Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals [Paperback]

The religious impulse, Gray argues in a later work (Heresies: Against Progress and Other Illusions), is as universal as the sex drive. Like the latter, when repressed, it re-emerges in the form of perversions.

Thus the Marxist faith in our passage into socialist utopia after revolution represents a perversion of the Christian belief in our passage into heaven after death - the former, heaven-on-earth, as unrealistic than the latter. Communism is thus, as an American Conservative commented, 'the opiate of the intellectuals'. Similarly, humanism replaces an irrational faith in an omnipotent god, with an even more irrational faith in the omnipotence of mankind himself (p38).

Of course, humanism is a hopelessly broad term, encompassing pretty much anyone who is neither religious nor a nazi. What Gray has in mind by humanism is a faith in the inevitability of social and political progress, a faith shared by neo-conservatives, who think they can transform Islamic tribal societies and Soviet Republics to capitalist democracies, and Marxists, who think Islamic tribal societies and capitalist democracies will eventually give way to communism.

Notwithstanding an early discussion of the irrational origins of modern science (p20-23), Gray does not deny the reality of scientific progress. What he doubts is the inevitability of social, moral and political progress accompanying it.

Whereas scientific progress is self-perpetuating (a society that unilaterally gave up technology would be conquered by one with technologically superior weapons), political progress is not. Nor does progress in science and technology necessarily lead to social and political progress. After all, "without the railways, telegraph and poison gas, there could have been no holocause" (p14).

Therefore, "even as it enables poverty to be diminished and sickness to be alleviated, science will be used to refine tyranny and perfect the art of war" (p123) and "if one thing about the present century is certain, it is that the power conferred on humanity by new technologies will be used to commit atrocious crimes against it" (p14). In other words, "technology is not something humankind can control" but rather "an event that has befalled the world" (p14).

This is because, although technology progresses, human nature remains unchanged. Therefore, "the uses of knowledge will always be as shifting and crooked as humans are themselves" (p28). Ironically, therefore, the chief problem with belief in societal progress is its failure to come to grips with one aspect of scientific progress - namely in the scientific understanding of human nature. The discoveries of sociobiologists demonstrate a degree of selfishness and nepotism innate among humans and incompatible with societal utopias (see A Darwinian Left: Politics, Evolution, and Cooperation (Darwinism Today)).

Sociobiologists emphasise the degree to which innate mechanisms respond to environmental variables to maximise fitness in diverse environments, including by producing altruism, suggesting that this can allow more egalitarian societies to be engineered. However, this analysis ignores the reality that the social engineers (politicians) are themselves possessed of the same human nature and therefore would not be motivated to do so, even assuming they are able. Even if human nature were itself to be reengineered, "it will be done haphazardly, as an upshot of struggles in the murky realm where big business, organized crime and the hidden parts of government vie for control" (p6), and reflect the interests of those doing the reengineering.

There are weaknesses in Gray's thesis. While Gray doubts the inevitability of social, political and moral progress, he perhaps does not question sufficiently its reality. The Romans, transported to our times, would accept the superiority of our technology and, if they refused, we would out-compete them economically and militarily and thereby prove it ourselves. However, they would view our social and moral values as decadent. While scientific and technological progress exists objectively, what constitutes moral and social progress is a matter of opinion. To his credit, Gray does occasionally hint in this direction ("Ideas of justice are as timeless as fashions in hats" (p103) is one of his countless quotable aphorisms).

Given his tendency to pontificate about subjects outside his sphere of expertise, Gray also gets it wrong on more specific issues. Particularly curious given his pessimistic outlook is his enthusiasm for 'Gaia theory'. Contrary to Lovelock's disciples, our planet is not a harmonious self-sustaining organism. On the contrary, organisms are in vigorous competition with one another (although their evolution to exploit the presence of other organisms in their environment may give the superficial appearance of cooperation).

Dawkins describes Gaia theory as "a cult" (Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder (Penguin Press Science): p223). It should therefore be viewed, within Gray's framework, as yet another perversion of humanity's religious impulse. (Given his enthusiasm for this cult, perhaps Gray himself is no more immune from the universal religious impulse than those he attacks.)

I generally dislike books written in a pretentious aphoristic style. They typically replace the argumentation necessary to substantiate their claims with bad poetry. This is not the case in Straw Dogs. Perhaps this is because his arguments, though controversial, are straightforward. One suspects the inability of other thinkers to reach the same conclusions reflects a failure of the will rather than the intellect - an unwillingness to face the reality of the human condition.

Beware that there is no sugar-coating to Gray's analysis. Moral philosophy is "an exercise in make-believe" (p109) and "very largely a branch of fiction" (p109), albeit fiction which reflects the real world less than that of successful novelists. He purports to prefer non-Western philosophical traditions, which, unpolluted by Christianity, supposedly see mankind as merely another animal and, like Schopenhauer (along with Hume, one of the few philosophers he mentions without disparaging), he draws on Eastern philosophical traditions. However, he rejects Buddhism too, arguing that "death brings to everyone the peace Buddha promised only after lifetimes of striving" (p129).

Refreshingly, Gray does not portray himself as a saviour. He discusses the Buddhist notion that we require a saviour to save us from saviours, but renounces even this role. We do not take our saviours seriously enough to require saving from them. We look to our saviours, not for salvation, but "for distraction" (p121). He thus relegates our self-appointed saviours (from religious leaders to political gurus) to glorified competitors in the entertainment industry.

Going further, he argues that it is towards "distraction", not production, that modern economic life is now geared (p162). In societies living so far above subsistence levels that, even among the underclass, obesity is more widespread health problem than starvation, yet where depression has grown into one of the biggest health problems of all, this view deserves to be taken seriously.

In viewing "distraction" rather than production as at the heart of modern economic life, Gray does not disparage distraction as a diversion from more important concerns. On the contrary, he seems to see distraction, if not much-maligned escapism, as the key to, if not happinesss, then at least to whatever is the closest we are able to come to this elusive state. "Fulfilment is found," he concludes in a passage which is perhaps the closest he comes to self-help, "not in daily life, but in escaping from it" (p141-2)

By his own thesis then, it is perhaps as a form of distraction that Gray's own work ought ultimately to be judged and, with its thoroughly invigorating pessimism, Straw Dogs distracted me immensely!

I don't write many reviews on here, but having searched this book in order to recommend it to a friend and found that it had some very mixed reviews, I feel the need to chip in:

I won't talk too much here about what Gray's main arguments are (and I will agree here with some of the negative reviewers that they are not presented at all neatly), but basically he's saying that, for all the material progress humans have made thanks to their great intelligence, we have and always will have the same failings as other animals, and that therefore any stability and betterment we have created will be partial and temporary. He is also arguing that all the mainstream political movements of the last few hundred years, from liberalism to communism, have been based (consciously or otherwise) on a fundamental Judeo-Christian belief that history is an onward march towards an eventual goal of universal human happiness/eternal life/utopia.

Obviously the book itself talks about far more than this, but these are the main messages that I remember taking away from the book. Even if the way in which I've expressed them here might make them seem like mere truisms, if you really take the time to consider how much truth there is in these ideas, I think they have the power to change the way we look at practically everything.

Somewhat confused at all the negative reviews, I went through some of them to look at the main points made against Straw Dogs. I have to say that a lot of them seemed to either not understand what Gray was trying to say, or simply complain that it was 'too depressing' (the latter may well be the case but I hardly think that's a good criticism). Some complained that Gray's book is full of facts that are demonstrably false, but I don't know what this refers to, while others refute the author's ideas about progress by simply stating that our modern lifestyle is superior to that of our ancestors- a fact that no-one could refute and that misses Gray's point about the temporary and illusory nature of progress entirely. Some complained about his setting up a 'straw man' in the form of the already defunct Soviet Union and communism, but his criticism has nothing to do with the traditional critique, and in many cases could equally be directed against the West.

For the most part, especially given the number of reviews containing sentiments along the lines of 'disgusted' and 'couldn't finish it' and 'threw it in the rubbish', I get the impression that most of the people who hated this book hated it because they can't stand how deeply and effectively it undermines the philosophies and political ideas they have based their lives on. This must surely be the mark of a genuinely powerful piece of philosophy, and I honestly think that this book will be remembered when its more famous contemporary works have been forgotten.

It is over a hundred years since Darwin revealed to us our animal lineage, and yet the human primate is still having difficulty coming to terms with its animal origins. All bar creationists may indeed now accept that we are descended from apes, but most of us still cling to the belief that we have somehow become different to the rest of the animal kingdom. Our ability to use language and reason, to see ourselves as selves, selves that move forward in time and, with other selves, progress by building a culture based on moral rules and a technology that seems to give us ever increasing control over our environment. Surely this is enough to set us apart from the rest of nature? No. Thankfully, a British philosopher who lives and breathes today but who speaks with the depth and clarity of a modern day Schopenhauer is here to rid you of this delusion.

Human beings are still animals claims Gray, but the more profound insight that he delivers, and that his critics seem unable to grasp or admit, is that humans, and even whatever intelligence that might emerge in a 'posthuman' future, will always be inescapably rooted in the natural world as much as the lowliest of slime moulds.

We believe that language and reason are what differentiates us, forgetting that we acquired these abilities through the blind mechanisms of evolution. This means that they are, as Hume, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche declared long ago, mere tools in the brutish struggle for survival. These same tools enabled the human animal to create the illusions of free will, self and morality and the delusion to think that with these, man has the ability to stand apart from the animal world and choose his own fate. But the fundamental import of Darwinism is that it tells us that 'we' were 'made' for the world. The world was not made for us, nor can we ever make it, nor indeed any world, to be for us.

Some rather simple-minded criticisms of Gray's outlook are floating around the Internet, including on this page, so lest they deter you from reading this book, here are a few brief rejoinders that can be made to them.

1/ 'Gray teaches us nothing new. Postmodernism has been around for 40 years now.' Gray clearly isn't giving just another rehash of postmodernist thought. In fact his book is a savage attack on some of the postmodernist thought that has now been neatly incorporated into liberal thinking. The belief that the world is entirely a social construction, that this construction is determined by power relationships and that therefore by changing those power relationships society can mould the world into whatever form it chooses. The way that humans see the world may indeed be due to power relationships within society, but these arise because of the fact that humans are biological animals in an inherently competitive natural world. Postmodernism is, as Gray says, 'just the latest fad in anthropocentrism'.

2/ 'Gray criticises science as a faith but seems to hold Darwinism as a faith.' Gray is primarily attacking the faith that scientific progress leads to moral and social progress. If anything is right in science it is the broad theory of Darwinism. Yet people believe that science can enable man to take control of his destiny, when one of the most fundamental tenets of modern science teaches us that science and its consequences (as with any other sphere of human activity) is ultimately determined by the same laws that govern other animals' behaviour.

3/ 'No-one seriously believes in progress anymore'. Well the western world is without doubt led by two men who wholeheartedly believe in the vision of moral progress, as we are seeing with disastrous consequences in Iraq. As both have been re-elected as their heads of government, presumably a lot of the people who voted for them share that vision. The idea that western society is not still dominated by the belief in moral progress is absurd. A generation ago homosexuality was illegal and homosexuals were routinely sent to prison. Today, someone can be sent to prison for simply arguing that homosexuality is wrong. For this to be the case, society clearly has a conviction that the moral attitudes of today are without question a progression on the attitudes of yesterday. To give a different example, on the 10th of September 2001 not one person in a hundred could have believed that America would soon be holding a serious debate on whether or not to legalise torture.

It goes without saying that I found Straw Dogs to be an utterly rewarding intellectual experience. Read it and it may change the whole way you look at yourself and your universe...though probably together with a feeling that, like all great writers, Gray has articulated for you something profound that you always suspected about the world.