Felix culpa

Everytime I watch a "spiritual" clip on YouTube, a very annoying ad pops up, featuring some guy speaking with an Australian accent who claims to have solved "the human condition" (no less). So eventually I decided to check him out, and here is what I found... 

Jeremy Griffith is an Australian biologist and author of several books, of which "Freedom" is freely (!) available on the web. Griffith is the leader of the World Transformation Movement (WTM), which has existed in various forms since 1983. I assume the WTM was until recently a very small group since I never heard about it before (according to "Freedom", they had 50 members during the 1990´s). Today, the WTM seems to have branches in several countries, and are conducting a sustained propaganda offensive on the web. When Australian media accused Griffith´s band of followers of being a cult, the WTM succesfully sued for libel. While it´s possible that this particular group isn´t a cult sensu stricto, they certainly *sound* like a weird mixture of religious cult and revivalist Christian church. This strikes me as peculiar, since the WTM at least strongly implies that they are atheists and science-based! Griffith himself is being treated as a towering genius who (with some input from other genial people) "solved the human condition", and his books are said to explain everything and have the ability to save the world. While some of Griffith´s ideas are interesting, his movement sounds fanatical, dogmatic and frankly weird. It also sounds "spiritual", despite the claims to a worldview informed by biology and psychology. 

Griffith believes that the human species originally lived in a state of child-like, nurturing, matriarchal innocence, similar to that of bonobos (the bonobo is a peaceful evolutionary cousin to the common chimpanzee). At this stage, human existence was wholly driven by instinct. At a certain point, the gene-driven instincts were supplemented by a nerve-driven conscious mind seeking understanding. This led to a perennial conflict between the mind and the instincts, during which the latter accused the mind of being sinful or evil for straying away from the instinct-driven life. Unable to defend itself against the accusations of the instincts, the mind developed various coping-strategies, of which the most prominent is the need for aggression and competition. Thus, aggression does *not* come from our genes or primal instincts, but is a psychological condition that evolved later. Since aggression doesn´t really solve the mind´s dilemma, humans become increasingly more frustrated and alienated, a process that has been going on for two million years. During that time, other coping mechanisms have been developed, this time of a broadly collectivist nature, which are really attempts to suppress the mind in favor of a return to the instinct-driven life, something Griffith considers impossible. Religion, socialism, feminism, environmentalism and "political correctness" are examples of this. Today, humanity has reached the low point of this development, with the entire human race running the risk of becoming psychological (or perhaps even near-literal) zombies, destroying the entire human species in an apocalyptic endgame of complete nihilism and insanity. Only one thing stands between us and the abyss: the message of the World Transformation Movement...

Some readers will already recognize the familiar Biblical meme of innocence - fall - original sin - apocalypse (or salvation). I don´t think Griffith would deny this similarity. He seems to regard monotheism and Platonism as the most advanced forms of understanding before the WTM´s message. Indeed, Griffith often references St Paul and Plato. He seems fascinated by the dramatic conversion experience of the former and the "simile of the cave" of the latter. Religious prophets were a kind of liberated beings. Despite this, religion nevertheless falls short and is turned into another failed coping mechanism, since the believers are supposed to blindly follow the prophets, in effect going back to the instinctual stage of human evolution. "God" doesn´t exist, at least not in the Biblical sense. God should be seen as a metaphor for the end-point of cosmic evolution, when everything that exists is holistically united in a state of Negative Entropy. (Note the teleological perspective here.)

It´s interesting to note that Griffith doesn´t view the conflict between mind and instinct as "sinful" or "evil", neither from the side of the mind nor from the side of the instincts. Rather, the struggle is a heroic one for understanding. The "fall" is inevitable if humanity wants understanding, a kind of "fortunate fall" if you like. This explains why Griffith doesn´t see a simple return to instinct as a desirable solution, despite the fact that our instinctual state was blissful and bonobo-like. Humans have to evolve higher! The WTM´s ideas are the end-point of the heroic struggle for understanding. Now, we can simply let go of all our alienated baggage, without any reproach or remorse, since the riddle of the human condition has been solved. Griffith also regards males as heroic, precisely because they entered upon the difficult path to understanding, while women took the side of instinct (or at least pretended to do so - both sexes are equally alienated). At the same time, males have become extremely alienated from their true natures. Rape, male homosexuality and in general treating women as sex objects are examples of this. The non-alienated existence seems to be gender-neutral, gender-complementary or even somewhat "matriarchal", with men aiding women in nurturing the children. Griffith opposes really existing feminism since he believes that it can´t harmonize the sexes, simply pretending that everyone in an alienated society is equal. His political views are frankly hard to fathom, since he often sounds right-wing and sympathetic to Prince Charles, Margaret Thatcher, and Fox News commentators Bill O´Reilly and Sean Hannity, while nevertheless taking positions usually seen as leftist (such as sustainability and gender equality). 

Griffith calls the non-alienated state of human existence "Transformed Lifeforce Way of Living" or simply "the Transformed State". The change from alienation to the new state is strikingly similar to a sudden religious conversion experience. You simply let go of your present condition and walk away from it all, something made easier if you don´t think too much, which includes thinking about Griffith´s own message! This will transform you to a person filled with love, compassion, nurturing and sheer excitement for life. In other contexts, however, Griffith *does* emphasize the absolute necessity of "Freedom" and the WTM´s other messaging, making the Transformed State sound like an effect of reading his books, or even *identical* to it. The message does have cultish traits. Joining the WTM is obviously seen as extremely important, and Griffith admits that the members don´t have children, so they can concentrate all their energy on spreading the good news. Some people are said to be so special that they can grasp the message almost immidiately (Griffith calls them "ships at sea"). An elite group? Resistance to WTM´s propaganda is simply illogical and must be the result of deep seated fear and alienation. Griffith calls it "the deaf effect" and has developed an entire course to challenge it and overcome it. It has never entered his mind that perhaps people are simply put off by WTM´s evangelical fervour, or might have legitimate worries about the practicality or consistency of this particular philosophy...

I mean, it´s not like we haven´t heard all this before, is it?

With that, I end my little report about what´s behind that ad on YouTube.