Jeremy Griffith Says We’ve Needed Distractions – And What They Reveal About Us

For more than a decade, Distractify has leaned into a simple truth: Sometimes we need to look away. But what if our craving for distraction wasn’t just a symptom of modern life – but something written deep into the story of how we became human?

That’s the question posed by Australian biologist Jeremy Griffith, who has spent decades developing a scientific explanation for the human condition – the deep insecurity he says lives in all of us, born from our inability to understand why a species capable of love and empathy can also be so competitive, aggressive, and destructive.

According to Professor Harry Prosen, former President of the Canadian Psychiatric Association, Griffith’s work represents “the 11th-hour breakthrough biological explanation of the human condition necessary for the psychological rehabilitation and transformation of our species.”

If there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that distraction has become the background music of modern life. Our phones light up before breakfast. Notifications multiply faster than thoughts. Entire industries now run on our attention spans.

As poet T.S. Eliot once put it, “Distracted from distraction by distraction.” The line could have been written yesterday – a diagnosis of the age of scrolling, streaming, and multitasking.

And it’s not just anecdotal. A study published in Science under the headline ‘People would rather be electrically shocked than left alone with their thoughts’ found that many participants preferred mild pain to the discomfort of introspection. It’s a striking demonstration of just how uncomfortable we’ve become with sitting quietly in our own minds – a discomfort that distraction conveniently masks.

But what exactly are we fleeing? Beneath all the chatter and constant stimulation lies something older – an unrest that technology didn’t create, only exposed. Nearly two centuries ago, the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard captured it perfectly when he wrote that “there is not a single human being who does not despair at least a little, in whose innermost being there doesn’t dwell an uneasiness, an unquiet, a discordance, an anxiety in the face of an unknown something, or a something he doesn’t even dare strike up acquaintance with…”

It’s that uneasiness – the deep, often unconscious sense of insecurity about ourselves – that Griffith says lies at the root of our need for distraction. So how does he explain it?

In his book FREEDOM: The End of the Human Condition, Jeremy Griffith presents a simple but far-reaching biological explanation for why humans became such psychologically insecure beings.

“When our fully conscious mind emerged some two million years ago,” Griffith explains, “it began experimenting in understanding the world – but our old instinctive orientations were intolerant of those experiments.”

Our inherited instincts, formed by natural selection, resisted this new capacity for conscious thought. They were rigid – even dictatorial – systems of guidance, intolerant of deviation. The result was an inner clash between instinct and intellect.

To illustrate, Griffith asks us to imagine a migrating bird suddenly endowed with a conscious mind. Out of curiosity, the bird veers from its ancient flight path to explore an island. Its instincts, shaped by natural selection, would push back automatically – an unthinking system unable to tolerate deviation from its inherited path. Unable to justify its decision to defy its instincts, the conscious bird would feel unjustly condemned by its instincts and begin defending itself – attack the criticism, try to prove it was not deserved, and try to suppress it.

That, says Griffith, is what happened to humanity. When our intellect began challenging our inherited instinctive orientations, the instincts in effect "criticized" those experiments in understanding. Unable to reconcile the conflict – explain that while instincts can orientate behavior, a conscious mind needs to understand the world to operate – we grew defensive. We attacked the implied accusation, became preoccupied with proving our worth, and, importantly, blocked out any criticism. We became angry, egocentric, and alienated sufferers of the human condition.

Through Griffith’s lens, distraction takes on a very different meaning. What we call distraction culture – the endless churn of pop news, celebrity gossip, and social media – becomes a kind of mass therapy. It’s how humanity has coped with the unresolved pain of not understanding itself.

As Griffith explains, “The reality is, we humans have become immensely superficial and artificial, living on the absolute surface, the meniscus, of existence in terms of what we are prepared to look at and feel.” Yet, he argues, this wasn’t a moral failure – it was a heroic psychological adaptation; the only way humanity could keep moving forward in the face of unbearable self-condemnation. Living on the surface was how we protected ourselves from the guilt and pain of not understanding our own behavior.

Seventeenth-century philosopher Blaise Pascal once wrote that “Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for miseries and yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.” It’s a line that captures both the necessity and the tragedy of humanity’s coping mechanisms: distraction was our refuge from unbearable self-doubt, yet the act of turning away from our inner truth created its own kind of misery – the loss of depth, meaning, and authentic connection.

Griffith’s breakthrough, he argues, lies in finally explaining the insecurity that made distraction necessary in the first place – an understanding that at last allows us to reconcile with our true self and face our imperfections with compassion.

He shows that humanity’s angry, egocentric, and alienated behavior was never inherently bad, but a psychological defense – an adaptation to the unbearable guilt of defying our instincts without understanding why. We needed those defenses until we could discover the real explanation for our defiance: that instincts can only guide behavior, whereas a conscious mind needs to make sense of existence.

Now that science has provided that understanding, enabled us to explain that instincts can orientate but nerves need to understand and therefore that we conscious humans are actually good and not bad, those old insecure coping mechanisms – anger, egocentricity, and alienation – are no longer required. Griffith argues that with this real defense in hand, the human race can finally be rehabilitated from its historically insecure state or condition.

In this sense, Griffith’s World Transformation Movement (WTM) – a global, non-profit initiative dedicated to sharing and exploring his biological explanation of the human condition – positions itself as a kind of scientific redemption story, one that allows humanity to face itself without fear.

As Emmy Award–winning Dutch actor Pierre Bokma demonstrated when he aired Griffith’s explanation on national television, “Jeremy Griffith makes it crystal clear – if you understand that your instincts and your consciousness don’t have to be enemies, you can finally bring your lost self back into harmony with your true self.”

The World Transformation Movement now has centers across the world – from Sydney to New York, London to Cape Town – all dedicated to sharing this biological explanation of the human condition. Support continues to grow among academics, mental-health professionals, and public figures.

Professor David Chivers, University of Cambridge anthropologist and former President of the Primate Society of Great Britain, described FREEDOM as “so logical and sensible, providing the necessary breakthrough in the critical issue of needing to understand ourselves.”

Professor Scott D. Churchill, former Chair of Psychology at the University of Dallas and past president of the Society for Humanistic Psychology, reflected: “This is the book all humans need to read for our collective wellbeing.”

Professor Stuart Hurlbert, Emeritus Biologist at San Diego State University, called it “a most phenomenal scientific achievement.”

And the late Professor Stephen Hawking, responding through his assistant, expressed that he was “most interested in your impressive proposal.”

For the online generation, Griffith’s message lands with special force. Our feeds, trends, and obsessions are the visible surface of something ancient – the human struggle to feel worthy. If his explanation holds true, understanding that struggle could mark the end of our dependence on distraction altogether.

As Griffith concludes in FREEDOM:

“Our upset lives are explained and defended now, which means we no longer have to be preoccupied compensating for that upset… No longer do we have to deny any confronting truths… Our goodness has now been established at the deepest, most profound level.”

If so, the next evolution of distraction might not be escape – but enlightenment.