Jeremy Griffith
FHA Director
Condensed Profile
Jeremy Griffith, Dec. 2002
Jeremy Griffith is an Australian biologist who was born in December 1945, 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 after graduating 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 creating 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 Foundation for Humanity’s Adulthood as a non-profit organisation dedicated to promoting analysis of the human condition. He is the author of three books, Free: The End of The Human Condition (1988), Beyond The Human Condition (1991), and, in 2003, the Australasian bestseller A Species In Denial. In 2004 he wrote the four synopses for The Human Condition Documentary Proposal which has received over 100 endorsements from many of the world’s leading scientists. Professor Harry Prosen, former President of the Canadian Psychiatric Association, has said, “I consider the synthesis that Jeremy Griffith is putting forward to be one of, if not the most important contribution to both understanding and ameliorating the human condition written thus far. I am aware of no other paradigm having ever been developed that answers somewhere in its great depths all the great questions like this one does.”
Extended Profile
Born in Albury, NSW, in December 1945, Jeremy was raised on a sheep station in central 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 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. The Centre 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 published widely, 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). His and Malley’s search also featured in an episode of the national television series Big Country (1973).
Click on this image to enlarge it.
In 1971 Jeremy completed his BSc degree in zoology at Sydney University and the following year, in the same self-sufficient spirit as he had undertaken the tiger search, he began manufacturing furniture to his own simple and natural designs. His idea was to make tabletops 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 tabletop 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 a brother.
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 by Craft Australia (1978). The business employed some 45 people and was a major tourist attraction when Jeremy sold his half share to his brother in 1991.
Advertisements for Jeremy's furniture from 1990 Australian home decorating magazines.
Click on these images to enlarge them.
In 1975 Jeremy’s enthusiasm for life took 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) and, in 2003, A Species In Denial.”
Beyond was launched in New Zealand, and in Africa at the National Museum of Kenya, in the Louis Leakey auditorium on 29 Sept 1992. Whilst in Africa, Jeremy Griffith was invited to visit a number of primate field studies in Kenya and Burundi.
Photos from Jeremy Griffith's 1992 trip to Africa. Below L to R : Jeremy with Dr Shirley Strum's Chololo Ranch Baboon Project study group in Kenya - Jeremy with Dr Susanne Abildgaard and 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 troup, Dr Elizabeth Macfie, veterinarian for Dian Fossey's Karisoke Gorilla Research Centre
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 the late 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 (FHA). 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.
Annie and Jeremy in central west NSW, 2000
In 2004 Jeremy wrote the four synopses for The Human Condition Documentary Proposal which has received over 100 endorsements from many of the world’s leading scientists. Professor Harry Prosen, former President of the Canadian Psychiatric Association, has said, “I consider the synthesis that Jeremy Griffith is putting forward to be one of, if not the most important contribution to both understanding and ameliorating the human condition written thus far. I am aware of no other paradigm having ever been developed that answers somewhere in its great depths all the great questions like this one does.”
With the help of his partner since 1980, Annie Williams, Jeremy spends most of his time writing at his brother Simon’s property in central west NSW.