WORLD TRANSFORMATION MOVEMENT ETHIOPIA

Ideas of Jeremy’s that touch my heart

By Tibebe Hailegiorgis

I think one of the most touching and the most important of Australian biologist Jeremy Griffith’s ideas is the one he raises about nurturing. Because in one way or another, we all have been shaped by our upbringing. Like it or not, we are products of our upbringing. As Jeremy explains in his book FREEDOM: The End Of The Human Condition, it is through this same nurturing that humans developed our conscious mind. To illustrate the importance of nurturing, Jeremy tells us how the bonobos [a primate with great similarities to our human ancestor, Australopithecus] raise their young with care and love [see summaries of how the process of nurturing in our ape ancestors liberated human consciousness in Freedom Essays 21, 22 and 24]. And in our modern times, he explains that there are few people who could look into the human condition without being overly confronted by it, and this is dependent on being sufficiently nurtured, and that he and [the pre-eminent South African philosopher and author] Sir Laurens van der Post are two of these few people.

The second idea that caught my attention was that Jeremy explains the reason for the worst conditions of mankind. Jeremy asks the real questions about human life, such as whether we are good or bad. Undeniably, we humans are blessed with the ability to love and be loved, but we are also cruel, warriors, predators, and rapists. Although we possess many wonderful functions, we are also the most destructive of all creatures on earth. The question that often arises is why? In his book FREEDOM Jeremy gives us the sufficient answer.

Jeremy explains that while in our behavior we are competitive, aggressive, and selfish, that on the contrary, our true nature is that we are philanthropic, cooperative and put the interests of others first. Why then is our way of life so selfish and cruel that it reaches a level we can’t stand and destroys our earth? We have not yet been able to answer the question of whether we humans are fundamentally good or bad. Until now, without answering this vexing question, we have kept an impenetrable black box within us. But now we are getting an answer.

According to the famous psychologist Carl Jung ‘when it [our shadow] appears…it is quite within the bounds of possibility for a man to recognize the relative evil of his nature, but it is a rare and shattering experience for him to gaze into the face of absolute evil’. It is true that facing the devil within us is shocking. If we allow our mind to think about this matter, the truth can tell us that we humans were behaving wrongly. But the great philosopher Socrates tells us that ‘the unexamined life is not worth living’. Examining the real situation of our life creates panic and prevents us from having faith in ourselves. Nevertheless, we must examine and understand the circumstances of our lives.

However, even though we need to face the human condition, restore it, and liberate the human race, instead of facing the issue and looking for a solution to the problem, we try to deny and run away in the hood of threats and fear. Although the greatest solution to saving the world is seen as loving each other and loving the environment, the real solution is to find a way to love the darkness within us. In order to treat the life situation that causes us so much pain and destruction, we must reconcile the two characters within us, good and evil. According to Jung ‘wholeness for humans depends on the ability to own their own shadow’. We become fully human when we understand the darkness within us and when we recognize and accept the kindness and importance of our nature and find peace.

Moreover, the great philosopher Sir Laurens van der Post says, ‘True love is to love the unlovable and the difficult.’ Only by understanding that we are all part of war, cruelty, greed and indifference can we understand the nature and origin of those dark forces and defeat them. Peace and love will come to our earth through true compassion, and this can only be achieved when we understand who we are. A life of compassion recognizes the vital interaction that must exist between one individual and another, between one culture and another.

Furthermore, our spirituality is essential to build the bridge that help us to cross the chasm of history that separates us from our true collective vision and the meaningful life that awaits us in the future. Yes, a true understanding of human nature and our historical origins, goodness and evil, the bleakness of life, will help us cross the historical gulf that separates us from our compassionate nature and self-righteousness. Incredibly, the moment these two giants, Jung and van der Post had been waiting for, the insight into the human condition of psychological insecurity, has finally arrived and brought to our hands by Australian biologist Jeremy Griffith.