(www.worldtransformation.com/jeremygriffith) Google+
 |
| Download high resolution image |
Jeremy Griffith is an Australian biologist. Born in December 1945, he was raised on a sheep station in central New South Wales and educated at Geelong Grammar School in Victoria. He played representative rugby football, making the trials for the national side, the Wallabies, in 1966, and, prior to and following graduation from Sydney University in 1971, spent six years in the wilds of Tasmania undertaking the most thorough investigation ever into the plight of the Tasmanian Tiger, concluding it was extinct. After establishing a successful furniture manufacturing business based on his own simple and natural designs, Jeremy started writing about the human condition in 1975 and in 1983 established the Centre for Humanity’s Adulthood (now called the WORLD TRANSFORMATION MOVEMENT (WTM)) as a non-profit organisation dedicated to promoting analysis of the human condition. He is the author of six books: Free: The End of The Human Condition (1988), Beyond The Human Condition (1991), the Australasian bestseller A Species In Denial (2003), The Great Exodus: From the horror and darkness of the human condition (2006), FREEDOM (2009) and The Book of Real Answers to Everything! (2011). In 2004 he wrote the four synopses for The Human Condition Documentary Proposal, which received over 100 endorsements from many of the world’s leading scientists (/docoresponses). Jeremy’s latest book, The Book of Real Answers to Everything!, is a compilation of short articles that have been developed to help demonstrate to readers the universal application of his synthesis to subjects wide and varied. In addition to the book’s ground-breaking piece on What is Science?, Jeremy provides definitive explanations on topics including The human condition, What is love?, Soul, Conscience, Good vs evil, What is the meaning of life?, Is there a God?, Our ego and egocentric lives, Save the world, Consciousness, Human nature and Why do people lie? Jeremy’s principal book FREEDOM is a compilation of all his earlier publications, as well as significant new material, including the expanded transcript to the WORLD TRANSFORMATION MOVEMENT Introductory Videos (which were prepared in 2008 and posted online in 2009). Of FREEDOM, Professor Harry Prosen, a former President of the Canadian Psychiatric Association, has said: ‘Finding understanding of the human condition, our capacity for good and evil, has been the Holy Grail of the whole Darwinian revolution because it is the insight needed for the psychological rehabilitation of the human race. Since I am convinced this book presents that liberating understanding I believe there has never been a more exciting moment in human history, or a more important book.’ Jeremy became a Patron of the WORLD TRANSFORMATION MOVEMENT after retiring as a Director in 2009.
Born in Albury, NSW, on the 1st of December 1945, Jeremy was raised on a sheep station in Central West NSW. He was educated at Tudor House School in NSW (1956-59) and, at a senior level, Geelong Grammar School (GGS) in Victoria (1961-63). His time at Geelong included a year at the school’s outward bound campus, Timbertop, which Prince Charles also attended for part of his education. In 1964 he matriculated at home by correspondence, gaining first class honours in biology, and in 1965 he began a science degree at the University of New England. While there, he played representative rugby, making the trials for the Wallabies, the national team, in 1966.
Deferring his studies in 1967, Jeremy hitchhiked to Tasmania (with his dog Loaf), determined to save the Thylacine–the Tasmanian Tiger–from extinction. Setting off with only a trail bike to carry Loaf, his pack and himself, he began by searching all the remaining wilderness areas for evidence of the Tiger’s survival. The search was to last for more than six years and by its conclusion he and his co-worker James Malley had attracted significant support and a Thylacine Research Centre had been established. Bob Brown, who went on to develop the Australian Conservation Movement and become a Federal Member of Parliament, donated his time and income for a year to support the Centre, which had two field units in operation and camera monitors in all likely wilderness areas. It was the most thorough effort made to save this extraordinary animal, but sadly Jeremy concluded the ‘Tiger’ was extinct. Jeremy’s findings were widely reported, with articles appearing in the American Museum of Natural History’s journal, Natural History (‘The Search for the Tasmanian Tiger’, Dec 1972), and Australian Geographic (‘Tasmanian Tiger–Extinct or Merely Elusive?’, by Andy Park, July-Sept 1986). The search also featured in an episode of the national television series A Big Country (1973). To read these articles and a more detailed account of the search visit Jeremy Griffith’s Remarkable Search for the Tasmanian Tiger.
In 1971 Jeremy completed his BSc degree in zoology at Sydney University and the following year, in the same self-sufficient spirit he had undertaken the tiger search, he began manufacturing furniture to his own simple and natural designs. His idea was to make table tops from bark-to-bark slabs of timber, so Jeremy hitchhiked to the north coast of NSW where such slabs were available. He made his first table top by carting a slab in a wheelbarrow four kilometres from the sawmill to a joinery where it could be planed. The business grew and in late 1973 he was joined by one of his brothers.
By 1976 they had saved enough to buy a 54 hectare property, on which they built an immense pole-framed workshop. Their unique furniture received much critical acclaim, including an article titled ‘Craft as a Successful Livelihood’ published in Craft Australia (1978). The business employed some 45 people and was a major tourist attraction when, in 1991 Jeremy sold his half-share in the business to his brother.
Click on these images to enlarge them.
Advertisements for Jeremy’s furniture from 1990 Australian home decorating magazines.
In 1975 Jeremy’s enthusiasm for life had taken on a deeper dimension. He explains: ‘A few years after I started making the furniture I realised that if I were not to compromise the ideals I was striving for in the furniture I would have to find the solution to a deeper problem–namely, why wasn’t humanity ideal. Why, for example, did people want furniture that was highly embellished, artificial and extravagant rather than simple and natural? At a deeper level, why, when the ideals were clearly to be cooperative, loving and selfless, was humanity so competitive, aggressive and selfish?’
‘The introspective, soulful time I spent with nature in Tasmania only heightened my idealism and thus the problem for me of understanding the non-ideal real world. Once I was focused on the question, I began to thread my thinking about it together on paper. Since 1975 I have spent at least the first three or four fresh early (often pre-dawn) hours of each day working on the problem. The results are my books Free: The End Of The Human Condition (1988), Beyond The Human Condition (1991), A Species In Denial (2003), The Great Exodus: From the horror and darkness of the human condition (2006), FREEDOM (2011) and The Book of Real Answers to Everything! (2011).’
In 2004 Jeremy wrote the four synopses for The Human Condition Documentary Proposal, which received over 100 endorsements from many of the world’s leading scientists (/docoresponses). Professor Harry Prosen (/prosen), a former President of the Canadian Psychiatric Association, has said of FREEDOM, ‘Finding understanding of the human condition, our capacity for good and evil, has been the Holy Grail of the whole Darwinian revolution because it is the insight needed for the psychological rehabilitation of the human race. Since I am convinced this book presents that liberating understanding I believe there has never been a more exciting moment in human history, or a more important.’
Click on these images to enlarge them.
Photos from Jeremy Griffith’s 1992 trip to Africa. Above L to R: Jeremy with Dr Shirley Strum’s Chololo Ranch Baboon Project study group in Kenya; Jeremy with Dr Susanne Abildgaard and a common chimp at Jane Goodall’s Chimpanzee Rehabilitation Centre in Burundi; Jeremy with the Susa Mountain Gorilla study group in Rwanda. Jeremy met with the carer of this troop, Dr Elizabeth Macfie, veterinarian for Dian Fossey’s Karisoke Gorilla Research Centre.
Beyond was launched in New Zealand on 10 June 1992, and in Africa at the National Museum of Kenya, in the Louis Leakey auditorium, on 29 September 1992. Whilst in Africa, Jeremy Griffith was invited to visit a number of primate field studies in Kenya and Burundi.
As their titles suggest, Jeremy’s books present biological explanation of the human condition. It is a macro interpretation as revolutionary and as simple–in hindsight–as Darwin’s Origin of Species. Jeremy’s books have been given impressive reviews by such eminent scientists in the field as Professor Charles Birch and Professor John Morton, and other distinguished thinkers such as Sir Laurens van der Post. In 1991 the Centre for Humanity’s Adulthood, which Jeremy established in 1983 for the study of the human condition, was registered as a charity with the slightly changed name of the Foundation for Humanity’s Adulthood (as the WORLD TRANSFORMATION MOVEMENT was previously known). In 1999 Jeremy established The University of Denial-Free Studies as the base for the development and study of a new denial-free paradigm for science, and in 2009 launched an online video facility on the WORLD TRANSFORMATION MOVEMENT’s website for the discussion of the all-important issue of the human condition and its resolution.
Annie and Jeremy in Central West NSW, 2000
With assistance from Annie Williams, his partner since 1980, Jeremy spends most of his time writing.
Print