Every parent wants to raise an emotionally healthy family. But in today’s world, where mental health challenges, behavioral issues, and generational trauma are on the rise — and more broadly recognized and diagnosed — it is natural to ask: Why do we all struggle so much with our emotions? Where do dysfunctional behaviors come from — and can they be changed for good?
Australian biologist Jeremy Griffith, whose work on The Human Condition is internationally recognized, offers a powerful explanation of human behavior. Based in Australia, Griffith’s theory is promoted by the World Transformation Movement, and aims to shed light on the emotional challenges many families face today. Rather than placing blame, his perspective brings clarity, compassion, and hope for a transformed future.
Backed by strong support from thought leaders across scientific and psychological fields, Griffith’s scientific explanation of what he calls the ‘human condition’ aims to help people understand the basis of emotional upset and defensive behavior. And if his insight is accurate, it may well become one of the most powerful tools available to those not only working to protect, nurture, and guide families seeking to raise stronger families, but humanity as a whole.
What is the Human Condition?
Griffith describes the human condition as the product of an internal psychological conflict that arose when our species developed a conscious mind around two million years ago. In our early evolution, humans were guided by instincts. However, when our nascent intellect continued to grow and question life, it necessarily deviated from these instincts in order to think independently and pursue understanding.
This development, Griffith explains, created a deep conflict within us. Our instincts couldn’t make sense of the growing role of our conscious mind, which seemed to undermine their ‘authority’. The result of this perceived ‘criticism’ towards our conscious mind was a deep emotional ‘upset’ — a feeling of shame, guilt and insecurity — which over millennia built up, manifesting in the defensive responses of anger, egocentricity and alienation we see in modern behavior.
The significance of Griffith’s explanation, according to its advocates, is that through understanding the human condition’s biological origin — understanding why we had to challenge our instincts — the need for humans to be insecure, defensive and retaliatory ends; as a species and as individuals, we can finally heal. As Griffith puts it: “through this clarifying insight all our psychologically defensive angry, alienated and egocentric behaviour is made redundant. With the great burden of guilt lifted from the human race, the old insecure, upset life that went with it is finally over and a new life free of all that upset begins. Humans can finally return from a tormented psychotic existence to health and happiness.”
A Scientific Framework Rooted in Compassion
Griffith’s insight is based on first principle-based biology. Drawing on primatology and anthropology, as well as physics and philosophy, it provides a framework that explains behavior in evolutionary terms. And yet, it’s also deeply humanizing, inviting us to view ourselves and each other with understanding. Just as we appreciate that a child will sometimes struggle while learning to walk, we can come to view human struggles as part of the bigger picture of our species reaching psychological maturity. Viewing behavior through this framework can help ease anger and shame — traditionally the greatest barriers to healing — and foster compassion in families and communities.
What The Experts Are Saying
Griffith’s explanation of the human condition has attracted praise from thought leaders around the world.
Professor Harry Prosen, a deeply respected former President of the Canadian Psychiatric Association, described Griffith’s work as “the holy grail of insight we have sought for the psychological rehabilitation of the human race,” further observing that “The beauty of Griffith’s treatise is that the healing starts at the macro level… from under the umbrella of that safe position, everyone can gradually work inwards to their particular experience of all the imperfections in human life that have now, finally, been made sense of.”
Professor Scott Churchill, a former chair of psychology at the University of Dallas, described Griffith’s main book, FREEDOM: The End Of The Human Condition, as the “book all humans need to read for our collective wellbeing.”
Professor David J. Chivers, a former President of the Primate society of Britain stated that “FREEDOM is the necessary breakthrough in the critical issue of needing to understand ourselves.”
Final Thoughts: A Message of Hope
Parenting is the most important and challenging job in the world. And while there’s no manual for raising perfect children, there is a growing need for understanding that can help us raise children who are emotionally secure, safe and supported.
Jeremy Griffith’s explanation of the human condition offers something unique in the mental health and parenting space: a biological understanding that leads to deep emotional healing and a roadmap to greater empathy, stronger families, and ultimately a brighter, more compassionate world — not just for ourselves, but for generations to come.
