Fix The World is a global not-for-profit initiative advancing a biologically grounded explanation of human behavior that it argues has significant implications for sociology, and the long-standing issue of human conflict.
Formerly known as the World Transformation Movement, the organization positions itself not as an advocacy group or new ideology, but as a research-based initiative focused on addressing what it identifies as the underlying psychological driver of persistent personal and global dysfunction.
Founded by Australian biologist Jeremy Griffith, Fix The World is organized around the central proposition that the social, cultural, and institutional problems examined by sociology are downstream effects of a deeper, unresolved psychological conflict inherent in our “human condition”. This conflict, Griffith argues, arose from the evolutionary emergence of conscious thought within an instinct-governed species.
Rather than viewing social instability primarily through economic, political, or cultural perspectives, Fix The World invites sociologists to consider whether chronic patterns of division, hierarchy, and emotional alienation may ultimately be rooted in a shared psychological predicament that has shaped human societies across time and geography.
The Human Condition: the Basis of Sociological Problems
At the core of Fix The World’s work is a reinterpretation of the human condition that seeks to explain the paradox of humanity’s capacity for empathy, cooperation, and altruism coexisting with aggression, competition, and chronic social and global fragmentation. Rather than treating this contradiction as an inherent condition, or morally inexplicable, Jeremy Griffith proposes that it emerged from a specific evolutionary development.
Griffith argues that the problem arose when humans evolved a conscious, analytical intellect capable of questioning and overriding the instinctive directives that had previously regulated its behavior through the forces of natural selection. While this extraordinary development enabled free will, experimentation and thus the accumulation of knowledge, it also disrupted the instinctive order without providing an immediate explanatory framework for that disruption.
The result, he suggests, was a species-wide psychological insecurity. Unable to understand why conscious reasoning was effectively defying instinct, our instincts perceived this new behavior as somehow illegitimate, and, in-effect ‘criticized’ it, a response that gave rise to defensiveness, and then to anger, egocentricity, and emotional block-out, or what Griffith calls “alienation” – behavioral conditions extensively documented in sociological research across cultures, institutions, and historical periods.
Within Griffith’s framework, divisive social behavior is not seen as an anomaly or moral failure, but as an adaptive response to unresolved psychological pain.
Implications for Social Theory and Applied Sociology
A key claim of Fix The World is that once the human condition is biologically explained and psychologically contextualized, the defensive basis for social division becomes redundant. When individuals can understand that insecurity, egocentrism, and conflict were unavoidable by-products of humans’ cognitive development – rather than evidence of inherent badness – the need to justify oneself through dominance, or to retreat from an unjust world, diminishes.
For sociologists, this raises provocative questions. If social conflict and alienation is driven by mis-understood psychological defences, what happens when that defence is no longer required? How might institutions, norms, and power relations evolve if the drivers underlying competition, coercion and social withdrawal lose their psychological necessity?
Fix The World does not claim to replace sociological analysis or therapy, but to complement it by addressing what it sees as the psychological substrate upon which social systems are built. In applied contexts – from community cohesion to organizational culture, conflict mediation, and youth engagement – the organization argues that understanding the human condition could reduce reliance on external regulation and increase genuine engagement and cooperation.
Academic Engagement and Interdisciplinary Interest
Fix The World points to engagement from academics across disciplines who regard Jeremy Griffith’s work as a serious attempt to address a gap between an understanding of biological evolution and social behavior.
Former President of the Canadian Psychiatric Association Professor Harry Prosen described Griffith’s work as “the holy grail of insight for the psychological rehabilitation of the human race.”
Ecologist Professor Stuart Hurlbert likened Griffith’s contribution to a second Darwinian breakthrough, while psychologists and primatologists have noted its integrative scope.
Cambridge anthropologist and former President of the Primate Society of Great Britain, Professor David Chivers, described Griffith’s work as “the necessary breakthrough in the critical issue of needing to understand ourselves”.
Psychologist Professor Scott Churchill has argued that “all humans need to read [Griffith’s books] for our collective wellbeing”, reinforcing the opinion that solving the human condition is necessary to our species’ mental well-being.
While debate around the theory continues, Fix The World presents these endorsements as evidence that the core explanation merits interdisciplinary consideration, particularly in fields concerned with persistent social dysfunction.
A Global, Non-Commercial Model
Fix The World operates through a global network of centers that are run by volunteers, as well as online communities spanning multiple continents. All of its materials – including books, interviews, essays, and other educational resources – are distributed free of charge. This non-commercial approach reflects the organization’s position that understanding the human condition is a public good rather than a proprietary product.
For applied sociologists, this open-access model provides an impressive case study in grassroots knowledge dissemination, cross-cultural engagement, and a voluntary collective organization that does not seek to impose a price on knowledge.
Why Fix The World Matters for Sociology Today
In an era marked by intensifying polarization, declining trust, and widespread psychological distress, Fix The World argues that sociological inquiry must grapple not only with systems and structures, but with the psychological conditions that have given rise to them. Its central proposition – that social division is a symptom of an unresolved stage of human psychological development – challenges conventional assumptions about behavior and opens a whole new path for applied research.
Whether one ultimately accepts its biological claims or not, Fix The World invites sociologists into a broader conversation about the relationship between consciousness, defensive behaviors, and the ways in which we operate, personally and globally. At a minimum, it poses a question with deep disciplinary relevance: can enduring social problems be resolved without first understanding the psychological condition that create them?
