Chris Dillow at Stumbling and Mumbling makes a provocative post of seven reasons why he doesn’t like women. I can’t really agree with, since some of my best friends are women, but I got a good laugh out of his first reason:

1. They have “feelings.” It would be futile to decry so widespread a human failing, but women – more than men – compound this shortcoming. They think their feelings matter. Worse, they are prone to mistake them for thoughts.

Reading the weekend paper a few weeks ago, I came across this “advertisement”:

They are always interesting, these notes put in national newspapers, that are not adverts or job ads, indicating that some section of the community has some (at least what they perceive as) interesting information for the rest of us.

It is surprising that the ad does not really give you much information at all about the organisation. The only description is that the Foundation for Humanity’s Adulthood is “dedicated to understanding and ameliorating the human condition”. This unfortunately could be used to describe half the organisations in the world! The “human condition”, at least on plain reading, could cover most human traits: love, hate, addiction, depression, religion. They only other real pointer is the description of the defamation case that the article is about, one where the SMH apparently implied that the Foundation “placed demands on its members which tore families apart”. From that one could infer that it might be a religious organisation or other such organisation (although on closer inspection it is not, see below).

Nonetheless a visit to the organisation’s website does not really help to clarify matters. It mentions the court case above, a book called “Freedom”, and an interestingly a link to a discussion forum post that makes positive comments about someone called “Griffith”. This stood out a bit for a foundation website, this Griffith must somehow be central to the foundation.

The description of the FHA page adds little, although it does mention a Foundation Director, Jeremy Griffith. More information on him is available on wikipedia:

The FHA promotes and provides a forum for Griffith’s theory of human nature. Between the years 1975 and 1988 Griffith developed a theory which claims to explain human nature, good and evil and provide a way to a better life. Griffith’s theory developed from reflections on the nature of human beings as both loving and hateful, a state of being he refers to as the human condition. He also wished to develop an explanation for humanity’s destructive effect on the natural environment. In 1988 he established the Foundation for Humanity’s Adulthood as an organization to promote, support and discuss his theory.

The organisation has about 50 members who support the program of FHA, which seem to be based around the philosophical like writing of Jeremy Griffith.

The understanding of the human condition explains the difference between our instincts and intellect and the effect that difference has had on our behaviour. It describes how the anger and selfishness felt by humans is the result of these two factions within ourselves—the gene-based instinctive learning system struggling against the nerve-based intellect’s capacity to understand.

This conflict, which started some two million years ago when consciousness emerged, causes humans to live with an undeserved sense of guilt that is characterised by competition and aggression. Once guilt is removed by being explained—which the FHA says is now possible—the competition and aggression in humans naturally subsides.

He appear to use some aspect of biology to construct a theory around our instincts and intellect on how that can improve our understanding of our condition – and maybe provide guidance to future actions.

Without going into it deeper I am not sure how far this advances us. Dualism has been around for a long time.