Straw Dogs (John Gray)
OVERVIEW
One of my goals in this year-long quest to read and collect different secular perspectives on meaning is to push the envelope in diversity of opinion, and “Straw Dogs” by John Gray is about as out-of-the-box as it gets. I picked it up because it viciously critiques what many atheists ground their meaning in: humanism, the search for truth, and the hope for a better world. To the position that we can find meaning in life through secular humanism, Gray argues “humanity” doesn’t exist (and he actually avoids using the term in his writing, preferring instead to use “mass of humans”). He believes that hope is childish, that progress is an illusion, and that the secular search for “truth” is regurgitated Christian superstition. Delusion is our natural condition.
This book will not tell you that your life has any meaning (or any more meaning than, say, the life of a slime mould). We are simply one species among many, and, according to Gray, “not obviously worth preserving.” This is a book for the most extreme pessimists, occupying the space that exists between philanthropy and misanthropy – a middling and apathetic position toward the human condition.
(I hope your dopamine receptors are in good working order)
A free life
For most of us, nothing is more important than freedom, the ability to choose how we live. That’s not because freedom is some pinnacle of achievement, it’s simply that we have identified the good life with the chosen life. Which is really too bad, because we don’t actually choose anything. We are not the authors of our lives, not even the part-authors. The time and place we are born, the family we are born into, the language we speak, our race, our sex, our gender, our natural talents (or lack thereof) – these are all chance, not choice. And after birth, our lives are mostly a series of spontaneous events over which we have no control. Even free will is an illusion, a Christian daydream that we have yet to wake from. We evolved to project a “self” into our decisions and actions, but no such identity exists; our recent progress in the fields of neuroscience and cognition render this truth irrefutable, and Gray reflects that “the self we imagine surviving death is a phantom even in life.” And the hope that we could strive to rid ourselves of the illusion, perhaps a life spent striving in meditation and contemplation? “Even the deepest contemplation only recalls us to our unreality. Seeing that the self we take ourselves to be is illusory does not mean seeing through it to something else. It is more like surrendering to a dream.”
Our lives are chance, not choice, and we delude ourselves imagining there is some “I” that sits behind our eyes making decisions and freely directing our actions. Personal autonomy is fantasy, not reality.
A moral life
You probably believe that morality is something special, a set of values or unchanging norms that outweigh everything in their importance. Humanists of the Enlightenment and Christians alike suffer this pretence. But “moral philosophy has always been an exercise in make-believe… a very large branch of fiction.” Morality is not universal or categorical, it’s a convenience that we can only sometimes afford (mostly when life is secure and stable).
“Humans thrive in conditions that morality condemns. The peace and prosperity of one generation stand on the injustices of earlier generations; the delicate sensibilities of liberal societies are fruits of war and empire. The same is true of individuals. Gentleness flourishes in sheltered lives; an instinctive trust in others is rarely strong in people who have struggled against the odds. The qualities we say we value above all others cannot withstand ordinary life.”
The good life can only flourish because of immorality. Think of the nations whose populace you consider to be living the “good life” and see if you can find one that was not (and is not) purchased through the suffering of others. We have no timeless conscience that speaks out against cruelty and injustice. Virtue and vice go hand in hand. We are primates especially skilled at creating and wielding technology to serve our self-interests, that is all.
A meaningful life
Most of our ancestors sought a safe, comfortable life, but not a meaningful life. The search for meaning has, for most of human history, been entirely absent. That’s because we first must be convinced our lives should have meaning for us to fret about them being meaningless. Unless you have been taught that your life needs to be redeemed in some way, there’s no fear of it not being redeemed. It was religion that gave you the idea that your life was supposed to have meaning, and so then that your life had to be redeemed from its meaninglessness. If nihilism is despairing over the meaninglessness of existence, there was no nihilism until there was theism. And that’s it. The quest for meaning is a vestige of religious thinking, an echo of former orthodoxy. If you’re searching for meaning, it’s only because you’ve been on the receiving end of a centuries-old game of Christian telephone. It seems that even secular thinkers harbour pious hopes.
(Life has no meaning, pass it on.)
A quest for truth
Speaking of regurgitated Christian superstition, let’s turn to the pursuit of truth. In Gray’s opinion, science has replaced religion as the orthodoxy of our time. But science and technological progress have only ever been about one thing: giving humans the power to control their environment. This is the practical aim of almost all science, almost all of the time. Science is not a quest for truth. To misunderstand this “is to detach science from human needs, and make of it something not natural but transcendental. To think of science as the search for truth is to renew a mystical faith, the faith of Plato and Augustine, that truth rules the world, that truth is divine.” Just as the practical aim of science is not truth-finding, neither is it the aim of the human mind. Here Gray quotes the evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers: “the conventional view that natural selection favours nervous systems which produce ever more accurate images of the world must be a very naïve view of mental evolution.” Elevating the pursuit of truth, like elevating the pursuit of meaning or morality, is a religious impulsion that humanism has borrowed to fashion its own ideals from. If you’re an atheist who believes the search for truth is the most worthy human endeavour, ask yourself where that belief came from. To parse a number of Gray’s thoughts together:
“Humanists believe that if we know the truth we will be free. In affirming this they imagine they are wiser than thinkers of earlier times. In fact they are in the grip of a forgotten religion. The modern faith in truth is a relic of an ancient creed.”
“Science will never be used chiefly to pursue truth, or to improve human life. The uses of knowledge will always be as shifting and crooked as humans themselves. Humans use what they know to meet their most urgent needs – even if the result is ruin.”
“These are not flaws that can be remedied. Science cannot be used to reshape humankind in a more rational mould. Any new-model humanity will only reproduce the familiar deformities of its designers. It is a strange fancy to suppose that science can bring reason to an irrational world, when all it can ever do is give another twist to the normal madness.”
An honest and humble life
Attempting to live with honesty and humility, this you can do (which is fortunate, seeing as how morality, meaning, truth, and freedom have been blacklisted). Do your best to understand the illusions you live within – which ones you can live without, and which ones are simply invincible. You have evolved a sense of self-hood, but this is not particularly noteworthy to anyone but you. Be humble, almost everything is outside your control. You are not unique or important. Your species is not unique or important. This is an honest rendering of your situation.
This is, what I believe to be, the only positive recommendation Gray offers: that one can be honest and humble. Not that you’ll find it laid out plainly in some redemptive final chapter, but it is untouched by his cynicism.
WHAT NOW? (actions for mortal atheists)
A Valium prescription? Your guess is as good as mine.
IN SUM:
Is this book entirely secular? This book is mostly discouraging of secular humanism, not religion.
If I had to describe the book in one sentence? A book for those who find even nihilism too positive an outlook.
Who should read this book? Anyone possessing both intrigue and an unassailable supply of dopamine.