STRAW DOGS

This radical book addresses a central issue of our time: is humanism compatible with naturalism? For Gray, the answer is a resounding negative. He takes an ultra-Darwinist view even beyond the bleakness of Jacques Monod, whom he castigates for his residual humanism and faith in science. This faith in science is understandable to Gray, even if it is misguided, since he contends (p. 155) that 'there is progress in knowledge, but not in ethics'. However, according to Gray, 'the human animal will stay the same: a highly inventive species that is also one of the most predatory and destructive'. This means that we cannot expect technical progress to solve the frailty of human nature; indeed, humanity's worst crimes have been made possible through modern technology, so that new technology can only lead to refined forms of atrocity.

Gray thinks that Enlightenment humanism is fatally flawed in leaving intact the belief in progress, which he characterises as a secular version of the Christian idea of salvation. The reality, he claims, is that humans are the result of blind evolutionary drift, of chance and necessity, so that the idea of conscious evolution is a mirage. And the idea that science can enable us to master the process is a dangerous delusion. Gray takes his cues from a number of apparently disparate sources: Gaia theory, with its thoroughgoing naturalism epitomised in the Daisyworld model; Schopenhauer's philosophy of will over Kant's triumph of reason; and Taoist philosophy with its ideas of vast impersonal forces over which humans have no control.

Along the way he attempts a demolition job on our cherished religious and humanist icons: consciousness, the self, free will, morality, goodness, purpose, spirituality and transcendence. Is there anything left standing after Gray's onslaught? Well, yes, I think so, as his very premises are one-sided and questionable. Ultra-Darwinism is a contentious position most often used as an anti-religious weapon. Theists understand the evolutionary process differently. His definition of meditation as a technique for by-passing self-awareness rather than heightening consciousness would be contested by any practitioner. And his dismissal of the idea of free will is summary in the extreme: 'If our actions are caused then we cannot act otherwise than we do. In that case we cannot be responsible for them. We can be free agents only if we are authors of our acts; but we ourselves are products of chance and necessity. We cannot choose to be what we are born. In that case we cannot be responsible for what we are. QED! This position begs so many questions that it would take a long essay to discuss them all in detail: what is causality here? And responsibility? What does the fact of one's birth have to do with responsibility? And what is the relationship between conscious and unconscious?

Gray uses Hume, cognitive science and Buddhism to question the integrity of the self, which he claims is not the expression of any essential unity. The dissolution of the self cannot, he claims be attained through mystical experience, of which Gray is almost entirely ignorant, but only in death which, as we all know (he claims) is extinction. Mystics would agree that the self is a construction, but behind it the find not nothing but rather the Universal Mind, of which we are all expressions.

Morality comes next. While it is true, as Gray points out, that humans have killed their own species on a scale quite impossible to any other species, this is not the whole story. Commenting that morality is a mere convenience, he cites a story of a prisoner in a concentration camp who sacrificed another for himself; not very edifying, but he fails to mention Maximilian Kolbe, who as a celibate priest sacrificed himself for another married man. He relates the story of the Russian writer Shalamov, much of whose life was spent in labour camps, but makes no reference to the rather different outcome of Viktor Frankl, whose experiences in Auschwitz led to the formation of a new school of psychology. Gray also unfairly insinuates that Christianity is somehow responsible for not preventing the Holocaust.

Gray then moves on to liken humans to deluded animals, whose religions 'are attempts to be rid of a freedom they have never possessed'. There is some truth in his analysis of the ways in which we use all kinds of methods to escape from our everyday consciousness and in his picture of the 'distraction economy' where the biggest threat is a loss of desire leading to a decline of consumption. Also in his description of 'anarcho-capitalism' backed by the Mafia and his contention that future wars will be fought over resource shortages. Then he goes right off the rails again, in my view, by claiming that machines will do more than become conscious, 'they will become spiritual beings, whose inner life is no more limited by conscious thought than ours. Not only will they think and have emotions. They will develop the errors and illusions that go with self-awareness'.

Is Bryan Appleyard right to say that the book 'leaves all conventional wisdom in ruins'? I think not, but, as Don Cupitt says, 'the more you disagree with John Gray's main line of argument, the more you will gain from him'. Yes, indeed, since the book is a brilliant statement of its argument, but the argument itself is flawed and one-sided, based as it is on a radical naturalism that wholly denies the validity of an inner understanding of life. However we must collectively face up to our history with the kind of clear-sightedness that Gray epitomises, recognising that humanism is a precarious foundation for morality and going deeper to affirm the oneness of life and consciousness.