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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A brave and important book, 12 Jul 2007
A Species In Denial by Jeremy Griffith is a controversial book because it dares to look into the issue of human alienation; it dares to confront the issue of self. The book is titled "A Species In Denial" because humans have been unable to deal with the issue of self, the issue of the human condition, the extent of our divided, alienated, 'fallen' state.
What is so extraordinary and important is that this bringing to the surface of the issue of our incredibly divided selves is made possible by the central thesis of the book which is the biological explanation for WHY this divided self has been highly necessary. The book doesn't condemn humans, it dignifies them. It explains that they are 'good' and not 'bad' afterall. It explains the origin of, so called 'sin' or 'evil', and by so doing lifts the 'burden of guilt' from humanity. I suggest people are offended by the honesty of this book and fail to reach this deeper, all-important reconciling understanding in the book that makes the honesty in it both possible and necessary.
To go outside the historic denial of the human condition necessitates heresies on many fronts. The orthodoxies are everywhere challenged in this book, but challenged they need to be. I suggest that a book of such fundamental honesty is overdue.
When Charles Darwin presented his book, the Origins of Species, and demystified humans by linking them with animals, the establishment or orthodoxy was so angered by the heresy that it took a great deal of courage for people to focus on the science of the idea and discover its validity. Science now accepts Darwin's Theory and in fact a great deal of scientific knowledge has been built upon it.
I am an honours graduate in biology and have been assessing the ideas that Griffith presents in A Species In Denial and his earlier books about the human condition since 1992. I see that A Species In Denial is about human biology, about how humans evolved from an instinctive animal to a fully conscious being and how that resulted in us having to live in denial of our contradictory natures. It is this dilemma of the human condition, this issue of good and evil in the human makeup, that A Species In Denial at last reconciles. For all its audacity in exposing the extent and variety of human alienation, it is an incredibly brave & important book.
The science behind this book is so simple that it could be assessed, evaluated and verified by school children, yet I have seen some respected scientists and academics become so offended by the outright honesty of this book, that they fail to even consider the basic scientific processes described in it.
Response to this book is extremely polarised. We must ask ourselves why many eminent and qualified people can see such merit in A Species In Denial and others attack it so ferociously without ever tackling the ideas.
I strongly recommend you read the book and see for yourself if this book isn't almost unbearably honest and discover the real reason behind the extreme animosity from some people. Denials naturally resist exposure because they are so embedded, especially a denial of this scale where virtually all of humanity is involved, but our freedom as a species lies beyond living in our dungeon state of denial. More power to this book.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Profound, but deeply flawed, account of the origins of our capacity for good and evil, 7 Dec 2003
I once believed that this book, and those which the author published previously, were the answer to all the world's problems. I don't any more.
Griffith seems to be hung up on the idea that much of what we do in our ordinary lives is "an attack on innocence". This includes apparently loving sexual relations. (There is no doubt that some men use sex as a weapon, but I see no evidence that this tendency runs beneath consensual intercourse.)
Seeing this "attack on innocence" as a prime motivator of human behaviour leads Griffith to a remarkably convoluted "explanation" for homosexuality which is one of the weakest points in the book.
Also, by feeling that he alone has the answers to the world's problems, Griffith seems to have come to believe that the world is being swamped by something he calls "exhaustion" and crushed by some kind of oppressive "pseudo-idealism". And he believes that post-modernism, in its rejection of absolute truth, is the most dangerous form of this phenomenon. Where he sees a negative, I see a positive. The world is breaking away from old certainties and we are becoming more honest in our expression of our imperfections. Much of what he sees as spreading "exhaustion", I see as a dropping of pretence about our psychological state and a number of movements towards healing.
He is right to point out the dangers of fundamentalism and dogma, but have not his own ideas become a fundamentalistic dogma? The evidence for me is in a reading of his books in chronological order, with this one being the most angrily defiant. I find an application of Jung's theory of projection very useful to uncovering the flaws in "A Species in Denial".
Don't get me wrong, I think this book digs as deeply into the nature of the human condition as any book available at the moment, but Griffith has not applied Occam's Razor to his ideas. There are simpler explanations for the human condition which can be constructed from the basics he outlines. At least that is what I've come to believe, after studying his work for the last 16 years.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This book offers much-needed solution instead of bandaid, 13 Mar 2004
I have just finished reading A Species In Denial, the most remarkable book I’ve ever read. As a university student I come across many books claiming to offer solutions to the world’s problems but this one I believe is the only one to achieve this and I encourage everyone to read it.In today’s world which is rife with human suffering—terrorism, wars and poverty and even Mothers and Fathers murdering their own children—it’s not hard to know we need a solution not a band-aid to the problems facing humanity. It’s time we all understood the crux of the problem here on earth. Human beings are capable of the most atrocious acts, but they are also capable of incredible acts of love. Good and evil, if you like. I believe A Species In Denial provides an explanation for this suffering and pain and there is a solution, that is neither short sighted or a band-aid. Its no longer good enough for people to hide behind faith and band-aid solutions. It really is time to take a step back and take a good look at the big picture. The good intentions of so many individuals and organisations are simply that. They are not going to solve the biggest problem of humankind. The biggest problem facing human kind IS human kind itself. Our problems, and the state of the world are counter effects of a much more significant problem, namely human beings and our human condition. The human condition being our ingrained insecurity arising from our inability to reckon with and understand our capacity for acts of good and evil. Only once we address the much larger, all consuming challenge of bringing dignifying understanding to the human condition, will we witness the subsidence of the problems facing mankind today. I challenge any one who is sceptical about what I am saying, to get a hold of A Species In Denial‚ to read it, digest it and then see if it doesn’t knock your socks off. This book is already a bestseller in Australia and it’s no wonder. There really is only one solution to the massive problem facing the world today. This problem is explained in the book and the solution is there for anyone brave enough to look at it.
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