“A Species In Denial” – by author Jeremy Griffith
Before I begin I feels it’s important to state that I am not usually prone to ad hominem attacks, yet this book so repulsed my sensibilities that I simply cannot withhold my contempt. I am impelled to slander since the author of this work is so vainglorious nothing else could suffice.
I first came across the book “A Species in Denial” as I was perusing a used bookshop.
After flicking it over, I noticed that the author, Jeremy Griffith, was an actual biologist, which served only to pique my interest further. I love a good treatise on the failures of humanity, more so when it’s from, seemingly, a legitimate expert in an academic field. Had I known what lay ahead I would have burnt the entire store down to avoid the sheer mind numbing agony this book inflicted upon me.
If a time machine is ever created, I can state without hyperbole that its first use will be to erase all memory of this cursed ‘magnum opus’ of puerile vapidity from ever entering into my possession.
The fact it was also available for purchase for the tiny sum of three dollars should really have been an omen, but clearly one I chose to ignore in my excitement.
Shame on me.
The cover and presentation of the book paints it as professional and academic take on the complexities inherent to the human condition, an earnest empirical study of mans nature, existential angst and place in the universe.
Looks however, can be deceiving.
This author of this hefty tome claims to have unraveled the integrative nature of the natural world, how all biology forms itself into natural integrative systems and from this, how it can decipher the riddle of the human condition. He even goes as far to claim he has answered why our “metaphysical souls” become corrupted by the world, the true source of our great unhappiness.
Let that sink in for a moment.
The book purports to elucidate how we as a species can reclaim our true nature, one of being co-operative and “loving” (his words not mine, from a biologist no less) and attempts to do so via a lengthy form of stream of consciousness aphasia that is so repetitious in nature it is insulting.
The author claims that this repetition is to break down the “mental barrier of our accumulative negative life experience” that blocks us from comprehending his amazing ideas. Such claims however, soon seem fraudulent due to the litany of pop culture references that are liberally sprinkled throughout. These references are so common, one begins to feel the need to claim them as plagiaristic filler, this, despite the suitable referencing.
The book begins from some sound premises early on and for the first 50 pages, though poorly written, appear relatively cogent. However, as the reader moves ever so slowly to the 100th page and beyond, the book reveals itself to be everything it claims it is not.
Despite the constant repudiation throughout that it is not a new age or self help book, the writers insistence that his message is so simple and profound even a teenager can understand it becomes rather prophetic, since his work fits perfectly within the overly simplistic and feckless framework of the genre. Appeals to emotion, pseudo scientific claims and extreme leaps of logic abound.
Seemingly as a way to refute these accusations preemptively, the book contains quotes and examples from readers whose lives were changed by the ideas ensconced within. This was obviously a terrifying moment for me since it was clear that the books subject matter had gone through many revisions and had actually been republished in its current form.
These defensive examples of self validation include an unsolicited endorsement from a young girl, who claims a previous work from the author had changed her life, curing her depression and providing the metaphysical push to move forward. Her contentment manifesting by appropriating this work of fictions enlightened world view. We all live our own lie, I guess sometimes it’s easier to just steal someone else’s, regardless of its sterility?
Such poorly persuasive ideas would only find validation within a juvenile mind, one prone to the histrionic lamentations of inexperience combined with youth. While in some strange way complimentary, the sudden cure for this teenager’s moody depressive apathy merely speaks to the banality of her suffering. In no way could any genuine depression be alleviated by such meagre and unsophisticated ideas.
When one considers that the author believes most adults are unable or unwilling to listen to his core message, as he so fervently states time and time again in the text, they begin to realise this is simply because his ideas are so disturbingly callow as to be embarrassing.
No literate, educated adult would ever continue past the 100th page. Any attempt at real scientific inquiry or solid investigatory analysis is lost in an unending cycle of veiled insults and overdramatised guff.
This book reads like The Secret, if it were laced with grandiloquent faux scientific expropriations of academic terminology. Though, in all honesty I’ve never read The Secret, so maybe they are of comparable lexical forgery?
The problems with the book become ever clearer as the reader is mercilessly assailed, over and over again with the same concept framed in a hundred different ways. So much so, that to describe it as tedious would be disingenuous. I literally had to fight with myself every time the page required turning, such was the mental anguish I endured reading the aimless scrawls of this insufferable egotist.
Keep in mind that I have read internet fan fiction before so this simply reinforces the feculant content within this asinine treatise.
So bad was the prose within that it soon became a challenge of nihilistic endurance just to continue. So, continue I did.
What is more surprising than the hopeless attempts at cohesion within, is despite this oversight, the style soon takes on a completely antagonistic tone. One that was so outrageously misplaced it speaks to the authors total lack of introspective ability.
Often I found myself simply offended by the incredulous claims levelled at me in all my brainwashed adult maturity. I’m glad he continually repeats this accusation at the reader throughout since he was clearly seeing something I couldn’t. In truth, he is hopelessly delusional.
What I first interpreted as insulting presumptuousness on the authors part soon gave way to my own bizarre sense of ironic enmity, as if overcome with what I can only describe as patronising indulgence.
It’s hard to continue reading something when the writer has gone out of their way to impart to you the genius of their ideas, despite their incredible immaturity. You just end up feeling sorry for them.
Unfettered I battled on, allowing the author an opportunity for atonement or perhaps some conciliatory thematic shift. It never came.
One of the more contemptutious claims made within, is that the majority of human beings exist in some perpetual state of ignorance. While this does resonate for me, the self professed existential cosmicist that I am, he is clearly not afraid to elevate himself above his accused hapless victims of philosophic misanthropy.
After all, his simple message is incessantly reiterated in a litany of didactic examples one would have to be ignorant not to comprehend it.
The problem with all of this however, is despite his background in biology, the authors grandiose statements remain just that. Bereft of any honest attempt at substantiation via sound premises. These emotional outbursts of unscientific nonsense are a chilling indictment of an educated biologist who frankly, should know better.
Griffith claims in resolute and no doubt earnest seriousness that the “driving force in human evolution” was the increased “nurturing of offspring” or as he describes it, “love indoctrination”.
Stop laughing, this is legitimate science.
Such claims could almost be forgiven had the book provided any real insight, verifiable or anecdotal, but it soon reveals itself to be completely and utterly farcical. Only a self-aggrandising bipolar maniac could ever make the claims this man does with a straight face and I am a diagnosed self-aggrandising bipolar maniac.
As I read further I couldn’t help but feel that the author was so far off the mark that it was like someone left an undergrad to their own devices, unsupervised for several years as they wrote their PHD thesis on a subject they didn’t really bother to study. It is so laced with poor and overwrought phraseology that any chance for his message to come through falls immediately flat. After all how could a genius with such cerebral insight into the human condition write so artlessly? This channeling of Heidiggian obtuseness is merely another example of the paucity of intellectual value on offer within its pages.
Sadly the core message of this book falters under the weight of its own vacuity, a turgid protracted composition that even Nietzsche in his final days of syphalytic madness could have ever hoped to equal.
Had a more experienced author tackled the subject with the same core themes, even without the attempted ‘scientific’ methodology, perhaps some greater insight would have been uncovered.
Sadly this is just not the case. So bad is the work that at several points the author actually dares the reader to stop. This is not an attempt at humour, he does this repeatedly. After all, as he claims, if someone did stop reading, it would only prove him right. The reader just clearly isn’t ready to hear what he has to say.
In this instance, he displayed a surprising level of clairvoyance, as he was completely and utterly correct. The book was so stupefyingly intolerable I simply could not finish it, regardless of the antagonistic daring that permeates its hallowed pages. I inevitably surrendered around the 200 page mark, with only 328 more to go.
Part of me wanted to finish the book, just to disprove the authors accusations but this quickly subsided when I saw its chiding provocations for what they truly were. A childish attempt at justifying his terrible prose. Only a masochist could ever finish this book. I have derived more enjoyment lying face down in the gutter at 2am, vomiting uncontrollably and wishing for death.
The final and and most unnerving conceit contained within this work of overbearing verbosity was the authors sincere suggestion that it should be read twice or to my absolute astonishment, three times. A proposal so transcendently arrogant that I could not possibly entertain it.
This book punishes the reader with every turn of the page, treating them with such audacious contempt it is inconceivable. In the end, no unpacking of Plato’s Allegory of the cave, which covers almost 50 pages by the way, could ever save this work. It is simply poor in every respect.
Only after I failed the authors test of endurance did I care to investigate him further. As it turns out, his concepts have sprouted an entire new age pseudo religion. No longer a peddler of outdated print media, he and his indoctrinated cohorts have embraced the Internet. Undoubtedly in an effort to seek validation via its many denizens of gullibility. The site contains videos, presentations and unsurprisingly, free ebooks of all his conjectural gibberish thus far. Feel free to peruse the wealth of fictional absurdity at http://www.humancondition.com/
I got such a good laugh that it’s only fair he gets some traffic. After all, in another life, before I learned to temper my own delusions of grandeur with circumspection, I too could have been a kindred spirit. Luckily or perhaps unfortunately my lack of hubris prevents me from attempting such a grand all encompassing theory on the human condition.
This book and its related digital media is to quote, Orson Wells “Impossible, meaningless”
I am less intelligent for having read this. Readers beware and consume at your own risk.
A generous 2/5 stars for the laughter it provided.