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Victory For A New World
Of Understanding For Humanity

The following apology to the Foundation for Humanity’s Adulthood (FHA)—now known as the World Transformation Movement (WTM)—was published in the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper on the 6 June 2009:

‘On 22 April 1995, the Sydney Morning Herald published an article by Reverend Doctor David Millikan which implied that the Foundation for Humanity’s Adulthood placed demands on its members which tore families apart. The Herald withdraws such inference and apologises to the Foundation for the harm caused by the publication’.

This apology is a great milestone in the FHA’s efforts to defy and defeat a 20 year campaign of persecution that has been waged against the critically important understanding of the human condition that the FHA was established to promote and defend.

This campaign of persecution—essentially an all-out attempt to destroy the FHA and decimate the reputations of its directors Jeremy Griffith and Tim Macartney-Snape—was taken into the public arena in 1995 by a Reverend of the Uniting Church who produced an ABC Four Corners program and a feature article in the weekend edition of the Sydney Morning Herald about the FHA and its work.

The major events in our struggle to ‘clear our name’ in the 14 years since this campaign went public in 1995 are briefly summarised in the following advertisement, placed by the FHA, which appeared prominently as a 11cm by 17cm advertisement on page 4 of the Weekend Edition of The Australian newspaper on Saturday 13th June 2009.

––––Advertisement––––

A Most Serious

Wrong Righted

Vindication of

The Foundation for Humanity’s Adulthood (FHA, a Sydney charity dedicated to understanding and ameliorating the human condition),
Jeremy Griffith (author of the bestseller, A Species In Denial),
Tim Macartney-Snape (a twice honoured Order of Australia recipient)
and the FHA’s other directors, members and supporters.

• In 1995 an ABC Four Corners program and feature article in the Sydney Morning Herald—both produced by a Reverend of the Uniting Church—were published about the FHA and its directors.
• In 1998 the Australian Broadcasting Authority, Australia’s then official media watchdog, found the Four Corners program to be ‘inaccurate, unbalanced and partial’ and took the unprecedented step of recommending to the ABC that it would be ‘appropriate to apologise’ to the FHA.
• When the ABC refused to apologise defamation actions were taken against the ABC and the Herald, and in 2003 and 2005 respectively each report was found to be defamatory by NSW Supreme Court juries.
• In 2008 two of the three defamatory imputations found to arise from the Four Corners program resulted in a payout of $700,000 for the loss and damage caused by the broadcast. The finding in relation to the third imputation is currently subject to appeal.
• In 2009 the Herald published the following apology to the FHA:
  ‘On 22 April 1995, the Sydney Morning Herald published an article by Reverend Doctor David Millikan which implied that the Foundation for Humanity’s Adulthood placed demands on its members which tore families apart. The Herald withdraws such inference and apologises to the Foundation for the harm caused by the publication’.

By its very nature the subject of the human condition is contentious. Nevertheless, it is the underlying issue in all human affairs that has to be addressed for there to be a future for the human race. It is therefore vital that debate in this arena be kept free of misrepresentation and smear—especially at the supposed leading levels of our society.

The Foundation for Humanity’s Adulthood
www.humancondition.com

As mentioned in the advertisement there is still an appeal to be heard, and the process of seeking redress through the courts hasn’t been entirely redemptive, but what has been achieved is that the two publications have now been profoundly discredited.

With regard to the legal process having not been entirely redemptive, while it is infinitely preferable to the way heretics in science have been treated historically, such as Giordano Bruno being burnt at the stake for upholding Copernican theory, it is not by any means a perfect system of redress and justice. One day we will be able to tell the full story about our experiences but it will suffice for the present to say that in our experience the legal system has become so incredibly adversarial that the full truth of a particular matter is extremely difficult to bring to the surface in a trial.

Despite these aspects the important point is that we have reached a watershed moment in righting this very serious wrong. The significance of this achievement cannot be overstated.

The FHA’s ‘key held aloft’ logo symbolises the purpose of the FHA. The discovery of the cause for humans’ capacity for good and evil is the key that ameliorates that troubled condition and our task in the FHA has been to hold that key aloft, promote and defend that key understanding. Since understanding of the human condition is what enables humanity to mature from insecure adolescence to secure adulthood our task has been to lay the Foundation for Humanity’s Adulthood.

As the underlying issue in all human affairs the human condition had to be faced and understood for there to be a future for the human race. However, by its very nature the human condition is such a contentious subject that emerging understanding of it was always likely to have to endure and ultimately defeat an initial undemocratic onslaught of misrepresentation and smear—and that is exactly what has happened.

All of the giant strides in humanity’s journey of demystification—our species’ conscious thinking self’s responsibility to replace mystery, superstition and dogma with knowledge—met so much resistance that in each instance the insights were lucky to survive. Science historian Thomas Kuhn emphasised this point about there being no guarantee new ideas in science will survive prejudice when he wrote, ‘In science…ideas do not change simply because new facts win out over outmoded ones…Since the facts can’t speak for themselves, it is their human advocates who win or lose the day’ (Shirley C. Strum, Almost Human, 1987—Strum’s references are to Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, second edn, 1970). Similarly, in his essay On Liberty—a document recognised as one of the philosophical pillars of western civilisation—John Stuart Mill emphasised the extreme danger of oppression of thought, saying, ‘the dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of those pleasant falsehoods which men repeat after one another till they pass into commonplaces, but which all experience refutes. History teems with instances of truth put down by persecution. If not suppressed for ever, it may be thrown back for centuries.’ (American state papers; On liberty; Representative government; Utilitarianism, 1952).

The great danger has been that while all groundbreaking new ideas are typically resisted by the established order of the day, no new idea was going to be as resisted as understanding of the human condition. This is because the subject of the human condition strikes at the very heart of the issue of our insecure human natures; it faces us squarely with the very subject of our insecurity, the subject that makes us want to stay in the secure shadows of the old order and not move forward. The issue of the human condition is the issue of ‘self’, the most difficult of all subjects for us humans to go near.

Clearly therefore to defend the ideas that the FHA was established to do was going to be an incredibly difficult task, but also one the FHA couldn’t afford to fail in. It certainly has proved to be a nightmare undertaking, but thank heavens we have prevailed. It has taken absolutely all of the character, courage and all-out commitment of the 50 members of the FHA to endure and finally overcome these many, many years of horrible persecution and vilification. It really has been a case of an ant having to stop an elephant, but we small band of 50 people, and most of us were only in our late teens and early twenties when we began this immense undertaking, have done it. While the world doesn’t know it—at least not yet—we know what we have achieved.

Even though we have understood how critical it was that we defend these ideas, from the beginning everyone else was telling us to take the easy way out—‘why waste your energy and money’, ‘there are always going to be those who hate what you are doing’, ‘you can’t defeat these people’, ‘forgive and forget, we’ll understand’, ‘just get on with your important work’ etc etc. We very much empathise with a scene in Inherit the Wind—a movie about the so-called Monkey Trial in Tennessee, USA in 1925, where a school master named John Scopes was prosecuted for promoting Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection—where Scopes’ attorney said to Scopes: ‘I know what you are going through. It’s the loneliest feeling in the world. It’s like walking down an empty street listening to your own footsteps. But all you have to do is to knock on any door and say “if you’ll let me in I’ll live the way you want me to live and I’ll think the way you want me to think” and all the blinds will go up and all the doors will open and you will never be lonely ever again.’

Again we would like to emphasise that the whole future of human endeavour rests on keeping inquiry free from oppression with another quote from John Stuart Mill’s great essay On Liberty: ‘We have now recognised the necessity to the mental well-being of mankind (on which all their other well-being depends) of freedom of opinion, and freedom of the expression of opinion’, summarising that ‘the price paid for intellectual pacification, is the sacrifice of the entire moral courage of the human mind’.

Given the immense responsibility and difficulty of our task, we are obviously extremely relieved that it has been successfully completed and that we can move on with the next stage of our project of promoting the fabulous future that these understandings of the human condition make possible for the human race.

Possibly the best summary of the importance of and reasons for our 20 year struggle to defend these understandings of the human condition can be found in Jeremy Griffith’s short 2004 essay Crisis Point in the Human Journey. (There is also another highly relevant essay titled Sir James Darling’s Vision of Fostering the Ability to Undertake the Paramount’ Task of Solving the Human Condition in Order to ‘Save the World’.)

ABC TV ordered to pay defamed
FHA director $500,000

On 1 August 2008, the NSW Supreme Court handed down a comprehensive defamation judgment against the ABC and Reverend David Millikan for their production of a 1995 Four Corners program.

The following is a report summarising the judgment that appeared in
The Australian online.

ABC to pay defamed climber $500,000

By Andrew Drummond | August 01, 2008

MOUNTAINEER Tim Macartney-Snape has been awarded almost $500,000 after being defamed on ABC Television 13 years ago.

The New South Wales Supreme Court today awarded him $448,500 after a jury found an April 1995 episode of the Four Corners program, The Prophet of Oz, implied he used his influence to recruit school students to an alleged cult.

Mr Macartney-Snape, now 52, and associate Jeremy Griffith are directors of a Sydney-based research group Foundation for Humanity's Adulthood (FHA).

The NSW-registered charity, established in 1983, has more than 100 members throughout Australia and New Zealand and claims to try to understand and improve the "human condition: human capacity for both good and evil".

In May 2005, a Supreme Court jury found the Four Corners episode and its narrator Reverend Dr David Millikan, defamed Mr Macartney-Snape on two occasions.

Firstly, that: "Tim Macartney-Snape deceives schools who invite him to talk to students about climbing Mt Everest by exploiting the occasion to promote Jeremy Griffith and his teachings".

And that he " ... abuses his position of influence, derived from his reputation as a mountaineer, to recruit students at schools for Jeremy Griffith".

Court documents show the damage to Mr Macartney-Snape's reputation included two schools withdrawing invitations for him to address students.

"It is unsurprising that the impact upon his career as a speaker was dramatic and immediate," today's judgment said.

Mr Macartney-Snape said the verdict was vindication for FHA, which has had to endure years of "stigma" due to the Four Corners episode.

"The national broadcaster conspired with a religious fundamentalist to do a complete hatchet job on a groundbreaking scientific idea," he said in a statement following today's verdict.

With costs and interest, Mr Macartney-Snape expected the payout to exceed $1 million.

"Thirteen years later, the truth has caught up with the lie," he said.

"Today's verdict is vindication for a project which has had to endure the appalling and completely unjustified stigma cast by the ABC for more than a decade."

While the jury also found Mr Griffith was defamed, Justice David Kirby did not award costs to the biologist, philosopher and author after considering the defences of truth, qualified privilege and comment in relation to the claim.

The ABC declined to comment until its lawyers had reviewed the 355-page judgment.

Parties will make submissions to Justice Kirby on costs and interest at a future date.

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Since the above Australian online report, many newspapers throughout Australia have run very similar stories, such as the Daily Telegraph story below.

$1m ruling against the ABC

2 August 2008

TAXPAYERS will foot a huge bill after mountaineer Tim Macartney Snape was yesterday awarded almost $450,000 in damages over a defamatory ABC broadcast.

The Supreme Court ordered the payout after a jury found Mr Macartney-Snape was defamed by a Four Corners program which wrongly implied he deceived schools and abused his influence for his own ends. With costs and interest, the payout could top $1 million.

Mr Macartney-Snape -- who in 1984 became the first Australian to climb Mt Everest -- launched a career in public speaking.

But he told the Supreme Court that, after the program was screened in 1995, "any interest in me as a public speaker was, you know, pretty well shot''.

He sued the ABC and narrator David Millikan over the program, which concerned the work of biologist Jeremy Griffith. Mr Griffith is a co-director with Mr Macartney-Snape of the Foundation for Humanity's Adulthood.

The Sydney-based research group claims to try to understand and improve the human condition and the ''human capacity for both good and evil''.

The ABC unsuccessfully defended the case on the grounds of truth, qualified privilege and fair comment.

Appeal

On 30 October 2008, an appeal was filed in the NSW Supreme Court’s Court of Appeal in relation to the one defamatory imputation that Justice Kirby did not award damages for. The hearing of that appeal is expected to take place towards the end of 2009, or possibly even in 2010.

Four Corners discredited

After being awarded half-a-million dollars in damages by the NSW Supreme Court judgment, Tim Macartney-Snape, a twice honoured Order of Australia recipient, said “the verdict is further resounding discreditation of the 1995 Four Corners program about the FHA.”

In 1998, the Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA), Australia’s official media watchdog, brought down its then strongest ruling ever, against the Four Corners program. It found it to be ‘inaccurate, unbalanced and partial’ and it went so far as to take the unprecedented step of recommending to the ABC that it would be ‘appropriate to apologise’ to the FHA.

The ABA’s 1998 ruling included findings that “the imputation by Dr Millikan that Mr Griffith sees himself as a figure equivalent in stature and eminence as Jesus Christ” was “inaccurate” and that the program “omitted relevant viewpoints on the issue of family turmoil”.

“When the ABC refused to apologise, we were left with no choice but to institute defamation proceedings seeking compensation for the damage in the Supreme Court,” Mr Macartney-Snape said.

“In the judgment today, we won two of the three imputations determined by the judge and we’ve received a very substantial damages award.”

“It is appalling that the ABC dragged this out for so long, especially given the ABA recommended it apologise a decade ago.”

While relieved about his vindication, Mr Macartney-Snape said he was disappointed that his fellow director Jeremy Griffith was not also awarded compensation.

“It is very surprising, given that four eminent international scientists gave such strong evidence in support of Jeremy’s work.”

“As history shows and as this whole experience confirms, new ideas are notoriously resisted by the establishment,” Mr Macartney-Snape added.

Mr Griffith said he was relieved that the damage to Tim’s magnificent reputation had at last been properly redressed and that the credibilty of the Four Corners program had been impugned by the verdict.

He also said, “while the issue of humans’ insecure and contradictory nature is the most confronting and thus contentious of subjects, it is also the underlying issue in all human affairs that must be addressed by science if there is to be a future for the human race.”

At the Supreme Court hearing before Justice Kirby in 2007, scientific experts from the US and Europe took the stand in support of Mr Griffith’s treatise on the human condition. Significantly, their evidence had to be limited to material he published prior to the April 1995 Four Corners broadcast.

Since 1995, Mr Griffith has published a number of seminal works that have attracted international attention and support from prominent scientists who regard his thesis as being at the cutting edge of scientific enquiry. His recent publications include The Human Condition Documentary Proposal (2004), which received commendations from eminent scientists including Stephen Hawking and Nobel Laureate Charles Townes, and the 2003 bestseller A Species In Denial.

Mr Macartney-Snape said that Mr Griffith’s earlier work was so new and radical, similar to the early pioneering work of other great thinkers and artists.

“The breathtaking scope and originality of Jeremy’s work contrasted so sharply with the prevailing mechanistic scientific paradigm that, initially, relatively few could recognise and appreciate its real substance. It’s like the early work of Picasso which was initially met with indifference, but later acknowledged as being brilliant and ahead of its time.”

Among those testifying at the 2007 hearing for Mr Griffith was Professor Harry Prosen, former president of the Canadian Psychiatric Association.

“If we stop asking the serious questions about human life, we may as well stop being conscious,” Professor Prosen said upon hearing of the judgment.

Echoing Mr Macartney-Snape’s views, the Canadian professor added that: “George Bernard Shaw warned of the true nature of scientific progress when he said, ‘all great truths begin as blasphemies’.”

“Jeremy is a rare individual in the history of science, one of the very few honest and courageous enough to so directly confront and explain humans’ non-ideal state.

“I have no doubt that, in time, the extraordinary significance of his work will be recognised the world over,” Professor Prosen said.

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—At Socrates’ trial where he was in the broader sense similarly accused of ‘corrupting the young’, and ‘challenging the Gods of the day’ he said in his defence, ‘the only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance’ and ‘the unexamined life is not worth living’.

—‘The human condition is the most important frontier of the natural sciences’ E.O.Wilson Consilience 1998

For a context of the court case, including a brief history of the resistance to new ideas in science, we strongly recommend you read the following two short presentations:

Crisis Point in the Human Journey

At no time in the human journey to enlightenment is the temptation to abandon the all-important democratic principle of freedom of expression greater than when understanding of the human condition is finally found.        Written by Jeremy Griffith.   Read/Print Essay

Sir James Darling’s Vision of Fostering the Ability to Undertake
the ‘Paramount’ Task of Solving the Human Condition
in Order to ‘Save the World’

To affirm the crucial importance of the FHA’s work of addressing the human condition we present a short speech given by Sir James Darling, former Chairman of the ABC, the organisation that is now doing all it can to misrepresent, vilify and destroy this all-important work. Sir James Darling was also headmaster of Geelong Grammar School for 32 years until 1961, the school that a number of FHA members attended, including FHA founding directors, Jeremy Griffith, his brother Simon Griffith, Tim Macartney-Snape AM OAM and Christopher Stephen. Comments by Jeremy Griffith. Read/Print Speech