomes more advanced, it begins to connect information in a way that enables reasoning about how experiences are linked, leading to a deeper understanding, awareness, and intelligence about the relationships between events across time. Essentially, consciousness means being aware of how experiences are interrelated and using that knowledge to navigate change.
What this means is that when the nerve-based learning system evolved enough to give rise to consciousness, it became evident that instinctive orientation to the world was insufficient – genuine understanding of the world through conscious thought was necessary. And as Griffith writes in FREEDOM, “… if we think further about that development, we can appreciate that a conflict would have arisen between the already established instinctive management system and the new conscious, understanding-based management system.”
Griffith employs a simple analogy to summarise his “Instinct vs Intellect” thesis. He asks readers to imagine what would happen if a conscious mind were placed within a migrating stork. Like all the other storks, this stork follows instinctive migratory patterns without question; it’s driven entirely by genetic programming. But the stork now has the ability to think consciously. And as it flies its migratory course up the coast of Africa to the rooftops of Europe for the summer breeding season, as storks do, it sees an island and decides to veer off-course to explore. This marks its very first conscious choice, its very first attempt at self-management. But for deviating from the established path, its instincts immediately push back; they resist this errant, “independent” thinking; they, in effect, seek to pull the stork “back on course”.
So the stork is now caught in the cross-hairs of a psychological conflict between its instincts that demand it return to the established route, and its conscious mind that is urging it to explore new horizons, new ways of doing things. Ideally, the stork would recognise that the conflict stems from the difference between instinctive behaviour, formed by a multitude of generations of natural selection, and the new conscious mind’s capacity to understand cause and effect, learn and reason. But it lacks that insight that’s needed to bring peace to its new equation. And so its conscious mind’s determination to practise free will in the face of that resistance from its dictatorial instincts leads it to react defensively: it denies the seemingly unwarranted “criticism” from its instincts, and it seeks external validation to appease its resultant hurt sense of self. This is when its egocentricity is born: its conscious mind, preoccupied with validating itself, becomes centred on achieving external success – power, status, fame. In short, “the stork” (aka, the human species) becomes angry and self-centred.
Griffith says relatively recent scientific discoveries have given us the understanding we needed to bring peace to this conflict, namely the understanding of the difference between the gene-based learning system, which can only give species adaptations or orientations, and the nerve-based learning system, which has the ability to associate information and be insightful. Once we understand that the conscious mind is insightful and therefore needs to experiment in order to fulfil its potential, we can understand that it had to defy our instincts, which are merely orientations, and were therefore ignorant of this need to understand.
The most significant aspect of Griffith’s clarifying synthesis is that it has the power to finally liberate us all from the psychological struggle that has been behind all of human history, our psychology, and thus our cultures, our civilisations – every aspect of human life – because with this insight, our defensive, self-centred behaviour that has caused such harm to ourselves, each other and the natural world becomes obsolete. The guilt, anger and insecurity that have weighed down on every human being, manifesting in all manner of violence, war, racism, corruption, inequality, poverty, and environmental devastation that has resulted in us almost destroying our beautiful planet, can finally be made sense of and thus lifted, making way for the true transformation of our world.
I am not dismissing the efforts of people (like myself) to make a difference through better farming practices, or recycling, or conservation, or social justice, etc., but in truth, such measures are only stopgaps because they only touch on the very meniscus of the problem we need to tackle, and the evidence of this is that despite the best efforts of many, they are failing. This is sobering, but on the evidence, true. To bring a more sustainable, equitable and peaceful life to every human, not just in Africa but in the entire world, we really need to get to the bottom of what is driving all the destruction, which is what Griffith’s explanation of the human condition does.
And we all deserve it; Africa is renowned for, most significantly and beautifully, being the “cradle of mankind”, but we have struggled deeply with the effects of the horrors of the human condition – all of which Griffith provides compassionate explanation for in his astonishing treatise. We in Africa desperately need this reconciling and rehabilitating understanding of the human condition – the profundity of which has been recognised by significant thinkers around the world.
Dr Ian Player, the great South African conservationist, said of Griffith’s work, “I believe you are on to getting answers to much that has puzzled and bewildered humanity for a long time.”
Before his death Sir Laurens van der Post wrote to Griffith asking him to “please send me an extra copy of your book? Mine is on loan because it was so appreciated.”
The ecologist and Professor Emeritus of Biology at San Diego State University, Professor Stuart Hurlbert, has expressed his admiration for Griffith’s work, saying, “I am stunned and honored to have lived to see the coming of ‘Darwin II.’”
Professor Harry Prosen, a former president of the Canadian Psychiatric Association who was also psychiatric consultant to the Bonobo Species Preservation Society, called Griffith’s biological explanation of the human condition “the holy grail of insight we have sought for the psychological rehabilitation of the human race”.
And what I think everyone reading this article would particularly benefit from is this impacting presentation from Reggie Khotshobe, the Igqirha from South Africa mentioned above, in which he explains how “Jeremy Griffith’s explanation of the human condition has answered the thus far unanswered core questions in life. It will take us all to our species’ destiny, to ‘ubuntu’.”
Given the ever-frightening, ever-increasing heightening of crises across the world – geopolitical, social, and environmental – a revolutionary, rehabilitating and redeeming insight into human behaviour that transforms our entire view of the world and brings about a world-transforming movement could not be more urgently needed.
It’s no longer enough to aspire to create an environment that “benefits” us financially, physically, environmentally and socially – such an aspiration is just a short-term Band-Aid, a utopian dream that is not grounded in reality and therefore cannot last. While there has always been much emphasis on the need to love one another and care for the environment, the true necessity on Earth has been to find the understanding, and thus the capacity, to love the darker aspects of ourselves. What we needed was to find a way to reconcile and redeem those aspects, to understand the psychological roots of our deeply troubled condition. Only by doing this could we heal our wounded souls and set ourselves free.
I suggest that Jeremy Griffith’s understanding of our stricken human condition truly addresses this base issue, and in doing so provides a solution that transforms our universal mindset to restore harmony between humanity and our planet, in our cherished Africa and beyond.
