For much of the modern era, efforts to fix the world have focused on building better systems – better technologies, better policies, better institutions. And by many measures, those efforts have delivered. Advances in artificial intelligence, medicine, renewable energy, and global connectivity have transformed what humanity is capable of achieving.
But despite this progress, many of the world’s most persistent problems are amplifying. Political polarization is intensifying, mental health challenges are rising, and conflict continues across multiple regions. The gap between what we can do and how we behave is becoming harder to ignore.
If the tools to fix the world are improving, why do the outcomes fall so desperately short?
A growing recognition is that the limitation may not lie in our systems or tools at all. It may lie in something far more fundamental: the human condition itself.
A Problem Beneath the Problems
The idea that human behavior is the basis of global dysfunction is, of course, not new. Psychologists, philosophers, and economists have long tried to explain why humans can be cooperative and altruistic in principle, yet competitive, selfish, and even destructive in practice.
But while these perspectives have provided insight, they have tended to address the symptoms rather than fully explain the cause of this contradiction.
So if we are serious about fixing the world, that invariably raises a deeper question: what is the origin of this conflicted state between ideality and reality, between so-called ‘good and evil’, which is the issue of the human condition?
As the renowned biologist E. O. Wilson observed, “there is no grail more elusive or precious in the life of the mind than the key to understanding the human condition.”
This is where the work of Australian biologist Jeremy Griffith has been gaining attention. Griffith has spent decades refining a biological explanation of the human condition that seeks to identify the source of this conflict.
His work has drawn attention from a range of academics and public figures. Professor Harry Prosen, a former president of the Canadian Psychiatric Association, has called it “the 11th-hour breakthrough biological explanation of the human condition.” Professor Alejo Vidal-Quadras, a former Vice-President of the European Parliament and nuclear physicist, has described it as “a really significant contribution to science, providing fundamental answers.”
Such endorsements are striking, particularly given the scale of the claim: that resolving the human condition could be central to resolving many of the world’s problems – and ultimately help fix the world once and for all.
The Source of the Human Condition
Griffith’s work is centered upon a deceptively simple idea: the human condition emerged from a conflict between our species’ instincts and intellect.
In his account, human instincts – shaped over millions of years of evolution’s natural selection – provided established orientations for behavior. However, with the emergence of a fully conscious mind, thought to have developed in early members of the genus Homo some two million years ago, as evidenced by fossils that show expansion of the association cortex around this time, humans gained the ability to question, experiment, and seek understanding independently of those instinctive orientations
This created a fundamental tension between the two operating systems.
Instincts can guide behavior, but they cannot explain it. The intellect, by contrast, requires understanding. So as early humans began to explore and deviate from instinctive expectations in order to learn, our instincts effectively registered that deviation as “wrong.”
According to Griffith, this ‘criticism’ from the instincts left humans feeling internally divided.
Intuitively sensing that their search for understanding was the right thing to do, but unable to explain that position, humans became psychologically defensive – reacting against the perceived criticism, seeking to prove their worth, and attempting to block it out. In this way, the patterns of anger, egocentricity, and alienation emerged.
Rethinking Human Behavior
Griffith’s framework offers a stark reinterpretation of some of the most persistent aspects of human behavior.
Anger, egocentricity, and alienation are often treated as flaws to be managed or suppressed. In this view, however, they are better understood as defensive responses – mechanisms that emerged to protect the conscious mind from unresolved internal criticism.
This perspective helps explain why efforts to change behavior and thus fix the world through external systems – political, economic, or educational – have had limited success. Without addressing the underlying cause, such behaviors will persist.
It also reframes the problem. Instead of asking how to better control or regulate human behavior, the question becomes whether the underlying tension can be fundamentally resolved.
From Explanation to Change: A New Way to Fix the World
Griffith’s central argument is that providing a biological explanation for the human condition changes the situation fundamentally.
If it is understood that the intellect’s departure from instinct was not ‘bad’ or a failure, but a necessary step in the development of understanding, then the basis for that internal conflict is removed. The conscious mind is no longer implicitly “at fault,” but instead seen as engaged in a necessary process of exploration and learning.
In that context, the defensive responses that have characterized much of human behavior – anger, egocentricity, and alienation – are no longer required; they become redundant.
It is a significant claim: that a major shift in understanding ourselves could disable the psychological drivers of conflict at both an individual and collective level.
Growing Academic Interest
Dr. Stuart Hurlbert, Professor Emeritus at San Diego State University, called Griffith’s insight “a most phenomenal scientific achievement,” even referring to him as “Darwin II.”
Professor Scott D. Churchill, former Chair of Psychology at the University of Dallas, praised Griffith’s work for its “razor-sharp clarifications” of existing biological theories, while Professor David Chivers, former President of the Primate Society of Great Britain, described its central arguments as “logical and sensible,” the “necessary breakthrough” in understanding ourselves.
Such praise indicates Griffith’s work is being taken extremely seriously as the possible solution to the human condition.
Fixing the World at its Source
If the root cause of global problems lies in human behavior, a proposition that is hard to argue against, then efforts to fix the world must ultimately depend on addressing our human condition.
This is why Fix The World, an international nonprofit, was established to make Griffith’s work widely accessible. Formerly known as the World Transformation Movement, the organization provides free educational resources and operates through a global network of over 80 volunteer-run centers around the world focused on building greater awareness of the human condition and Griffith’s resolution of it.
The idea is that once the underlying psychological conflict is explained and resolved, the behavior that gives rise to many of the world’s most persistent challenges – conflict, social dysfunction, environmental destruction – can begin to change in a fundamental way.
A Different Way of Thinking About Progress
There is no shortage of innovation aimed at fixing the world. From climate technologies to artificial intelligence, the pace of advancement continues to accelerate.
But if the central constraint is not technological but human, then even the most powerful tools will have limited impact on their own.
Whether Griffith’s explanation ultimately gains wider acceptance remains to be seen. But if the human condition can be understood at its source, it may provide the missing link between addressing human behavior and finally being able to truly fix the world.
