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Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

John N. Gray

3.95 · Rating details · 3,674 ratings · 369 reviews

'Straw Dogs' is a radical work of philosophy that challenges our most cherished assumptions about what it means to be human. John Gray explores how the world and human life look once humanism has been finally abandoned. ...more

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Paperback, 246 pages

Published September 1st 2003 by Granta Books (first published 2002)

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Jul 21, 2018 Bill Kerwin rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 21st-c-amer, essays, nonficion, philosophy

If you are an agnostic with few illusions who seeks the consolations of philosophy; if you are fortified by Ligotti’s bleak analysis (A Conspiracy Against the Human Race) and sustained by Cioran’s grim maxims (A Short History of Decay); if the fiction of J.G. Ballard, Will Self, and Jim Crace is congruent with your assumptions, congenial with your attitudes; then John Gray’s Straw Dogs may be the book for you.

The atheist Gray, who rejects the assumptions of Christianity, here targets the contemp
If you are an agnostic with few illusions who seeks the consolations of philosophy; if you are fortified by Ligotti’s bleak analysis (A Conspiracy Against the Human Race) and sustained by Cioran’s grim maxims (A Short History of Decay); if the fiction of J.G. Ballard, Will Self, and Jim Crace is congruent with your assumptions, congenial with your attitudes; then John Gray’s Straw Dogs may be the book for you.

The atheist Gray, who rejects the assumptions of Christianity, here targets the contemporary consensus of humanism. In ridding itself of theistic illusions, Gray believes, secular humanism didn’t go nearly far enough.

For Gray, Utopianism is a variant of the Kingdom of God, progress a non-theistic version of salvation history, the exaltation of human consciousness and the celebration of free will little more than the vestiges of a repressed belief in the integrity and persistence of the immortal soul. Gray argues that there is no real evidence for any of these commonly accepted beliefs: human consciousness is fitful, free will illusory, progress a fiction (history is cyclical, not forward-looking), and ”utopia”—given the contrary nature of man—will be (at best) the occasional result of autocratic, repressive regimes.

Although Gray’s book challenges our comfortable assumptions, it also offers its own severe form of consolation. If we cease to believe in progress, to yearn for utopia, we may save ourselves from continual disappointment; if we cease to believe in a unitary self in command of fictive choices, we may more easily immerse ourselves—as the Daoist and Zen Buddhist do—in the successive ebb and flow of time, the "lucid dream" which constitutes humankind’s richest simulacrum of reality.

Although Gray’s laconic style lacks Cioran’s witty ironies and Ligotti’s deadpan humor, he makes up for it with his wide-ranging scholarship and the concentrated power of his thought. There is much in this book to ponder, much to which a thoughtful reader may return, again and again.

Here are eight of my favorite passages:

* * * * * The destruction of the natural world is not the result of global capitalism, industrialisation, 'Western civilisation' or any flaw in human institutions. It is a consequence of the evolutionary success of an exceptionally rapacious primate. Throughout all of history and prehistory, human advance has coincided with ecological devastation.

* * * * * Cities are no more artificial than the hives of bees. The internet is as natural as a spider's web. As Margulis and Sagan have written, we are ourselves technological devices, invented by ancient bacterial communities as means of genetic survival: 'We are a part of an intricate network that comes from the original bacterial takeover of the Earth. Our powers and intelligence do not belong specifically to us but to all life.'

* * * * * Among us, science serves two needs: for hope and censorship. Today, only science supports the myth of progress. If people cling to the hope of progress, it is not so much from genuine belief as from fear of what may come if they give it up.

* * * * * Over the past 200 years, philosophy has shaken off Christian faith. It has not given up Christianity's cardinal error — the belief that humans are radically different from all other animals.

* * * * * Postmodernists parade their relativism as a superior kind of humility — the modest acceptance that we cannot claim to have the truth. In fact, the postmodern denial of truth is the worst kind of arrogance. In denying that the natural world exists independently of our beliefs about it, postmodernists are implicitly rejecting any limit on human ambitions. By making human beliefs the final arbiter of reality, they are in effect claiming that nothing exists unless it appears in human consciousness.

* * * * * 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. To see ourselves as figments is to awake, not to reality, but to a lucid dream, a false awakening that has no end.

* * * * * Action preserves a sense of self-identity that reflection dispels. When we are at work in the world we have a seeming solidity. Action gives us consolation for our inexistence. It is not the idle dreamer who escapes from reality. It is practical men and women, who turn to a life of action as a refuge from insignificance.

* * * * * Other animals do not need a purpose in life. A contradiction to itself, the human animal cannot do without one. Can we not think of the aim of life as being simply to see?

...more

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Dec 20, 2012 Warwick rated it it was ok

Shelves: philosophy

This smallish book is one of the most depressing and pessimistic 200 pages I have read in a long time. John Gray has been getting darker and darker in his vision of the world and Straw Dogs finally brings him round to bleak nihilism.

The book has many virtues. It is written in an admirably simple and clear way, with thoughts broken down and laid out in Pascalian pensées, some of them only a sentence or two long. The content is never less than thought-provoking. In six broad chapters, he outlines This smallish book is one of the most depressing and pessimistic 200 pages I have read in a long time. John Gray has been getting darker and darker in his vision of the world and Straw Dogs finally brings him round to bleak nihilism.

The book has many virtues. It is written in an admirably simple and clear way, with thoughts broken down and laid out in Pascalian pensées, some of them only a sentence or two long. The content is never less than thought-provoking. In six broad chapters, he outlines his theory that humans are mere animals, that faith in science is no more rational than faith in religion, free will is a myth, progress an illusion, and morality "a sickness peculiar to humans". His vision of the future is one of wars which are "certain to be hugely destructive" and in which humans will probably die by the billion, ultimately to be replaced by machines. Not only is this inevitable, it is not even particularly undesirable: humans are "not obviously worth preserving".

It takes a kind of heroic cynicism to be quite so relentlessly negative, and that alone tells you that Gray must be overlooking quite a lot. But at any rate the book, though rather fascinating, is a mass of inconsistencies. On the one hand he spends a lot of time trying to demonstrate that humans should become less obsessed with action and more content with simply being. But on the other hand he insists that humans cannot change and any attempt to alter human nature is doomed to failure. Similarly, he bangs on about how pointless the concept of truth is – "the worship of truth is a Christian cult" – yet what is this book if not an attempt to put forward his own view of truth and overturn the "untruths" of others? If this book does not offer a kind of truth, it offers nothing.

His criticism of science is too extreme to be valuable. Gray views it as a kind of modern mystical religion, an object of faith every bit as irrational as its religious ancestors. This allows him to make some pretty silly statements:

Yet after all the work of Plato and Spinoza, Descartes and Bertrand Russell we have no more reason than other animals do for believing that the sun will rise tomorrow.

Call me a bluff old traditionalist, but I feel that Copernicus, Galileo, Newton and so on have given me a much firmer basis for that belief than simply past evidence. Gray's failure to recognise progress is perverse. Of course, people will always feel unhappy and will always suffer, but there can be no denying that modern civilisations have raised the general standard of living, demonised inequality, established systems of justice and law enforcement, produced great works of art, and so on and so forth. Gray, when he acknowledges such things at all, merely suggests that this is a blip which will soon be followed by more misery and extinction.

Yes, there is a danger in blind faith in progress or undue veneration of science. But all Gray has to offer as an alternative seems to be an even more unreliable amalgam of Eastern philosophy and Gaia theory. It's not enough. The apocalyptic romance of his vision is itself more akin to mysticism than rationality. And so the leaps in logic pile up. It is worth stressing (though hardly a new idea) that we are animals like any other species. But it takes some effort to go on to say that we are therefore in no way unusual in our accomplishments both good and bad. Similarly, Gray is right to show that morality breaks down in extreme circumstances. But he is wrong to conclude from this that it has no value.

Liberal humanism has had so many demonstrable benefits that any attack on it has to offer some comparable alternative. Straw Dogs sidesteps this competition by arguing that belief in progress or development is silly, and we should rather simply accept that we are ultimately heading for annihilation both personally and as a species. That may be so, but this book fails to prove that bleak resignation is the most appropriate response, either for personal happiness or for social stability. ...more

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Oct 24, 2018 BlackOxford rated it liked it

Shelves: british, philosophy-theology

Hemlock for the Masses

Straw Dogs is an intellectual meal and a half to digest. And it’s a fusion of styles and subjects that makes it a cuisine awkward to classify - classical philosophy, sociology, technological analysis and forecasting, with a soupçon of New Age mysticism. Having just had another substantial meal in Terry Eagleton’s Culture and the Death of God, which uses some of the same ingredients (with an extra helping of philosophy and hold the New Age), I feel compelled to compare the t ...more

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Aug 30, 2010 Jon Stout rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: fatalists and misanthropes

The irony is that I agree with John Gray on most of his large points, that we have reason for pessimism, that mankind will fail to handle some of the larger crises of our day such as population growth, that human history is replete with gratuitous savagery and violence in the name of religion and/or humanistic ideals, that we would do better to be aware of our animal natures, and so forth.

But there is something about the way he does it that turns me off. He wants to survey the history of ideas, The irony is that I agree with John Gray on most of his large points, that we have reason for pessimism, that mankind will fail to handle some of the larger crises of our day such as population growth, that human history is replete with gratuitous savagery and violence in the name of religion and/or humanistic ideals, that we would do better to be aware of our animal natures, and so forth.

But there is something about the way he does it that turns me off. He wants to survey the history of ideas, as well as every new age movement on the horizon, and say, “See where that got us? What’s the point of doing that?” He’s down on secular humanism as well as traditional religions, and he seems opposed to anyone who ever had an original thought in the history of philosophy. “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity!” What’s the point of even trying? Better to be like the other animals and passively accept whatever comes our way.

He does have his favorites. He likes Taoism and Schopenhauer. But with most other thinkers, he takes a two-sentence shot and dismisses them without trying to understand. It’s as though he’s saying, “So much for that one! I don’t have to think about him any more! There goes another one!” Potshots are fun, but they are no substitute for engagement.

He says, “According to the most influential twentieth-century philosopher of science, Karl Popper, a theory is scientific only in so far as it is falsifiable, and should be given up as soon as it is falsified. By this standard, the theories of Darwin and Einstein should never have been accepted.” (p. 22) No kidding. I guess I missed that the theories of evolution and relativity had been falsified. The hard part was finding circumstances in which they could be falsified. Anyhow, the most influential twentieth-century philosopher of science is Thomas Kuhn (even though he’s a historian), who might have buttressed Gray’s arguments if Gray were interested.

Gray says, “Wittgenstein believed that his later thought had transcended traditional philosophy, but at bottom it is not much more than another version of the oldest of philosophies – Idealism.” (p. 53) To that I ask: How can behaviorism be idealism? Wittgenstein discusses where he stands with respect to realism and idealism. Gray should have checked it out.

He says, “It is scarcely possible to imagine a philosophy such as Platonism emerging in an oral culture.” (p. 57) Hello. What we know of Plato’s philosophy comes from dialogues, an oral medium and art form. It’s not hard to imagine; Plato makes it completely explicit.

On a more substantive point, Gray bashes Socrates for using his mind to discern values, the same idea for which he praises Taoism. With regard to Socrates, he says:

“… reason cannot be the guide of life. Euripides rejected the belief that Socrates made the basis of philosophy: that. As Dodds puts it, ‘moral, like intellectual error, can arise only from a failure to use the reason we possess; and that when it does arise it must, like intellectual error, be curable by intellectual process’.” (p. 98)

But then he quotes A.C. Graham on the Taoist as saying:

“He does not have to make decisions based on standards of good and bad because, granted only that enlightenment is better than ignorance, it is self-evident that among spontaneous inclinations the one prevailing in greatest clarity of mind, other things being equal, will be best, the one in accord with the Way.” (p. 114)

I could go on and on, but I would just take up space on rebutting things that annoy me. If John Gray wants to sit passively and appreciate the pleasures of the senses, more power to him. Just give some respect to those of us who may at some point prefer thinking or acting.
...more

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Mar 13, 2013 brian rated it it was amazing

1. although this does happen to crystallize and articulate much of what i believe, that's largely irrelevant. i recommend reading this wonderful nuthouse as the extended essay (read: rant) thomas bernhard never wrote. plus, it lays out the meaning of life and explains the secrets of the universe.*

2. a terrific antidote to all that 'everything happens for a reason' nonsense.

3. makes me happy to imagine people who bought this wanting something else by the guy who wrote men are from mars, women ar ...more

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Feb 23, 2008 Tim rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: Everyone. Anyone seeking questions and answers about mankind and life's meaning

Shelves: own, science, philosophy, favourite, ecology

Potentially life changing. I say potentially because this is not a book for someone who is scared of facing their fears and doubts about what they have believed about mankind and their life. For me, he has blown me away. I can't help jumping up and wanting to tell someone about so many particular sections that i read that are so striking. I will warn you though, be prepared to experience depression or despair if what he writes does speak to you deeply. I feel both liberated and utterly despairin ...more

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Jul 01, 2011 Rob rated it did not like it

Just awful. A rambling, unconvincing argument by a terribly self-satisfied misanthrope.

Pretty disappointing, as I picked up the book hoping for a decent discussion on many of the ideas presented. The non-separateness of humans from the natural world, the illusory nature of the self and consciousness... these are ideas I care about. Indeed, if you have never spent time thinking about them, this book may serve valuable as a devil's advocate and catalyst. That's about the only value I found in it.

G Just awful. A rambling, unconvincing argument by a terribly self-satisfied misanthrope.

Pretty disappointing, as I picked up the book hoping for a decent discussion on many of the ideas presented. The non-separateness of humans from the natural world, the illusory nature of the self and consciousness... these are ideas I care about. Indeed, if you have never spent time thinking about them, this book may serve valuable as a devil's advocate and catalyst. That's about the only value I found in it.

Gray's book is set up as a series of tiny attacks on much of present-day thinking. However, instead of attacking arguments head-on, Gray prefers to simplify the complexity of whatever argument he approaches. After this reduction, he then proceeds to refute the simplification. If that is not enough, he will then make several unsubstantiated declarative statements, presenting them as either time-tested truths, or as being so obvious they should go without saying. You think by naming his book Straw Dogs, Gray would have gone to greater lengths to avoid making such transparent straw man arguments.

The research Gray put into his arguments is also pretty suspect. His understanding of the psychology and neuroscience of self seems pretty cursory. He comes across as not having a too firm grasp of any of it. His discussion of hunter-gatherer societies and their transition to agriculture is also very poor. I suspect he read a few books and then jammed both of those cultures into the pre-formed mental model he had been working with.

I think Gray should probably spend less time reading his own arguments and spend more time talking with those who actually work in the areas he so casually dismisses. His ideas are not new, and have been discussed ad nauseum in any journal worth its salt.

At the very least, Gray should have shown his book to at least a few people who disagree with it. He might have at least noticed a few of the instances of cognitive dissonance he had written out. If humans are not separate from other species, why does Gray give them such special accord? Animals that lack consciousness (as Gray defines it), can not be anything else other than what they are. However, Gray argues that humans also lack this consciousness, and yet they are still to be excoriated?

Like I said, I care about many of the ideas Gray presents in Straw Dogs, it's just that Gray is so ineffective and unlikable. Rather than coming across as an innovative thinker, he clumsily attacks the page with an imperiousness he has not earned. This is the book one would expect from a angry teenager who is discovering for the first time that the world may be, surprise, somewhat hypocritical. ...more

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Jan 29, 2010 Szplug rated it really liked it

Humans think they are free, conscious beings, when in truth they are deluded animals. At the same time they never cease trying to escape from what they imagine themselves to be. Their religions are attempts to be rid of a freedom they have never possessed. In the twentieth century, the utopias of Right and Left served the same function. Today, when politics is unconvincing even as entertainment, science has taken on the role of mankind's deliverer.

The above quote from Straw Dogs serves as a dece Humans think they are free, conscious beings, when in truth they are deluded animals. At the same time they never cease trying to escape from what they imagine themselves to be. Their religions are attempts to be rid of a freedom they have never possessed. In the twentieth century, the utopias of Right and Left served the same function. Today, when politics is unconvincing even as entertainment, science has taken on the role of mankind's deliverer.

The above quote from Straw Dogs serves as a decent summary of John Gray's disturbing, unpredictable, and relentless look at human folly at the dawn of the new century. Another Goodreads member advised me that Gray was like a man walking through a balloon store with a long pin, and the description is apt: the Englishman wields his pleasing, bracing prose like a semantic sledgehammer in shattering one edifice of conventional wisdom after another. Philosophy, religion, totalitarianism, the modern Right and Left wings of capitalist democracies, the War on Terrorism, the globalization of free markets, man's contingency: all are fair game for the one-man demolition crew. Gray questions how conscious and rational humans actually are, and are capable of being; he paints in clear strokes a picture of how mythology and utopianism - focussed through the prism of Christianity - have underpinned virtually all of the political movements of the past three centuries, all in the name of perfervid belief in the chimera called Progress.

Gray tackles so many cherished truths that he occasionally ends up contradicting himself - such as exploding the belief that man is free, only to base subsequent criticisms upon progress reducing man's freedom. It also brings one to question where Gray believes his ubersceptical route will lead: despite his summational plea to humanity to abandon its endless need for purpose - Can we not think of the aim of life as being simply to see? - it is difficult to envision such illusion-free existence driving the masses towards aught but despair. Nevertheless, the book is a brisk, wonderful, and eye-opening read, casting enough doubts upon the solidity of perceived wisdom to keep the reader questioning and ruminating for days afterwards. Working from the same vein of thoughtful polemic as that other great doubter of progress, Christopher Lasch - see the brilliant The True and Only Heaven for the definitive summation of the latter's critique - Straw Dogs is a cogent and illuminating - if uncomfortable - read. ...more

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Sep 10, 2014 Murtaza rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites

The central tenet of this book is that secular humanism is built off a worldview that - despite its protestations - comes entirely from religion. Darwinism suggests that we are animals, and while tendentiously accepting this humanists nonetheless insist on a special place and dispensation for humans. The idea of "progress", entirely a superstition, is in fact based on the Christian concept of salvation which has been transmuted into a secular worldview. Secular humanism as it has been created in The central tenet of this book is that secular humanism is built off a worldview that - despite its protestations - comes entirely from religion. Darwinism suggests that we are animals, and while tendentiously accepting this humanists nonetheless insist on a special place and dispensation for humans. The idea of "progress", entirely a superstition, is in fact based on the Christian concept of salvation which has been transmuted into a secular worldview. Secular humanism as it has been created in the West is really better described as post-Christianity; dependent for its coherence on Christian concepts which are in fact fundamentally at odds with Darwinism.

Humans may be a more advanced animal but as per the hypothesis argued here they are an animal nonetheless. They forage for food, seek warmth, attempt to procreate, communicate using sounds and markings with one another; and inevitably expire just as animals do. The secular humanist idea that we are fully in control of our lives and the decisions we make in it is entirely a religious one. We don't speak of whales, gorillas or birds having a higher purpose, mission or direction but we inexplicably insist that we ourselves do while simultaneously agreeing with Darwinism and its philosophic conclusions.

Due to my own background I am compelled to examine this work from an Islamic viewpoint. In Islam there is a belief that all animals are "Muslim", by which it means they follow the natural behaviors which God has dictated for them. Gray argues that humans alone try to deny their animal nature and attempt to define themselves as separate from the natural world. Islam - as I understand it- heavily draws upon naturalism in its exhortations to look to nature for its signs of creation. It is further built upon the idea of fitra; the essential human nature which is God-consciousness and is similarly expressed by animals and other parts of the natural world. In Islam the difference is we humans alone have the ability to deny and resist our fitra, and it is our duty to overcome this and embrace it. Gray is of course an atheist and this book is not an attempt to validate religious beliefs, but I could not help to be struck by the congruence especially as it has tied into arguments made in the past by Islamic scholars like Fazlur Rahman.

Gray suggests that we truly return to ourselves not when we are alone in our thoughts but when we attempt to reconnect and interact with other animals. I'm inclined to agree; the mystery and negative space that animals seem to take in our minds is more important than it seems without reflection.

This book also contains many ruminations on the nature of man's interaction with technology, politics, capitalism, and Gray's prognostications for the future. This is really a devastating critique of the prevailing orthodoxies of our time. Gray has the courage of his convictions in taking the beliefs of Darwinism to their logical endpoint. He also ably excoriates those among secularists who take pride in their ignorance of the theology. If they did not turn ignorance into a virtue they'd see that their beliefs about progress, humanity and the reality of the world are in fact built wholly on religious ideas.

This is a book which is a useful corrective to the unthinking beliefs dogmas of those who claim to hold the truth today. Gray even provocatively claims that it is religious people who have a better picture of human nature because by their marginalization they've been forced to cultivate a capacity for doubt and questioning greater than the proud standard bearers of secular humanism of our present age. ...more

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Oct 01, 2011 Alexander rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: bibliophage, leviathan, zeitgeist, abyss-gazes-back, mind-games, ribofunk, chronomancer, ecognosis

A bit too breezily aphoristic and dismissive at times, Gray's book is still an impressive nail-bomb of neo-Schopenhauerian polemic, veering between scorched earth and Taoist serenity, stoic good humor under reddening skies.

STRAW DOGS is a brazen "remix" of many familiar memes, but woven so artfully in barbed-wire fashion, covering so many rich topics and controversies, that it does what the best philosophical commentary does: provokes and stimulates both sympathizers and antagonists into enrichi ...more

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Oct 28, 2010 Gail rated it really liked it

Secular humanism is Christianity in a tracksuit. That's the book in a nutshell. Admittedly, a small and not particularly satisfactory nutshell. But a nutshell nonetheless.

I recommend this to you, dear reader. Gray writes about a vast array of ideas - from science, theology, philosophy and psychology - and, with tremendous economy, unravels the myth perpetuated by thinkers from each discipline in our so-called liberal secular humanist era: that we humans are higher than animals, and that our fan ...more

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Jul 05, 2012 Paul rated it did not like it

I think that Gray is too misanthropic and he relies too much on the gaia hypothesis. He goes out of his way to talk about how the self is an illusion, free will is an illusion and even consciousness (or at least what we normally characterize as consciousness) is an illusion. Why would anyone who agrees with those points find the gaia hypothesis appealing??? Also, if humans are inevitably going to do what they will do as it is all determined (I agree with this), then why in the world would you ma I think that Gray is too misanthropic and he relies too much on the gaia hypothesis. He goes out of his way to talk about how the self is an illusion, free will is an illusion and even consciousness (or at least what we normally characterize as consciousness) is an illusion. Why would anyone who agrees with those points find the gaia hypothesis appealing??? Also, if humans are inevitably going to do what they will do as it is all determined (I agree with this), then why in the world would you make pejorative jokes about them, calling them homo rapiens while idealizing "gaia?" It's all part of the same universe, humans, earth... all of it is part of the larger cosmic evolution.

Aside from that, Gray demonizes humanism and the concept of progress. He also demonizes action. Why did he write the book then? Would it be "progress" if people were more contemplative? Why does it matter, ultimately?

I have an answer. Even though we do not have free will, we still are forced to make choices as we occupy human perspectives. If you are completely idle, you probably won't be happy. Generally, even without free will, with choices between being happy and unhappy, people will choose being happy. If you don't, good for you, but you must understand that you are quite different if that's the case:) You need human attachments (and to a lesser extent other animal attachments may suffice). Also, as a human (an average one), you probably have a drive to survive and maintain your body by eating. Those drives actually can give plenty of purpose (depending on how it's defined). I agree with Gray that the emphasis on so many "higher purposes" is misguided and illusory. However, he cherry-picks science to support a strange misanthropy. It's like he wants to hate humans and progress. Or perhaps he wants to be provocative, so he picked certain facts, combined with his rhetoric, to support that aim.

Gray fails to appreciate that he occupies the human perspective. He is guilty of acting as though he is this observer outside of the human race that can judge from some standard outside of human values. Gaia values? I'd like to know what those are! I think that Gray should read the book Brain Trust by Patricia Churchland. She makes an argument that morality is largely social problem solving and it is an extension of our desire to attach to others as highly social creatures. I find that perfectly satisfying. A lot of what Gray says about progress might apply if you view morality that way. However, what Gray minimizes is something Churchland calls attention to. While there is room for pluralism and humans can adapt to many different cultures, as knowledge accumulates, certain behaviors are probably bad for human well-being. For instance, female circumcision to remove sexual pleasure from a female. It is arguably completely unnecessary and there are clearly other ways of doing things. If you effectively got rid of that practice in the world, that would probably be progress.

I think Gray longs for mind-independent knowledge. When he doesn't find it, he sometimes abandons truth. Just because we're animals that are caused by the universe, that doesn't negate realism entirely. It also doesn't mean truth doesn't matter to humans. He cherry picks regarding what bits of knowledge to accept and reject... That is perhaps his biggest flaw. Just because we are embodied, natural, animals without souls doesn't mean that we don't matter. We matter to each other. Just because we only care about our own survival due to evolution doesn't mean that there is no real value in life. From my perspective as a human, I might use knowledge ultimately to serve human ends. It is good to recognize that and I agree with him on that point. However, that's not really a bad thing. It's just life. It's a bad thing from a Christian perspective or if you are for some reason judging humans by some strange cosmic standard you've dreamt up that doesn't really exist or that you probably couldn't know anyway...

This book is worth reading mainly to show what NOT to think regarding the implications of recognizing the limits of human understanding and seeing human beings as animals. I highly recommend Patricia Churchland's book Brain Trust for a much more accurate view of humans. For a decent book on Moral Relativism, I recommend Jesse Prinz's The Emotional Construction of Morals. Even he argues that there can be progress... Churchland certainly doesn't suggest that we are the most peaceful creatures out there. Some of Gray's pessimism may be warranted, but your choices matter and some things are probably worth fighting for (relationships, social attachments, reducing the pain of those you care about and sometimes others). They don't matter to the universe, but they matter to you if you're a regular human (luckily there aren't many sociopaths and most people can form social attachments). ...more

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Mar 06, 2008 Adrian rated it it was amazing

A savage kick in the face of a book, a white hot iron poked into your brain by someone who is not interested in appealing to any of our notions about Western culture or civilization. Or at least that's what it felt like to me when I first read it. The premise of the book is simple. Human life has no over arching purpose, no meaning, no happy ending and no salvation. Gray spends his time trying to prove this point and to liberate the reader from the anxieties that hoping and wanting for more out ...more

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Jul 15, 2016 Jon rated it liked it

Shelves: english

Three stars, because I'm entirely sympathetic to Gray's argument that humans are in all important respects mere animals, and that humanism is a sham, a holdover from Christianity that wrongly insists that humans are uniquely perfectible and that true progress is possible. Still...what is this mess?

Largely disorganized, uneven (elegant passages shuffled with ones that are extremely poorly written), full of unbacked claims and faulty assertions, inaccurate readings of Eastern religions, undercook ...more

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Jan 19, 2016 John rated it did not like it

My concern is less with the poor logical form of Gray's arguments (which I will touch on), and more with the morbid indulgence in pessimistic nihilism this work purports. Gray seems to revel in being the bearer of bad news- something akin to a schoolmate who grimly stares you down to notify you that the teacher wants to see you- (i.e. using titles like "the poverty of consciousness"), Gray supports himself with biased and one-sided arguments (like citing the work of Benjamin Libet and ignoring h My concern is less with the poor logical form of Gray's arguments (which I will touch on), and more with the morbid indulgence in pessimistic nihilism this work purports. Gray seems to revel in being the bearer of bad news- something akin to a schoolmate who grimly stares you down to notify you that the teacher wants to see you- (i.e. using titles like "the poverty of consciousness"), Gray supports himself with biased and one-sided arguments (like citing the work of Benjamin Libet and ignoring his criticism like Dr. W.R. Klemm's Advances in Cognitive Psychology), using biased quotes from individuals like Lao Tzu (who was certainly no nihilist), and claiming that Nietzsche & Heidegger didn't go far enough for they kept some of their "Christian hopes."

An example of his poor logical forms can be found in chapter two, where Gray discusses Joseph Conrad's work to prove we have no free will. To summarize Gray's argument: spontaneous voluntary acts usually begin unconsciously, unconscious acts exhibit no free will, therefore we have no free will. This proof based on his argument is clearly flawed. The first premise, quoted from the scientist Benjamin Libet, hardly maintains a fixed premise (note the word usually). If the term usually ruled out any possibility for the "necessary sufficiency" required in any logical proof, in the second premise the argument collapses. Gray should have demonstrated (a) the difference between subconscious and unconscious for the two seem often conflated, and most importantly show how (b) an unconscious action is beyond the realm of free will. Since the simple scientific experiments of Libet-which is where he draws his conclusion- are not applicable to all actions, as argued by Dr. Klemm- we can see that the term usually is misapplied.

According to leaders in the field of consciousness like Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, the subconscious mind by definition goes beyond the realm of communication and into infinity in its vastness. Gray shows himself to be -less than blissfully- ignorant of the mystery of the subconscious mind and it's relation to consciousness. Rather, Gray harps on the Freudian term unconscious which commonly denotes repression and suppression (not a coincidence there). There is no evidence that something unconscious will always remain so. There is no reason to assume that all humans are neurotically controlled by unconscious impulses. Gray then, in an academic lapse, claims that all eastern techniques for meditation are not simply designed to heighten consciousness but actually to bypass it (p. 62). This narrow, unsupported, and unexamined claim falls short of convincing.

What is the limit of skepticism? Gray does not seem to once question his own skepticism, but rather seems to assert that science equals truth. Faith and belief are valueless. That certainly is an interesting belief... a sort of faith in science you might say; though I'm not certain why this doesn't come under the same scrutiny or skepticism he applies elsewhere.
The bottom line; John Gray fails in his attempt to be the next Nietzsche. ...more

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Jul 28, 2018 John rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: philosophy

In a nutshell we are all doomed. Humans are a plague which will ultimately exceed the worlds ecological limits. Religion has been replaced by science and progress will solve all our problems. A bleak pessimistic view of philosophy and its evolution. I am so glad me and my wife do not have children.

On the positive side I like that early Greek philosophers were not focused on truth but happiness or perhaps a more relevant word would be contentment. This book is all about how messed up the world i ...more

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Jan 03, 2009 Joshuacitrak rated it it was amazing

do not read this book! it will destroy your egocentric, small minded, action-oriented, "modern" view of the actuality of existence. go back to mindlessly consuming, seeking salvation through your christs (be it jesus, coca-cola, NFL football, technology, the environment, your career, whatever) and stand firm in your belief that humans are the most important species to ever exist. they are, they really are!!!

"The aim of life isn't the change the world, but to see it rightly."

however, if you have ...more

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Jul 19, 2010 Matthew rated it really liked it

You get the sense reading Straw Dogs that if John Gray were ever to meet a nihilist he'd chide him for being unjustifiably optimistic. Unremittingly grim. A philosphical overview of the human condition that concludes it all started to go wrong for us somewhere around the invention of agriculture. Progress is measured only in the novelty of the tools we use for mass murder. Secular humanism is just Christianity-lite and scientific rationalism exhibits all the key features of a cult. We set oursel ...more

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Nov 25, 2016 Tristram Shandy rated it liked it

Shelves: philosophy

”Today liberal humanism has the pervasive power that was once possessed by revealed religion.“

This sentence from page xi sums up pretty well the point that John Gray wants to make in his slim volume Straw Dogs. Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals. Now do yourself a favour and don’t mix up John Gray, the British philosopher, with John Gray, the writer of books such as Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus because if you do that you will get a roller-coaster ride through the tunnel of horror wh ...more

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Aug 03, 2012 Bruce rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction

I remember the days when there weren't any reviews on goodreads... and so anything I had to say was of course very valuable! ;-) Nowadays thougthful people who write better than I do have covered the basic ground very well already, leaving nothing but the off kilter angles to me.

So I am going to compare this book to Rupert Sheldrake's The Science Delusion. Both authors do the very important and valuable work of demonstrating through their scholarship of the history of ideas that contemporary sci ...more

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Jan 23, 2013 Dylan Horrocks rated it it was amazing

Shelves: belief-read, non-fiction

This goes on that special shelf of books I will be thinking about and responding to for the rest of my life. I devoured it in a few days and was almost hopping with glee by the last page. Gray has a tendency to adopt a somewhat portentous tone, but I didn't care. Now I want to read a whole lot more Gray.

One small curiosity: aspects of Gray's discussion of the impact of written language on human culture reminded me of David Abram's The Spell of the Sensuous, which made me wonder if Gray has read ...more

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Aug 13, 2020 John Vibber rated it liked it

I experienced “Straw Dogs” by John Gray as a provocative dose of pessimism.

Gray argues that humanism is a religion founded on hollow assumptions about our biological nature. According to him, human nature is fixed; therefore our mistakes inevitably echo those of our ancestors. He tells of history’s littered trail of failed civilizations and calls societal progress an illusion that humanists inherited from Christianity. He says that, given our nature, technology is more likely to seal our fate t I experienced “Straw Dogs” by John Gray as a provocative dose of pessimism.

Gray argues that humanism is a religion founded on hollow assumptions about our biological nature. According to him, human nature is fixed; therefore our mistakes inevitably echo those of our ancestors. He tells of history’s littered trail of failed civilizations and calls societal progress an illusion that humanists inherited from Christianity. He says that, given our nature, technology is more likely to seal our fate than change it. He also claims that we have no fixed basis for our moral values. Thus Gray displaces us as the paragon of animals and reframes us as earth’s most rapacious species doomed to inevitable collapse: the self-inflated apes blind to its own nature.

Gray’s writing is brilliant and highly quotable, but relentlessly bleak. I concede our limitations as an animal, but see evidence to question his thesis. Evolutionary psychology is finding evidence of innate moral decision making in primates including human infants. Gray denies that technology can shape our nature, but consider how just one technology birth control has elevated women’s freedoms and opportunities. Could this be societal progress? Furthermore, Gray underestimates the power and accomplishments of humans working collectively. On all these issues, I remain more convinced by the data and arguments in books like Matt Ridley’s “Rational Optimist” and Stephen Pinker’s “The Better Angles of Our Nature.” Enlightenment and Humanist beliefs may in part resemble religion, but when combined with science and economic growth, they tend to better the human condition.

I wouldn’t recommend this book for truth, but I would for reflection. For me, it provoked interesting questions. For instance, what is my authority in a relativistic world to hold certain truths “self-evident?” Can I believe “all men are created equal” if I don’t believe in a creator? Are my affirmations of self-evident truths and equality religious beliefs or something more? What is more?

Straw Dogs is a bit outdated, but it remains an erudite argument for one side of an ongoing debate about progress and human nature. Will society survive and improve? Place your bets. Time will tell.

...more

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Sep 08, 2010 Bob Nichols rated it liked it

This book is filled with one challenge after another to accepted belief and philosophical wisdom. Gray comments that humanism, science and green thinkers are secular versions of Christianity's quest for salvation. Socratic philosophy is the origin of Shamanism, a belief in an unchanging, eternal world that supersedes our material world that is an illusion. Nietzsche's Superman was a "ridiculous figure" who tried to transform humans into something they are not. Does meditation, he asks, heighten This book is filled with one challenge after another to accepted belief and philosophical wisdom. Gray comments that humanism, science and green thinkers are secular versions of Christianity's quest for salvation. Socratic philosophy is the origin of Shamanism, a belief in an unchanging, eternal world that supersedes our material world that is an illusion. Nietzsche's Superman was a "ridiculous figure" who tried to transform humans into something they are not. Does meditation, he asks, heighten consciousness or bypass it? Genocide is just as human as art or prayer. Morality is a branch of fiction that should be tossed aside in favor of prudence, or how to live skillfully. Without Western monotheism, he says, we would be spared of religious wars. Polytheists are not missionaries. Christians hate the body because the body dies, and the soul becomes the vehicle for eternal life. From another writer, Gray quotes that "'Progress celebrates pyrrhic victories over nature.'" Today's consciousness he says is a byproduct of the media. And, he states, Descartes would have been nearer the truth if he had described himself as a machine.

Gray steps outside of the generally accepted Western paradigm that sees humans as special, as exceptions to nature. We are animals, he argues. Where we excel is in our knowledge that grows, but "the human animal will remain the same" and seek to survive just like all other life forms. That is the most powerful observation in his book. We typically equate our capacity for knowledge, which is our distinctive trait, with the power to transform ourselves into anything we want ourselves to be. Gray separates these concepts and reminds us that in spite of all of our knowing, we are still motivated for good or bad by the same animal nature that we have always had. Knowing evolves; our animal nature does not. We think knowledge controls our animal nature, but Gray believes our animal nature largely controls what we know and how we use what we know. If the reader accepts Gray's alternative paradigm, then most of this book will resonate.

Gray is not convincing in his argument that we have no core self. If we are animal, we have an animal self, and particular animals have particular animal selves. If we are to live, as he writes, "according to our natures," this implies some sort of core self. Gray calls the philosophical interest in equality a fad, but an argument could be made that our interest in equality is anchored in our very biology, reflecting, as is seen in the Golden Rule and its variations around the world, the balance between the organism and the environment and between self and other, that is the underlying rational principle necessary for there to be order (and survival for all).

While clearly biologically based, Gray does not develop his own alternative theory. It is more implied than explicitly stated. While the last third of the book seems to lose its force, Gray deserves much credit for sticking his thoughts "out there" and challenging us to seriously reflect whether we are more animal than human, and what that might mean about how we live our lives and how we ought to live our lives.
...more

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May 16, 2014 anon rated it did not like it

We get where's he going w/ it, but something about it rubbed us the wrong way ... felt like we were being lectured to ... dumbed down dribble distilled for mainstream (religious) audiences, for zombies that want to be perceived as liberal, but their brain capacities are better aligned to the tea party. Straw Dogs is a pompous mess of infomercialized dogshit, thinly spread all over the map, rehashing existing dogma but adding nothing to the conversation. And Gray speaks in absolutes, summarizing ...more

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Nov 21, 2016 Greg rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This book should be required reading for all people who believe in progress in humanity. That is, anybody who reads the Economist, anybody who believes in the value of "an education", anybody who advocates for human rights, anybody who decries religious fundamentalism, anybody aghast at Donald Trump, anybody who cherishes the democratizing effects of technology, anybody pro-globalization, anti-exploitation, any child of the Enlightenment. In short, anybody who self-consciously holds *progressive ...more

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Sep 23, 2012 Josepha rated it it was ok

Although interesting and complete this book had so many flaws.
- Opposition to Hegel's teleology and the goals of the enlightenment (The progress of mankind)
-That atheism is christian invention (He simply refers to it as post-christian)
-Replacing ethics with the mindnumbingly dumb views of Taoism and saying that morality is the disease of man
-The coming of mankind as a species IS the most important event in the history of the world since man has so radically altered and exploited it (extinct spec ...more

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Apr 29, 2013 Richard Newton rated it really liked it

Shelves: philosophy, thinking-about-life

I feel this is one of those books you are either going to like to hate. If you are open to quite challenging ideas, presented in a fairly passionate and opinionated style then you may well like this book. If you want to see full arguments, no assumptions, and no jumps in logic then you may not. But given that these are thoughts (see title) - the flaws in his arguments are forgiveable.

This is a book which is pretty pessimistic about humanity, but at the same time has a positive tone - well positi ...more

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Jul 18, 2009 Mark rated it it was amazing

Shelves: philosophy, favorite, staff-pick

Desert rat Edward Abbey once said, "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell." Well, progress for the sake of progress seems also to be a very human ideology. We separate ourselves from the other animals, but we are merely a different species of animal, albeit the most destructive species. We like to think of ourselves as exalted and intelligent persons, who have dominion over all the other animals, but the truth is that we are deluding ourselves. Thanks to evolution thou ...more

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Oct 02, 2008 Jim Coughenour rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: anyone insufficiently hopeless

Shelves: thinkingcap

Yes, it's extreme – and often impossible to take seriously – but it's still one of my favorites. The philosophical equivalent of electroshock therapy. Stomps where trendy atheists fear to tap dance.
...more

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Feb 11, 2013 Tony61 rated it liked it

Short review: Gray gives a cogent synopsis of the major philosophical thinkers from Plato and Socrates to Heidegger and Hegel and provides a critique of the human-centered sentiments imbued in all these schools of thought.

He is controversial in eschewing theism and salvation and likening morality to a disease, and pretty much calling humanism a scourge on the earth. Gray recognizes that science has been co-opted to serve humanity instead of the pure pursuit of knowledge.

The problem I had with t ...more

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About John N. Gray

John N. Gray

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John Nicholas Gray is a English political philosopher with interests in analytic philosophy and the history of ideas. He retired in 2008 as School Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Gray contributes regularly to The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement and the New Statesman, where he is the lead book reviewer.

Books by John N. Gray

The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths

Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia

The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Inquiry into Human Freedom

False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism

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“Most people today think they belong to a species that can be master of its destiny. This is faith, not science. We do not speak of a time when whales or gorillas will be masters of their destinies. Why then humans?” — 50 likes

“We think our actions express our decisions. But in nearly all of our life, willing decides nothing. We cannot wake up or fall asleep, remember or forget our dreams, summon or banish our thoughts, by deciding to do so. When we greet someone on the street we just act, and there is no actor standing behind what we do. Our acts are end points in long sequences of unconscious responses. They arise from a structure of habits and skills that is almost infinitely complicated. Most of our life in enacted without conscious awareness. Nor can it be made conscious. No degree of self-awareness can make us self-transparent.” — 39 likes

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