The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths by John N. Gray

The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths Reviews

• 
  Jim Coughenour

  I'll start my review with a statement from the middle of this book, which might also stand for a précis of its argument:

  Admitting that our lives are shaped by fictions may give a kind of freedom – possibly the only kind that human beings can attain. Accepting that the world is without meaning, we are liberated from confinement in the meaning we have made. Knowing there is nothing of substance in our world may seem to rob that world of value. But this nothingness may be our most precious possession, since it opens to us the world that exists beyond ourselves.

  That phrase "exists beyound ourselves" hints at the paradox at the heart of The Silence of the Animals – what Gray calls, a bit awkwardly, a "godless mysticism."
  
  Gray's new book is advertised as a sequel to his deliberately shocking
  Straw Dogs (2003) – a prospect I confess that didn't particularly appeal to me, although I read Straw Dogs twice and was energized by its skeptical zest. I was also a fan of
  Black Mass (2007). But the truth is, I've had enough polemicism.
  
  Happily, Gray's new book provides a fresh turn. There is still the core hopelessness about the prospects of humankind, a complete rejection of the notion of "progress." But what could be a bleak conclusion for many writers is for Gray the point of departure. The Silence of the Animals turns to poetry, art, the musings of marginal philosophers, novelists and naturalists to explore a style of thinking and living beyond the myths of religion and (what Gray derides as a simple variant) the myth of "enlightened" humanism.
  
  I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the argument. It's really more of an essay in the manner of Montaigne – richly skeptical, generous in its love for animals, the earth, poets, writers and freethinkers. Gray gave me a new appreciation for Freud, a "scientist" I generally consider a quack. For Gray, Freud is an ethicist who taught the art of resignation. "Resignation meant accepting the fact of ultimate chaos."
  
  As with Montaigne, the discussion develops unpredictably, following its own imaginative logic. Every few pages Gray would introduce a writer I barely knew – Llewelyn Powys, T. E. Hulme or Fritz Mauthner. Ford Maddox Ford's Parade's End is mentioned in passing as "possibly the greatest twentieth-century English novel." Who knew? I'd just pulled that book off my shelf to read, before it's encumbered with Benedict Cumberbatch.
  
  When he cited J. G. Ballard's late memoir Miracles of Life (2008), I thought: I didn't know Ballard had published another memoir… I looked the book up on Amazon. Turns out the American edition has just been published. I hopped up from my table at Peets and hurried a couple doors down to Books Inc. – and there it was, a single copy. Anyone who loves books will understand the happiness of such a moment.
  
  Gray's godless contemplation is a pleasure for atheists – atheists wearied of calling themselves atheists – for those of us incapable of "believing in" Christianity (or any religion) but moved nevertheless by the beauty of its myths. We humans may not enjoy the silence of the animals but, however fictive it might be, we are lucky in language.
  
  
  
• 
  Andreww

  The Silence of Animals - John Gray (2013)
  
  I have a love-hate relationship with John Gray. Every atom of my being wants to deny his excoriatingly bleak judgement on the human condition and yet every time I read and re-read him I end up capitulating to his basic premise. His thinking's precise, forensic and irritatingly undeniable. Just turn on the television and watch the news for about two minutes and you see it playing out everyday.
  
  In a nutshell his argument runs that there's no redemption for the human animal, in fact, we delude ourselves if we think we are anything beyond the animal. We are, he argues, violent, brutish and barbaric. And whilst our 21st century lives in developed nations are no longer dominated by these three forces, it is deep-written in our nature to have these forces just below the surface and that fact is as immutable as the mountains. Whilst our technology and science progress and develop our basic character and nature cannot. We are not improving as a species, becoming less violent or nasty and inexorably moving on to some dreamy Star Trekkian future of benign benevolence. We are doomed to repeat the barbarism of history, civilisation only paper-thin.
  
  In this short and bitter book, sweetened by its careful construction and beautifully evocative language, Gray uses history and eye-witness account of human atrocity to drive home his point again and again. He drives nails into the humanist contention that we might be able to save ourselves from our atavistic instincts, dismissing atheism as just another rather silly belief system. As he evokes the silence of animals of the title he articulates his view so eloquently there's no escape. There is nothing surface here, his thinking goes so deep.
  
  He contends that our memory and narrative self construct a lie for us each and everyday, a lie perpetuated by our civilisations where the human sense of self is reflected back at us with such power we believe our own propaganda. We are not cohesive beings with an "I" deep inside us driving our thoughts and lives in a trajectory or agenda of our choosing. We are a narrative self failing to remember this fundamental lie everyday. We string moments together into a bead necklace of memory, both imagining the dots and then joining them to construct the story of our life. Neuroscientists will tell you the same, root about in the treasure chest of the brain and you won't ever find the place where "we" reside. To prove his point Gray takes us to humans in the raw, to Naples in 1943 where starvation and disease took a modern city and tossed it back into the dark ages and people fought to live in the most desperate of conditions. In such terrible circumstances anything goes and the civilised life is seen to be the myth it is. Humans are animals that will do anything to remain alive, ditching values and philosophies long held simply to keep their hearts beating.
  
  As I said it is a bleak and honest analysis and it is a powerful warning about human hubris, urging us to be ever humble and watchful for our own "nasty" instincts. Our institutions, our mythological civilised life where many of us have the privilege to live - where indeed John Gray himself gets the opportunity to de-construct it all - can and often is, washed away in an instant by the forces of dark disaster. He parodies our search for silence and the solace of meditation and the monastic life, suggesting there is an envy within it for the true language-less silence of animals. Where life is lived instant by shiny instant, a jabbing intention inside a single moment that is not recalled after the next one opens, in such a life there can be true calm. That dark calm of awarelessness, where day is simply the opposite of night and does not have a value-judgement shadowing it, making it something else entirely. In such a life, where the gripping fingers of memory do not snag hold of phantasms and illusions and weave a myth of stability and ego, is lierally beyond our ken and to be envied. On the journey he lords Nietzsche and Freud, whilst disparaging Jung and marvelling at our species's sheer ability to construct belief and myth.
  
  This is poetry disguised as prose, marinaded in the deepest and most beautiful philosophy. A powerful and life-changing set of ideas, approach with care as the human world and the individual within it will never appear the same again.
• 
  Jonfaith

  The world in which you live from day to day is made from habit and memory. The perilous zones are the times when the self, also made from habit and memory, gives way. Then, if only for a moment, you may become something other than you have been.
  
  Richard Rorty in a number of essays on Derrida and Deconstruction notes sanguinely that if rigor is what satisfies you and your philosophy, you need not follow Derrida. This is my clumsy paraphrase and Rorty readily notes there are a number of reasons to read Derrida, especially as he is one of the brave souls out dancing in the dark; but a programmatic analysis was not included in his methodology nor is it his intention. I feel that John Gray is likewise out sternly strolling in the shadows. His thesis here is that humanism is cognitive dissonance, a bad faith endeavor perpetuated by fictional positivism. Gray believes we confuse technology with a developed sense of self and purpose. The Silence of Animals is a queasy book, one larded with long citations from other authors. One could gather that his premise curtailed the need for escalation or procedure, what would be the point, anyway? I said that last bit in my Marvin the Paranoid Android voice.
  
  
  2.5 stars
• 
  Murtaza

  Reading "Straw Dogs" by John Gray many years ago was something close to a formative intellectual experience. At the very least it helped me think in new ways about some fundamental things that I had been taking for granted til then. As a result I've always had a soft spot for his essays and books and have continued to pick them up over the years, whenever possible.
  
  Having said that there is something unsettlingly repetitive about his corpus of work. "The Silence of Animals" goes over the same familiar themes: the Myth of Progress, the transmutation of religious expectation into secular ideology and the basic artifice of the man-created metaphysical world. In a sense these issues are timeless and bear repeating. But you don't necessarily need to read the same book about them again and again to get his message.
  
  There was a small novelty to this work, suggested in the title. If we as human beings, caught up in the escalating clamor of the modern world, could rediscover that inner silence and solicitude that comes naturally to animals, perhaps something like real knowledge could be found. This is the knowledge that comes from contemplation and from being attuned to the "sweet stillness of the heart," something that so many writers of antiquity tried to convey to us the value of.
  
  In addition to that reminder, Gray's reflections on Progress made me wonder whether the rush to adopt every new technology — even with mounting evidence that such uncritical embraces are causing us grave harm — is basically a sublimated religious impulse that considers novelty as not just a good but as something that provides meaning to life. How would we feel if the motor of technological advance ground to a halt, never to turn forward again?
  
  If you've read Straw Dogs you don't need to read this one. Gray's essays on Muslim terrorism and modernity are also worth looking at.
• 
  Mohamed Al-Moslemany

  في القرن التاسع عشر آمن نيتشة أن الفن يمكنه أن يكون جسرا بين الإنسان المادي والإله المتعالي الذي قتله، ولكنه يحذر؛ إن التحول من الدين إلى التأمل العلمي هو قفزة عنيفة وخطيرة، لا ينبغي التوصية بها، ولكن من أجل تحقيق هذه الغاية، فإن الفن يجب أن يوظف إلى حد أقصى لكي يغيث العقل المثقل بالعواطف، من اللامنطق يأتي الكثير من الخير. إنه متجذر بقوة في الأحاسيس، في اللغة، في الفن، في الدين، وعموما في كل شيء يعطي الحياة قيمتها. فقط السذج هم من يصدقون أن طبيعة الإنسان يمكن أن تصبح منطقية بالكامل.
  غراي كذلك يجادل أن العلم والتاريخ يثبتان بأن البشر ليسوا عقلانيين إلا بشكل جزئي ومرحلي، لكن بالنسبة للإنسانويين المعاصرين، الحل سهل: على البشر أن يكونوا أكثر عقلانية في المستقبل. هؤلاء الذين يحملون مبخرة العقل ليس بمقدورهم رؤية بأن فكرة قدرة البشر يومًا ما على أن يكونوا أكثر عقلانية تفترض قفزة إيمانية أكبر لا يفترضها أي دين. فكرة أن المسيح قد عاد من بين الموتى، بحكم أنها ترتكز على خرق إعجازي ضمن نظام الأشياء، تتعارض مع العقل أقل من ذلك المفهوم الذي بحسبه سيكون البشر في المستقبل مختلفين عن ما كانوا عليه دائما
  يمكننا اتهام زيوس قدر ما نشاء ولكنا لن نستطيع أن نقول أنه ممل بأي حال، على عكس أساطير العالم الحديث
• 
  Guillermo Jiménez

  El silencio de los animales fue el primer libro de John Gray que recuerdo haber comenzado a leer. En ese momento en mi vida estaba en un matrimonio que no iba a ninguna parte, pero durante el cual se dieron muchas situaciones que después fueron determinantes en mi vida.
  
  Recuerdo haber comenzado a leer este libro y sentir cómo me hablaba, cómo las primeras ideas que Gray iba dibujando sobre el papel tenían eco en mi, en mis sentimientos, en mi manera de ver a mi alrededor, y también recuerdo que al leerlo y terminar una parte, unas páginas, me regresaba al inicio y volvía a comenzarlo.
  
  Cada vez que comenzaba a leerlo sentía que leía algo ligeramente distinto, algo que había pasado por alto la primera vez. Avanzaba apenas unas páginas más que la vez anterior y lo dejaba.
  
  Ese ejercicio de comenzar a leer este libro se dio demasiadas veces… en los últimos 7 años de mi vida.
  
  Leí otros libros de Gray, como
  Perros de paja, Siete tipos de ateísmo y
  Misa negra, y entre todas esas y otras lecturas, este librito lo comenzaba y dejaba, volvía a comenzarlo y a dejarlo.
  
  Gray se convirtió en uno de mis tótems, uno de mis gurús y mentores, junto con
  Taleb, con
  Rovelli,
  de Waal y
  Pouydebat. Y me ha inspirado a explorar a otros autores, como a Leopardi y Montaigne, a quien espero leer con calma pronto.
  
  Ahora que pude leerlo todo de principio a fin, no puedo evitar reconocer en esta lectura exactamente lo que necesitaba leer en este momento en mi vida, leerlo y sentirme “menos solo” sintiéndome completamente solo, pero pleno y en armonía conmigo mismo.
  
  Incluso, comencé a compartir este mensaje con algunas de las personas con quien me escribo en esta época:
  

  Estoy en un punto muy zen de mi vida. Muy equilibrado, consciente de las cosas, más seguro de lo que quiero y lo que no. Y confirmando que no quiero hacer nada en la vida más que dedicarme a la contemplación. Leer, ver películas, escuchar música, y pues tener un trabajo que no me estorbe tanto y pague mis cuentas.

  
  Y mucho tuvo que ver esta lectura.
  
  El subtítulo aclara muy bien de qué va: sobre el progreso y otros mitos modernos.
  
  Durante las páginas de este libro, Gray nos explica y demuestra porqué el “progreso humano” es una invención y un mito inventado por la humanidad, y que basándonos en ello no vamos a llegar a ningún lado.
  
  Que en realidad, como especie: no vamos a llegar a ningún lado nunca.
  
  Todo esto lo hace con su erudición habitual, la cual jamás es pedante o presuntuosa, nunca se siente pesado ni paternalista con el lector, al contrario, va dando vaivenes de sus ideas dentro de unos márgenes muy bien delimitados, siendo ameno y hasta gracioso, y dejando una que otra crítica muy diplomática sobre uno que otro autor.
  
  Es una joya leer a Gray.
  
  La estructura es similar a la que vemos en los demás libros de Gray: va dejando aquí y allá, como unas especies de viñetas largas en las cuales nos expone alguna anécdota histórica, alguna lectura en específico, o profundizando en las ideas de autores que ha estudiado a conciencia, como Freud en este caso, entre otros.
  
  Por medio de estos ejemplos, va demostrando la lectura errónea o lo torcido que pueden llegar a estar las interpretaciones que han hecho otros autores, un Nietzsche, un Powys; todo salpicado de poesía, mucha poesía, mucha de la visión de los poetas sobre el mundo, lo cual enriquece la lectura exorbitantemente, abre caminos nuevos en el lector, plantea preguntas desde ángulos distintos, y pone en su lugar al pensamiento científico y las ciencias sociales, y sobre todo a las humanidades.
  
  Este libro me ha ayudado a hacer las paces conmigo mismo, y con quienes están cerca de mí.
  
  Justo hace un par de años terminó una relación muy importante en mi vida y, más recientemente, está terminando otra muy significativa, de la cual no me quedaba muy claro el por qué hasta después de unas pláticas más, y precisamente, me encontraba leyendo cuando:
  

  ¿Pero por qué se empeña en despertar a quiénes están durmiendo? ¿qué camino, qué salida ha diseñado para ellos? (pág. 55)

  
  Cita Gray a John Sturat Mill, y así es, un poco así son mis discusiones, no que crea que yo contengo “la verdad”, pero sí me acerco a cierto grado de lucidez, y termina frustrándome que haya personas a mi alrededor que prefieran seguir soñando despiertos que ver la realidad con otros ojos.
  
  Es como si alguien, viendo The Matrix (The Wachowskis, 1999), prefiere tomar la píldora roja y quedarse en Wonderland.
  
  Como sería el caso de esta relación valiosa para mí, pero en la cual, la otra persona prefiere dirigirse en otra dirección, una que antagoniza con la que yo he decidido seguir.
  
  Así que, como escribí arriba: esta lectura me hace más consciente de lo que está bien para mí, de acuerdo a cómo quiero entender el mundo; me lleva a aceptar mi condición, mi lugar en el mundo y a hacer las paces con mis circunstancias, me ayuda a redefinir qué es lo que quiero y qué es lo que no.
  
  Y de alguna manera, a entender a mis semejantes:
  

  ¿Por qué es tan importante el sentido? ¿Por qué necesitan los seres humanos una razón para vivir? ¿Sería porque no podrían soportar la vida si no creyeran que la vida tiene un sentido oculto? ¿O tal vez la exigencia de sentido derive del hecho de otorgar demasiada importancia al lenguaje, de creer que nuestras vidas son libros que no hemos aprendido aún a leer? (pág. 71)

  
  Esta pregunta la responde unas páginas más adelante Gray, y la comparto aquí por si alguien que leyera este comentario no tiene a la mano el libro, no puede leerlo o no le interesa pero termina llegando a esta parte, porque esto es lo que termina dándome todas las herramientas que no me han dado otras lecturas para entenderme:
  

  Al aceptar que el mundo carece de sentido, nos liberamos de la reclusión en el sentido que le habíamos dado. El saber que no hay nada sustancial en este mundo puede dar la impresión de privar al mundo de su valor. Sin embargo, este vacío se puede convertir en nuestra posesión más valiosa, puesto que nos abre al mundo inagotable que existe más allá de nosotros mismos. (pág. 92)

  
  Siga pues mi camino rumbo a la contemplación, enfundado muy cómodamente en la resignación.
• 
  Stuart Dunstan

  If you've read Straw Dogs, it's probably best you stopped there. It seems like each new book by John Gray is full of the same arguments as previous books, just framed slightly differently. I loved Straw Dogs, but there's only so many times I can read a new "remix" of the same ideas.
  
  The best parts of The Silence of Animals are the quotes from books that John Gray peppers throughout, leaving you wanting to read more. I've now added a number of them to my "to read" list, including The Peregrine by J.A. Baker, The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard, An Outpost of Progress by Joseph Conrad, and Naples '44 by Norman Lewis.
• 
  ΠανωςΚ

  Κατά διαστήματα συναρπαστικό, ακόμη κι όταν μ' εκνεύριζε. Πού και πού ένιωθα ότι ξεπερνά τις αντιληπτικές μου ικανότητες. Οπωσδήποτε ενδιαφέρον, κάποιες φορές όμως μού φάνηκε αποπροσανατολισμένο.
• 
  VII

  I miss this kind of books, especially now that I am forced to read endless, tedious distinctions about specialized subtopics that nobody besides 50 professors and a few hundred poor graduate students care about. There aren't really any arguments in this book. I think that after Straw Dogs Gray decided to focus more on the history of ideas, finding as many pessimistic anti-humanist, anti-Enlightenment writers as possible and combine them with each other to form small sections that describe his particular -and quite attractive to me- viewpoint. His Seven Types of Atheism was also very similar to this.
   
  This viewpoint should be very familiar to anyone who have read his other books. We humans think that things keep getting better but in reality what changes is the toys we have to play with and the stories we tell to ourselves. We are fundamentally and irrevocably flawed and we are ready to show it when opportunity arises, when we find ourselves in unusual circumstances. It's no surprise that many of his sections deal with stories from WW2 or similar supposedly extraordinary periods in which culture collapses. We say to ourselves that we are born to be free and that we are the only rational beings, but it is simply a replacement of God with faith in reason, truth, science and progress.
   
  We think that our views reflect the world but they are ready to crumble when a new one arises. It is actually a choice between myths, not a mirror of reality (he is following Rorty and post-modernist thought here). It is not us and the world, we are part of a chaotic order and we invent order and stability but only temporarily. It is hard or impossible to escape this need for meaning or order and in some cases, like in pursuit of happiness or freedom it can even be detrimental.
   
  The most interesting section is the one that bears the name of the book. A very common idea that started from Gadamer and Heidegger but is still here with McDowell is that whereas animals live in an environment, humans create their own world because of thought and language. This is supposedly a privilege, but for Grey it is a flaw. The animals in their environment are silent and lucky, because they don’t have this incessant endless inner talk. Humans traditionally seek silence in monasteries but now this is discouraged. As he says: “admitting the need for [silence] means accepting that you are inwardly restless” and that “much of your life has been an exercise in distraction”. Many people, philosophies or religions provide instructions on how to escape it but these ways usually came with caveats like spiritualism or reaching God or reaching some inner humanity or accessing a mysterious platonic realm. Instead, like in Straw Dogs, he endorses contemplation, a godless mysticism that doesn’t try to reach something divine or some higher self, it doesn’t have anything particular in mind as a goal, “all it offers is mere being”.
   
  Overall, I always enjoy this kind of books and cannot wait to escape academia and have the time to read all those authors he finds. But of course, this is only one more viewpoint, that just happens to suit my own preferences. I am fine with that.
• 
  Jayesh

  What's the book about? A scathing critique of modern civilization and liberal humanism? Loathing for the idea of faith in progress? Or a call to acceptance of human imperfection and frailty while liberating ourselves "from confinement in the meaning we have made. Knowing there is nothing of substance in our world may seem to rob that world of value. But this nothingness may be our most precious possession, since it opens to us the inexhaustible world that exists beyond ourselves." ?
  
  Hard to tell. It does give an interesting perspective on how so many of the things that we take for granted are just myths and an interesting defense of Freud over Jung. Also love his description of a myth:
  

  "Myths are not eternal archetypes frozen somewhere out of time. They are more like snatches of music that play in the mind. Seeming to come from nowhere, they stay with us for a while and then are gone."

  
  or aphorisms like:
  

  
  "If belief in human rationality were a scientific theory it would long since have been falsified and abandoned"
  

  
  

  "If there is anything unique about the human animal it is that it has the ability to grow knowledge at an accelerating rate while being chronically incapable of learning from experience"

  
  

  "Human uniqueness is a myth inherited from religion, which humanists have recycled into science."
  

  
  
  The book draws on works from numerous authors most of whom I know nothing about but the book ends up being structured in a meta fashion that I like a lot, but YMMV.
• 
  Sujith

  This is another of Grays’ characteristic critique of neo-liberal philosophy and follows in the direction of his earlier cult book "Straw Dogs." Referring to the works of writers as varied as Ballard, Borges, Freud, Conrad, Jeffries, Beckett etc.., and with a number of quotes included makes it for a rich reading. Human progress is quintessentially a myth and Gray himself does not hold back and is sharp shooting when he says– “Reviving long-exploded errors, twenty first century believers in progress unwittingly demonstrate the unreality of progress in the history of ideas”....“to suppose that the myth of progress could be shaken off would be to ascribe to modern humanity, a capacity for improvement even greater than that which it ascribes to itself.”
  
  Gray certainly does make one think hard when he asks - “When truth is at odds with meaning, it is meaning that wins. Why this should be so is a delicate question. Why is meaning so important? Why do humans need a reason to live? Is it because they could not endure life if they did not believe it contained hidden significance? Or does the demand for meaning come from attaching too much sense to language – from thinking that our lives are books we have not yet learnt to read?”
  
  The Silence of the Animals is fascinatingly an enjoyable read even though it knocks the ‘human’ off its pedestal!
  
• 
  James Murphy

  John Gray doesn't want us to forget we're animals, or that the fact explains us. This continues the thinking of his previous book, Straw Dogs. His core message here seems to be that technological progress doesn't mean progress in civilization because increases in knowledge don't neutralize man's innate irrationality. That irrationality accounts for our barbarity. Animal nature can't be overcome by our technological advances. Knowledge isn't enough to control it. Therefore, Gray says, progress is a myth. In our age of declining religion, since man can't live without myth, we've come to think of science and knowledge as salvation. Science has become the secular myth of progress which is replacing religion.
  
  The answer we strive for is silence. The most manifest difference between man and animals is our possession of language, through which we perceive the world. Animals lack language and live in a world of silence which humans seek through poetry, religion, and an engagement with the natural world isolated from civilization and its attendant barbarity. Silence, for man, becomes the redemption that animals possess naturally.
  
  An interesting book. Knotty.
• 
  Jakob

  John Gray takes a look at the fancies of man throughout history, and isn't particularly impressed. His main punching bag of choice is the modern notion of progress – particularly those of moral, societal progress – and the scientific optimism which posits that we're living in a intelligible world that we're increasingly beginning to understand. Christianity may be a falsely comforting fiction of redemption, but in the eyes of Gray, rational humanism is a worse fiction still, and as much of a religion in its own right.
  
  The book reads largely like an anthology, with constant quotations of a large list of authors' pessimistic views on humanity, civilization, and progress. I liked the portions drawing on Freud, Borges, and Conrad in particular. Gray, like me, seems to much much prefer Freud to his protégé Jung: "Jung's thought is interesting not because it has any value in itself, but for showing how psychology can become a vehicle for a new religion". He also brings in the life-stories and words of several (to me) little known writers.
  
  Gray's invective directed at humanism gets rather repetitious after a while. A familiar paradox is how the great pessimists can actually function as some of the best antidotes to a gloomy mood – from Schopenhauer's amusing but insightful grumpiness to Camus' reflections on the Sisyphean mundanity of everyday life. To me, this is not the case with Gray. In the end it comes off less as a life-affirming or humorously caustic pessimism than a peevish drone.
  
  Granted, humanity isn't on a one-way track toward moral utopia – after all, the last century brought with it some of the most gruesome atrocities imaginable, and there's more than enough around in the present. But when taking a quick glance at the societal trends since, say, the enlightenment age, I find it rather hard to deny that there have been some substantial and very meaningful societal advancements. As the brilliant educator Hans Rosling, who sadly recently passed away, pointed out repeatedly, the present world is in a far better condition than what the majority of us realize. It's just hard to remember given how the news we are fed every day invariably tend to accentuate the things that still go badly, and not the very gradual but all the more real facts like more girls getting access to education around the globe or decreasing violent crime rates.
• 
  Taede Smedes

  John Gray is een Britse filosoof die de afgelopen jaren ook in Nederland een trouwe schare fans heeft weten op te bouwen. Eerder verschenen o.a. "Strohonden", "Al-Quaida en de moderne tijd", "Valse dageraad", "Zwarte mis" en "Het onsterfelijkheidscomité".
  
  Dit boek is in zekere zin een vervolg op zijn boek "Strohonden" uit 2002. Net als dat boek is "De stilte van dieren" een venijnige kritiek op het vooruitgangs- en maakbaarheidsgeloof van de moderne mens, door Gray als moderne mythe beschouwd. Met name humanisten - zij die religie verwerpen en de wetenschap als bron van vooruitgang en ultieme bevrijding beschouwen - moeten het ontgelden.
  
  Het boek is fragmentarischer en minder systematisch dan "Strohonden". Het is opgebouwd uit drie delen, die zijn opgedeeld in hoofdstukken die allen een denker of dichter tot uitgangspunt nemen, en een rijke kennis van de Westerse (intellectuele) geschiedenis tentoon spreiden. Het is geen rechtlijnig betoog, maar evocatief en associatief. Daardoor is het moeilijk om de vinger precies op de zere plek te leggen. Met name Gray's gebruik van de term "mythe" is tamelijk vaag.
  
  Het mensbeeld in de eerste twee delen van het boek is tamelijk donker, maar het derde deel is haast boeddhistisch en lichtvoetig wanneer Gray contemplatie benadrukt als de mogelijkheid om de werkelijkheid te zien en te accepteren zoals die is.
  
  Een zeer lezenswaardig en interessant boek, dat boeit tot de laatste bladzij, en dat verrast met schitterende aforismen.
• 
  Christopher

  Well its John Gray-of course I loved it. Not quite as much as Straw Dogs though as it was a bit less trolly than that and more introspective. I am a recent fan of Mr. Gray but am relieved to find someone else making the same points (though much more eloquently) that I have been for a few years now. Possibly the best part, to which I wholeheartedly agree, is that truly being an atheist and a critical thinker means having no room for ideals such as humanism. Its a point Ive long thought relevant and a particular gripe I have with the new atheist movement.
  
  Since he was so fond of quoting poets and thinkers in this work let me add ome words from the excellent band Agalloch:
  
  I saw the nightfall...
  It called to me like a river of shadows
  It sang to me with the cries of a thousand ravens that blackened the sky as they
  took flight
  and sank the Sol
  I shall never trust the sun again, Eridanis Nadir
  
  I ran away far into the woods
  To find the Sol, I called to her...
  "I don't want to be forgotten...I never wanted to be human"
  NEVER!!!!!
  
  
• 
  Dario Andrade

  O livro é um longo ensaio que trata de grandes ideias abstratas que tornaram verdadeiros mitos, ou seja, damos sentido à nossa existência em parte, pelo menos, a esses mitos.
  Mais do que fazer comentários, tratei de reproduzir trechos que me chamaram a atenção ao longo do texto.
  Gray – primeiro livro que leio dele – se apresenta não como um otimista ou pessimista, mas como alguém que é cético em relação à nossa própria humanidade, o que inclui a própria ideia de um propósito abstrato que exista desde antes da nossa existência e nos guie neste mundo.
  Ele põe isso nos seguintes termos: “Ao longo de toda a história e da pré-história, tem-se aceito que existe algo errado com o animal humano”.
  E aí, o que fazer? Talvez enfrentar esses mitos nos guiam a lugar nenhum. O primeiro, e mais óbvio, é o que trata do progresso e de sua ilusão. Não, nós não vamos melhorar. Não, nós não vamos ser melhores, de um ponto de vista ético, melhores do que aqueles que nos antecederam. E mais, toda a nossa cultura, talvez toda a nossa vida possa ser sintetizada como o fracasso dessa concepção de se ver o mundo.
  A fé no progresso, segundo ele, é um remanescente tardio do cristianismo primitivo, originando-se na mensagem de Jesus, posto por ele simplesmente como o “profeta judeu que anunciou o fim dos tempos”, mas, por outro lado, “A mensagem do Gênesis é que nas áreas mais vitais da vida humana não pode haver progresso, apenas uma eterna luta com nossa própria natureza”.
  Mas há não o progresso no sentido de que evoluímos em direção a algo. Não. Na verdade, ao analisar o Coração das Trevas, ele observa que “A barbárie é uma maneira primitiva de vida, sugere Conrad, mas um desdobramento patológico da civilização” e “No entendimento de Conrad, contudo, não apenas o governo se deixou contaminar pela criminalidade. Todas as instituições humanas – famílias e igrejas, forças policiais e anarquistas – estão comprometidas pelo crime. A tentativa de explicar a maldade humana pelas instituições corruptas levanta uma questão: por que os seres humanos são tão apegados a instituições corruptas? Com toda evidência, a resposta está no animal humano”.
  Mas por que se acredita no progresso? A resposta dele é que “o mito do progresso projeta um vislumbre de significado na vida daqueles que o aceitam”. Significado em um mundo que não tem um. Mas esse preenchimento de espaços no nosso vazio existencial se faz também com outros mitos. O mais óbvio é o da racionalidade humana: “se a crença na racionalidade humana fosse uma teoria científica, há muito teria sido abandonada”. E “os seres humanos não lidam com crenças e percepções conflitantes procurando testá-las em cotejo com os fatos. Eles reduzem o conflito reinterpretando os fatos que vão de encontro às crenças a que estão mais apegados. Como escreveu T. S. Eliot em Burnt Norton, a espécie humana não suporta muito a realidade” ou, ainda, “A evidência científica e histórica é que os seres humanos só parcial e intermitentemente são racionais”
  Em suma, “A dissonância cognitiva é a condição humana normal” ou, ainda, “Se existe algo único no animal humano é sua capacidade de multiplicar conhecimento em velocidade crescente, ao mesmo tempo revelando-se cronicamente incapaz de aprender com a experiência”.
  Se não há progresso ou tampouco racionalidade, apenas oscilamos entre polos opostos: “A civilização é natural para os seres humanos, mas também o é a barbárie”.
  Essas distorções nos levam a compreender mal conceitos. E aqui gostei do modo como ele apresenta a seleção natural, que, para mim, ao menos, foi uma forma bastante luminosa que entender o que ela é de fato: “A característica mais importante da seleção natural é ser um processo de deriva. A evolução não tem um estágio final nem direção, de modo que se o desenvolvimento da sociedade é um processo evolutivo, trata-se de um processo que não vai dar em lugar nenhum”.
  Mas, afinal de contas, por que precisamos desses mitos inventados? A resposta dele é outra pergunta: Será porque não seriam capazes de suportar a vida se não acreditassem que contém um significado oculto?”
  A resposta de outros, ou pelo menos a maneira como ele interpreta Freud vai nesse sentido. Segundo Gray, para Freud a doença humana não tem cura e o objetivo da psicanálise – um processo interminável, advertia Freud – é a aceitação do destino pessoal. Enfim, ele entende que Freud propunha um modo de vida baseado na aceitação da perpétua inquietação.
  “A mitologia freudiana captura características perenes e universais da experiência humana. Naturalmente, as ideias de Freud são um sistema de metáforas. E também o é todo discurso humana, ainda que as metáforas não sejam todas do mesmo tipo.”
  Curiosa, por outro lado, é a citação do poeta Wallace Stevens: “A crença final é acreditar em uma ficção, que sabemos ser uma ficção, nada mais havendo. A mais requintada verdade é saber que se trata de uma ficção e deliberadamente acreditar nela”.
  Mas insistimos na mitomania: “Segundo Freud, a busca da felicidade é uma distração do ato de viver” e “O credo contemporâneo é que cada um encontrará a realização sendo a pessoa que realmente quer ser” e “Nosso infortúnio é que essas possibilidades são, em grande medida, frustradas”. Enfim, “Na realidade, a maioria passa a vida em um estado de turbulência esperançosa” porque “O ideal da autorrealização deve muito ao movimento romântico. Para os românticos, a suprema realização era a originalidade”.
  Mas isso é uma inteira mentira pois “Para Freud, a vida humana era um processo de construção do ego, e não a busca de um interior fictício” e “O ideal romântico diz que cada um deve buscar o verdadeiro eu” e “O melhor é que simplesmente não busquemos a felicidade”.
  Essa satisfação, além disso, não é viável “Qualquer tipo de vida civilizada acarreta perda de satisfação dos instintos. Para Freud, contudo, a barbárie não era uma alternativa atraente”.
  O Gray a todo momento nos lembra que a qualquer momento podemos cair: Cita o poeta T. E. Hulme, morto na Primeira Guerra Mundial: “O homem é o caos altamente organizado, mas suscetível de voltar ao caos a qualquer momento” e “Na visão romântica, os seres humanos só acidentalmente são criaturas limitadas: suas possibilidades são infinitas. Em uma visão clássica, os seres humanos são essencialmente finitos; o potencial humano é predeterminado e limitado. ‘Resumindo, são estas as duas visões. Uma, de que o homem é intrinsicamente bom, corrompido pelas circunstâncias; e a outra, de que é intrinsicamente limitado, mas disciplinado pela ordem e pela tradição para se tornar algo razoavelmente decente [...] A visão que encara o homem como um poço, um reservatório de possibilidades, eu chama de romântica; a outra, que o considera uma criatura muito finita e predeterminada, eu chamo de clássica’.
  E o silêncio dos animais o que é? Óbvio que é diferente do silêncio humano. “Enquanto para outros animais o silêncio é um estado natural de repouso, para os seres humanos é uma fuga da comoção interna. Por natureza volátil e contraditório, o animal humano busca no silêncio alívio do fato de ser ele próprio, ao passo que outras criaturas desfrutam do silêncio como um direito de nascença. Os seres humanos buscam o silêncio porque querem redenção; os outros animais vivem em silêncio porque não precisam de redenção”.
  E essa nossa busca por redenção nos leva a escolhas estranhas: “Para os que não suportam viver sem uma crença, qualquer fé é melhor do que nenhuma”.
  Além disso, mais uma vez ele reitera que “A ideia de que o mal humano é um erro, destinado a desaparecer com o avanço do conhecimento; de que a boa vida é necessariamente uma vida examinada; de que a prática da razão pode capacitar os seres humanos a determinar seu próprio destino – essas alegações altamente questionáveis têm sido repetidas como axiomas incontestáveis desde que Sócrates adquiriu o status de santo humanista” e “Como bem sabia Nietzsche, essa crença tem como um de seus princípios que a tragédia não é um fato definitivo: o que consideramos trágico é apenas um tipo de fracasso; de consequências infelizes ou desastrosas”.
  Por fim, talvez como expressão do seu credo, ele expresse que “a contemplação do ateu é uma condição mais radical e transitória: uma trégua temporária de um mundo demasiado humano, sem nada especial em mente. Na maioria das tradições, a vida de contemplação promete a redenção da condição humana: no cristianismo, o fim da tragédia e um vislumbre da comédia divina; no panteísmo de Jeffers, a aniquilação do eu em uma unidade extática. O misticismo ateu não pode escapar à finalidade da tragédia nem tornar eterna a beleza. Ele não dissolve o conflito interno na falsa quietude de uma calma oceânica. Tudo que oferece é o mero ser. Não há redenção na condição humana. Mas não é necessária nenhuma redenção.”
  Enfim, muitas ideias provocadoras. Mesmo que não concorde com várias, ainda assim uma leitura que inquieta.
  
• 
  Coral Davies

  **review to come**
• 
  David

  Well consider my mind blown and maybe a little bit depressed. Gray’s arguments about human progress, mysticism and the fallacies of humanism are well argued and more coherent than in the other book of his that I have read, The Soul Of The Marionette. Do I agree, probably not but his points are so well argued using examples from history, philosophy, fiction and poetry that they are difficult to refute. Look forward to reading straw dogs someday, but not straight away.
• 
  Joshua Buhs

  Intriguing, if ultimately not convincing--almost by the design.
  
  The book's a hard start for anyone coming in cold to Gray's writing--as I was. Eventually it became clear where he was going, but it took time. The book is divided into three sections, and for most of the first section I was at sea.
  
  In part, that's because of his elliptical style of argument, which is why the book almost cannot be convincing, by definition. Less of an argument, the book is a series of assertions that act as meditations on extended quotations. this is a short book, barely over two hundred pages, and about 40% of it must have been quotations.
  
  The first part argues that the idea of progress is a myth. The meliorative liberalism is pine-in-sky utopianism that fails to fundamentally grapple with history and human nature. I think there is a lot of truth to that contention, but one would have liked to see it worked out in more detail than through extended quotations from the writings of Arthur Koestler and Joseph Conrad. For instance--it's certainly true that the world has many (many, many) problems, but there do seem to have been genuine improvements: in the lives of women and black people, in combatting pollution. These issues are not solved, but certainly better. Gray refuses to deal with such issues. He also toggles between different notions of myth, acknowledging that everyone must live by some myth, but also criticizing progressive humanism for being a myth. His point is that some myths are better than others, but he forgets it at times.
  
  It becomes clear by the second section what was only suggested in the first: that Gray is an old-fashioned conservative, a type almost never seen anymore. Indeed, he's something of a monarchist, with warm thoughts for the Hapsburg Empire and nothing good to say about democracy and capitalism. Grays wants to make clear that there is something irredeemably cracked about the human animal, a deep problem that can sometimes be investigated--to a point--or brought to light, but never fully: like a deep-sea fish, the animalistic nature of humanity collapses if brought too much to the surface.
  
  His preferred figure here is Freud, who he reads as being against therapy and the therapeutic revolution that followed, in his name. Freud--according to Gray--thought that psychoanalysis was necessary for people to deal with some of their animalistic, orectic urges, but that nothing could cure those urges, or solve the fundamental baseness of human nature. The idea is not to seek happiness--an impossibility--or betterment--temporary--but to resign one's self to fate and find what enjoyment one can.
  
  It is also in this second section that Gray confronts science, though he never deals with it fully. In the first section, he seemed to bracket it, arguing that science was a small pocket of progress, but not something that fundamentally improved human life. Here, he continues to acknowledge that scientific knowledge might be progressive, but mostly that science operates as a myth for a certain subset of people--the secular humanists. In Gray's reckoning, secular humanists are only marginally different than most religious people, who also accept the idea of progress and humanism--mainstream religion is religious humanism.
  
  This not-a-dime's-worth-of-difference baseline sets the stage for his third section, in which he sketches out what he thinks is an appropriate myth. It should be godless, Gray thinks, taking atheism not as opposed to theism--like me, he sees most modern atheists as a denomination of Christianity--but rather as completely unconcerned with religious apparatus. He's neither interested in belief nor non-belief but--here I am putting words in his mouth--what seems to be habit, and ritual, ways of living, rather than ideals to think about.
  
  There is no transcendence, no hope for nirvana or heaven or even long-standing happiness. No utopia. The best one can get is what he calls contemplation but what reads like meditation, or even participation: allowing one's mind to take on the characteristics of the non-human.
  
  It's a fairly radical answer, given the very conservative starting point. Gray is a smart man, and he obviously knows a lot (and wants you to know that he knows a lot). I may have done some disservice to his thought, simply because he's smarter than me and simply because his style of argument is so cryptic. Nonetheless, the book gave me much to think about.
• 
  Rupert Denton

  In this astounding book John Gray a former Professor of European Thought at the LSE strips bare the myth of liberal humanism.
  
  Gray essentially argues that contrary to the liberal-humanist line of thinking, humans are just animals and any of their enlightenment derived soothsaying about progress should be seen for what it is, a myth.
  
  There is an almost hegemonic world view in the Western World that shouts ‘three cheers for humanity we are lifting ourselves from the muck and the future is bright!' There is very much a sense of ‘progress’ embedded in this liberal humanism, life is becoming better and will go on getting better thanks to the triumph of liberal-humanism. In fact no, progress is not a thing. We in the West have developed a notion of progressive time which is a construct and we extrapolate out into a non-existing future. In fact, just like evolution, existence is without direction. The view that progress comes through a rational and enlightened society based on the tenets of science rather than faith is inherently flawed because it itself is a faith also.
  
  We ascribe a moral purpose to our lives but this sense of purpose is a myth and it is dangerous because we sacrifice ourselves to the myth believing it is our path to some future salvation. The greatest myth of our time is Rousseau’s ‘man is born to be free but is everywhere in chains’, which is, Gray notes, the same as saying fish are born to fly but are everywhere underwater. From what omnipotent position is Rousseau, or any of our modern day prophets of progress (Hitchens, Dawkins and just about anyone standing on a TED stage), make this claim? The idea that there is some new existence waiting around corner to be discovered in the future can never be proven because the notion of the future is itself a fiction.
  
  Rather, we will churn around on earth for a few decades and then we will die and that’ll be the end of it. Instead of living in the future, existing in a hypothetical, we should just see what happens play it by ear. Admittedly, there is a ring of twee ‘living in the present' lifestyle advice that Gray offers and would probably be more suitable for a someone like Alain de Botton. However, what I ultimately take from Gray's book is that we are not without myth and we cannot be without myth. We can recognise the contingency of the myth to which we subscribe but a myth will always be there motivating us. The question I find myself asking is what happens if we did escape it? What if I wake up tomorrow and I find myself without a story…
  
  It is difficult to express in words what this book has done for me but I find myself spending every waking moment asking John Gray questions that he will never answer. Two of them are as follows. First, if humans cannot be separated from animals and humans also create myth and follow myth, do animals like lions and tigers and bats and elephants do the same? Do they also have myth? Second, what of beauty? What of that feeling of emotion that stirs in us when we hear a song we consider beautiful?
  
  My work in progress thinking on the first question is that, unless we are able to communicate with animals, we cannot know but I would assume yes rather than no. And, second, our interpretation of beauty is deeply constructed by our social context, our surrounds, which are influenced by their myths and so taste is subjective (some dogs seem to prefer being scratched on the stomach some behind the ears; some humans prefer Bob Dylan some Skrillex). Taste is subjective, not really a ground breaking thought.
  
  This is a profound book and worth your time.
• 
  mark

  This book is what gives higher education its general derogatory, as in over –valued/bloated reputation. The author, John Gray, was a professor of philosophy across the pond. (Cambridge U. etc. and so on.) He has an argument, but fails to make it concisely and is a lousy storyteller. He’s ‘retired,’ but should trade in his professor’s sport jacket (yes, the one with the leather patches on the elbows) for a straw hat and overalls and go fishing—and work on his story telling skills.
  
  His argument is: Over thousands of years, beginning with Aristole, humans have failed to progress when it comes to progress. With regards to what, you might ask? Exactly! He never defines it, the who, what, why of his argument – just goes on, and on, rambling, with tales about mostly obscure writers and thinkers (with the exception of Sigmund Freud, which to give Gray his due, he does a good job of offering some insight into) that show off his, Gray’s, eruditeness of – obscure writers and thinkers. Gray states that man has failed to progress—failed with reason, logic, religion, science, and language. Ironically, he sort of proves his point with this book. Professor Gray fails to name or identify the problem that needs progressing from except vaguely as ‘Barbarism’; but then says civilization is no solution … so … He’s the same age as I am, so like me, he grew up with washing machines, which are amazing machines when you think about what life was like before they were invented. Just saying … .
  
  What is the problem? I’m going to guess it is the inability for humans to resolve conflict, both internal and external, without resorting to the instinctual remedies of fighting or fleeing. In other words, we’re no better now than we were thousands of years ago at resolving conflicts. We have to resort to myths and delusion to soothe ourselves. At best, he posits, we have ‘evolved’ the psychological mechanisms of denial and rationalization to explain our behaviors. Freud would call it repression. True as that might be, and I say ‘might’ because Gray never defined what ‘it’ was well enough to say with any certainty. Does he offer any possible solution(s)? No. However, isn’t that, the mental gymnastics, some progress? Freud might say so, as in ‘The Talking Cure’ better than killing each other or running away. More progressive. Better to be aware (make conscious) your mental manipulations than have them manifest in physical, debilitating, maladies. Yes? So then, at the least we can go forth and work, say, and build better weapons to destroy our enemies … like say the club versus tooth and nail, or the H-bomb versus trench warfare? Who’s going to f with the dude with The Bomb? No one. That has been empirically proven (Science); so far. Isn’t that progress? We have real problems—like destroying the planet, genocide, the distribution of food and water, overpopulation of the planet – because we have been so successful, AS A SPECIES! Hello, Dr. Gray, isn’t that one definition of progress – becoming the most dominant animal on the planet? We humans began as a very few individuals, just minutely variant from the other ones — the ‘Primal hoard.’ But then, if you don’t define your terms, if you miss-use language, well then, you’re proven your point by b.s. -ing your fellow humans, as you drive your Mercedes to the bank to deposit your money so as you don’t get beaten and robbed, in your brick Tudor mansion on the banks of the Thames, while sipping your gin and tonic.
  
  Should you read this book? My counsel is to skip it. Read instead, Shierry Nicholsen’s The Love of Nature and the End of the World.
  Spring 2015
  
• 
  Leyre Alvarez

  Definitivamente, no es mi tipo de libro...Al principio me habia parecido medianamente interesante, pero según iban avanzando los capitulos se hacía cada vez más tedioso y repetitivo.
• 
  Tazar Oo

  လူဆိုတဲ့ တိရစၦာန္မွာ ထူးျခားတဲ့၀ိေသသတစ္ခုခုရွိတယ္ဆိုခဲ့ရင္ အဲ့ဒါဟာ၊ အေတြ႕အၾကံဳေတြဆီက သင္ယူဖို႔ ဘယ္တုန္းကမွ မတတ္ႏိုင္ခဲ့တဲ့ၾကားထဲကပဲ ���သိပညာကို အရွိန္ျမင့္ျမင့္ဆက္လက္ဖန္တီးႏိုင္တဲ့ စြမ္းရည္ပဲျဖစ္လိမ့္မယ္။ သိပၸံနဲ႔ နည္းပညာဟာ စုေဆာင္းရရွိတဲ့အခ်က္အလက္ေတြျဖစ္ၿပီး က်င့္၀တ္နဲ႔ ႏိုင္ငံေရးကေတာ့ ျပန္ေက်ာ့ေနတဲ့ ဒိြဟေတြပဲ။ ဘယ္လို တံဆိပ္ကပ္ေခၚေ၀ၚသည္ျဖစ္ေစ ႏွိပ္စက္ညွင္းပမ္းမႈနဲ႔ ကၽြန္စနစ္ေတြဟာ အၾကြင္းမဲ့ဒုစရိုက္ပဲ။ ဒါေပမဲ့ ဒီမေကာင္းမႈေတြကို အသံုးမလိုေတာ့တဲ့ သိပၸံသီအိုရီေတြလို အတိတ္ထဲ ေခ်ာင္ထိုးထားလိုက္လို႔မရဘူး။ နာမည္အသစ္နဲ႔ ျပန္ေပၚလာၾကတယ္။ ႏွိပ္စက္ညွင္းပမ္းမႈဟာ "အဆင့္ျမင့္စစ္ေဆးေမးျမန္းေရးနည္းစနစ္" ျဖစ္သြားတယ္၊ ကၽြန္စနစ္က "လူေမွာင္ခိုကူးျခင္း" ျဖစ္သြားတယ္။ တကယ္ေတာ့ မေကာင္းမႈကို ေလွ်ာ့ခ်ႏိုင္ျခင္းဟာ လူ႔ယဥ္ေက်းမႈအတြက္ ေရွ႕ေရာက္သြားတဲ့ ေျခလွမ္းတစ္ရပ္ျဖစ္ရမွာ။ ဒါေပမဲ့ သိပၸံပညာမွာလိုမဟုတ္ပဲ လူ႔ယဥ္ေက်းမႈရဲ႕ ေျခလွမ္းပ်က္ယြင္းမႈကို ကြန္ျပဴတာထဲမွာပဲ မွတ္သားထားလို႔မရဘူး။ အေလ့အက်င့္အျဖစ္ေနတဲ့ အျပဳအမူေတြဟာ တစ္ခါပ်က္စီးၿပီးတာနဲ႔ ျပင္ဆင္ဖို႔ခက္ခဲတယ္။ လူ႔ယဥ္ေက်းမႈဟာ လူသားေတြအတြက္ ပံုမွန္အေျခပါ၊ ဒီလိုပဲ အရိုင္းအစိုင္းေတြအတြက္လည္း လူ႔ယဥ္ေက်းမႈဟာ ပံုမွန္အေျခအေနပဲ။
  
  သိပၸံပညာနဲ႔ သမိုင္းဘာသာက ျပဆိုတာက လူသားေတြဟာ လူ႔သမိုင္းတစ္ေလွ်ာက္လံုး တစ္စိတ္တစ္ပိုင္းနဲ႔ ျပတ္ေတာင္းျပတ္ေတာင္းပဲ က်ဳိးေၾကာင္းဆီေလ်ာ္စြာ ျပဳမူႏိုင္ခဲ့တယ္။ ဒါေပမဲ့ ေခတ္သစ္လူသား၀ါဒီေတြရဲ႕ အေျဖကေတာ့ရွင္းတယ္၊ "လူသားေတြဟာ အနာဂတ္မွာ ပိုမိုက်ဳိးေၾကာင္းဆီေလ်ာ္လာလိမ့္မယ္" ဆိုတာပဲ။ ဒီလို ယုတၱိအေပၚအေကာင္းျမင္လြန္းတဲ့ တက္ၾကြသူေတြ သတိမထားမိတာက၊ အနာဂတ္ လူသားေတြဟာ ပိုမိုက်ဳိးေၾကာင္းဆီေလ်ာ္လာလိမ့္မယ္လို႔ ယူဆဖို႔ ဘာသာေရးေတြမွာလို ခုန္ပ်ံေက်ာ္လႊားတဲ့ ယံုၾကည္မႈတစ္ခု လိုအပ္တယ္ဆိုတဲ့ အခ်က္ကိုပဲ။ ေယရႈခရစ္ ျပန္လည္ရွင္ျပန္လာတယ္ဆိုတဲ့ ယံုၾကည္ခ်က္နဲ႔ လူသားေတြဟာ သူတို႔ အျမဲတမ္းျပဳမူေနခဲ့တဲ့ ပံုစံနဲ႔ကြဲၿပီး အနာဂတ္မွာ ျပဳမူၾကလိမ့္မယ္ဆိုတဲ့ ယံုၾကည္ခ်က္ဟာ ဆန္႔က်င္ဘက္ေတာ့ မဟုတ္ဘူး။
  
  *****
  
  လူသားရဲ႕ လြတ္လပ္မႈမွာ ယံုၾကည္သူနဲ႔ အေတြးအေခၚထက္ လုပ္ရပ္အေပၚမွာပဲ မူတည္ၿပီး လူကိုဆံုးျဖတ္ေလ့ရွိတဲ့ သံသယ၀ါဒီတို႔ စကားေျပာၾကတယ္။ သံသယ၀ါဒီက 'လူသားဟာ လြတ္လပ္စြာေနထုိင္ဖို႔ ေမြးဖြားလာတယ္၊ ဒါေပမဲ့ ေနရာတိုင္းမွာေတာ့ သံႀကိဳးေတြခ်ည္းပဲ' ဆိုတဲ့ ရူးဆိုးရဲ႕ ဆိုရိုးကို ကိုးကားေျပာေတာ့ ယံုၾကည္သူေတာင္ အံ့ၾသသြားမိတယ္။ ဒါေပမဲ့ သံသယ၀ါဒီက ရူးဆိုးရဲ႕ အဆိုကို ခနဲ႔ၿပီး ေျပာလိုက္တာပဲ။ "ကၽြန္ေတာ့္အျမင္ေတာ့ ဒါဟာ သမိုင္းကို ေစာ္ကားၿပီး အခ်က္အလက္ေတြကို မထီမဲ့ျမင္ျပဳတာပဲ။ သည္းခံေပးလို႔ မရႏိုင္ေလာက္တဲ့ စကားပဲ။ ခုတစ္မ်ဳိး ေတာ္ၾကာတစ္မ်ဳိးအေျပာပဲ။ ၿပီးေတာ့၊ အစဦးအဆိုကို အခ်က္အလက္အမွန္လို႔ ႀကိဳတင္ယူဆလိုက္တာကေတာ့ အႏၱရာယ္ေတာ္ေတာ္ႀကီးတယ္။ အဲဒါက ျပႆနာရဲ႕ ဇစ္ျမစ္ပဲ။ ထားပါေတာ့၊ လူတစ္ေယာက္က ဟန္ပါပါ ေခါင္းတၿငိမ့္ၿငိမ့္လုပ္ၿပီး ...ငါးေတြဟာ ပ်ံသန္းဖို႔ ေမြးဖြားလာတယ္..ဒါေပမဲ့ ေနရာတိုင္းမွာ ကူးခတ္စရာေရေတြပဲ ေတြ႕ရတယ္... လို႔ ေျပာပါၿပီတဲ့၊ ခင္ဗ်ား ဘာေျပာမလဲ"
  
  *****
  
  သက္ရွိတစ္ေကာင္တေလ ရွိေနေၾကာင္း ဘယ္သူမွ သတိမျပဳမိေစပဲ လုပ္ေဆာင္ခဲ့တယ္။ ဒီပိုးမႊားေတြက မ်က္မျမင္ေတြ၊ ဒါေပမဲ့ သူတို႔ကို ဘယ္သူမွမျမင္ေစပဲ သူတို႔ လုပ္စရာရွိတဲ့ တာ၀န္ကို ထမ္းရြက္ရာမွာ ဆရာတစ္ဆူေတြ။ တိတ္ဆိတ္မႈကို အကာကြယ္ယူၿပီး သူတို႔အလုပ္ကို ၿပီးေျမာက္ေစတယ္။ ညအခ်ိန္မွာ သန္းေပါင္းမ်ားစြာေသာ ေမးရိုးေတြရဲ႕ တေျမ့ေျမ့ က်ိတ္ေခ်ေနသံကို ထက္ျမက္လြန္းတဲ့ နားရွိမွပဲ ၾကားႏိုင္လိမ့္မယ္။ အေဆာက္အဦတစ္ခုရဲ႕ အရိုးျငမ္းကို အရသာခံ သံုးေဆာင္ၿပီး ၿပိဳလဲမႈအတြက္ အသင့္ျပင္ေပးလိုက္တယ္။ ေလးငါးရက္အၾကာ လယ္ခင္းမွာေနၿပီး၊ စိုက္ပ်ဳိးေရးသမားက အိမ္ျပန္လာတယ္။ သူ ထားခဲ့တုန္းက ပံုစံအတိုင္းပဲ ဘယ္အရာမွ သိသိသာသာမေျပာင္းလဲ။ ကုလားထုိင္တစ္လံုးမွာ သူ ၀င္ထိုင္လိုက္ေတာ့ ထိုင္ခံုက်ဳိးသြားတယ္။ ဟန္ခ်က္မပ်က္ေအာင္ ကမန္းကတန္း စားပြဲခံုကို လွမ္းအဆြဲ သူ႔လက္ထဲမွာတင္ အစိတ္စိတ္အမႊာမႊာကြဲတယ္။ အိမ္တိုင္ကို မွီလိုက္တဲ့အခ်ိန္မွာပဲ အလြယ္တကူ ထက္ပိုင္းက်ဳိးၿပီး ေခါင္မိုးလည္း ၿပိဳက် ဖုန္တေထာင္းေထာင္းထ က်န္ရစ္တယ္။
  #ျခ
  
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  ရာသီမ်ားသည္ တစ္ခ်ိန္က ရွိခဲ့သည့္ရာသီမ်ား မဟုတ္ေတာ့
  သို႔ေသာ္ တစ္ႀကိမ္တစ္ခါသာ ျမင္ေတြ႕ခြင့္ရျခင္းက အရာရာတိုင္း၏ သဘာ၀မွ်
  လက္ရွိျဖစ္ပ်က္ေနဆဲ ခဏ...
  
  ~ဂၽြန္အက္ရွ္ဘယ္ရီ
• 
  Pieter-Jan Beyul

  Een bijna meditatief boek.
  
  De structuur en het verloop van het boek voelt aan als een bloemlezing van verschillende literaire werken die elk op hun manier het contemplatieve in de mens beschouwen dat onze moderne wereld laakt met zijn zucht naar oplossing/verlossing.
  Waar zowel de linker- als rechterzijde van het spectrum vandaag aandringen tot elk hun versie van de feiten en al dan niet hun recept tot welslagen, keert John Gray zijn blik naar een tijdloos element dat onze hele gecreëerde drukte in perspectief plaatst.
  Freuds psychoanalyse wordt door Gray geherwaardeerd om diens mythologiserende karakter en diens inschatting van de betrekkelijkheid van de rede. Diezelfde rede die vanaf Socrates de afkondiging is van millennia van hybris.
  In zijn hele oeuvre maant Gray de moderne mens tot zelfrelativering en ook hier maakt hij een uiterst helder geformuleerd betoog dat ons bij het lezen alleen al tot stilte brengt.
  Martin Heidegger, die de mens op neo-christelijke wijze bovenaan de voedselpiramide trachtte te plaatsen, krijgt bij Gray af te rekenen met de ongelofelijk vervoerende episodes van J.A. Baker die door de ogen van een valk een sjamanistische eenwording herontdekt die hem alleen kon worden aangeleerd door in de leer te gaan bij het niet-menselijke, bij het allesomarmende dierlijke. Evenmin laat Gray zich leiden tot een idealisering van de natuur als een oord van harmonie waarop wij ons gewoonweg moeten afstemmen om tot een vermeende innerlijke vrede te komen. Zo'n vrede kan niet gevonden worden en hoeft ook niet gevonden te worden. De moorden die schuilgaan achter de zang van vogels worden niet vergeten. Gray laat ons lessen trekken uit een realiteit voorbij onze weidse aan interpretaties ervan, om 'full circle' terug tot onszelf te komen en van daaruit, verrijkt, de levensdraad herop te pikken.
  
  Dit boek is een zeldzaamheid in de hedendaagse filosofie, die altijd naarstig het (heilige) woord de voorkeur geeft en zelden de mystieke stilte voorbij het talige overweegt. Dit domein hoeft niet alleen toe te behoren aan de zogenaamde 'New Age'ers', die zelf een karikatuur hebben gemaakt van tradities die hen voorafgaan.
  Het humanisme tout court wordt hier doorprikt. De dwaling waarbij het symbolische wordt verward met de realiteit. De misvatting dat de mens door kennisverruiming elke kwaal kan voorkomen en tragedie kan verbannen.
  Ikzelf las niet alleen een oproep tot mystiek zonder god ( want welke mystiek is nog finaal als deze wordt bereikt met god? ), maar ook een oproep tot een opnieuw verkennen van de proto-filosofie van het heidendom, dat nog niet geplaagd werd door het primaat van de rede en van een diepere wijsheid kon en nog steeds kan getuigen dan de doodlopende straten van het humanistische denken.
• 
  Fred Nolan

  The title of Sam Harris’s 2010 TED talk, ‘Science Can Answer Moral Questions,’ soundly fails the Jeopardy test. ‘Could Science Answer…?’ seems better-suited to our Age of Nuance. Or even: ‘Hasn’t Science Already Answered…?’ But Harris, we soon learn, used exactly the words and punctuation he meant.
  
  ‘The separation between science and human values is an illusion,’ Harris states. ‘If questions affect human well-being then they do have answers.’ One example is simple by design: that of the suffering of rocks. A child has no reservations kicking, throwing, displacing or painting rocks because rocks demonstrate no tendency to suffer.
  
  Furthermore, the mere act of accepting that every question can be answered ‘will change the way we talk about morality, and will change our expectations of human cooperation in the future.’ Despite the presentation’s rather ascientific view—and not a word on the scientific method, or the research community’s robust competitiveness—this TED talk is a good day for humanism. Of the many things that humanism rejects, the unified forward march of science, knowledge, technology, reason and morality is not one of them.
  
  John Gray’s conclusion is the opposite. And the title of his 2013 book, The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths does not pose a question, either. Technological advances and our growing body of knowledge are above dispute, but, in Gray’s view, ethics are not coming along for the ride. Look only to the eternal social ills—murder, slavery, rape, subjection of others, willful ignorance and hate crimes of every stripe—for proof of that.
  
  While science advances technology, and while technology advances communications, the message of the good life isn’t getting through.
  
  Nor is religion to blame. Indeed, religion is our source of the idea of progress. That is a counterintutive remark for an atheist, to be sure, but Gray expresses it in full voice.
  
  His case begins with passages from Joseph Conrad, Wallace Stevens and Norman Lewis, with a minimum of connective tissue between one and the next. The book maintains this format through to the last page; here Gray is both philosopher and curator. Some readers will think of the structure as a creature with lovely bones but weird ligaments. Others will welcome its undogmatic prose. (The conclusions of the prose are dogmatic all the same.)
  
  The first of three parts, ‘An Old Chaos,’ ridicules the idea of human progress. ‘Faith in progress,’ is alluring, he claims, because it ‘prevents too much self-knowledge.’ To begin with, ‘For those who live inside a myth, it seems a self-evident fact.’ But furthermore, faith and religion are in a steady decline and, ‘In the story that the modern world repeats to itself, the belief in progress is at odds with religion.’ In other words, the idea of progress is fashionable, and it feels contrary to what is falling out of fashion, moreover it dulls the teeth on whatever thorny questions remain. But modern religions, particularly Christianity and Islam, are what raised our expectations in the first place, above the cruel, never-ending cycles of planting and harvest, drought and rain, freeze and thaw, which drove earlier cosmologies. Today’s spiritual texts are one-way stories of fall and redemption.
  
  If Gray attacked humanism’s beliefs in the first part, he calls out the movement by name in the second. ‘Beyond the Last Thought’ leans heavily on a 19-century Austrian thinker, one whose name is synonymous with psychoanalysis. Sigmund Freud is a more fascinating character than I expected; he rejected the humanists’s view of a species which, at its core, is good, and only corrupts itself along the way. Gray’s Freud insists that ‘human sickness has no cure,’ that each of us lead ‘a meandering road to death. But, until we reach our destination, we are at war.’ It is an awful thing to believe of ourselves. Yet we find purpose where we can, illusion and spirituality included: ‘If science serves the demand for knowledge, religion serves the demand for meaning.’ It is here where Gray’s ethics most convincingly merge with those of the source, and the inattentive reader could momentarily lose track of who is speaking, Gray or Freud.
  
  The last section, ‘Another Sunlight’ is the least convincing. That is unfortunate, given its shattering 146-page prologue, and that the titular sub-chapter ‘The Silence of Animals’ rings with promise. The silence of the title refers to the literal absence of language in nature. A monk, for example, can, through the power of inner monologue, demand of himself deliberate quiet. It is said, although Gray disagrees, that such a silence is ‘transparent and bright because it confronts the world’ (here Gray offers Catholic philosopher Max Picard as highly flammable straw). In contrast to that, Picard writes, ‘Animals have a heavy silence.’ Maybe name the second edition The Myth of Progress.
  
  The theses of each preceding section could have been distilled to bumper stickers from their first pages, while the third is more patient in making its point. ‘The idea that human evil is a type of error, which will fade away as knowledge advance,’ is an illusion, yet to rouse us from our illusions is cruel and vain, no different from waking a sleepwalker. ‘The needy animal that invented the other world does not go away, and the result of trying to leave the creature behind is to live instead with its ghost.’
  
  In the end, Gray’s argument is claustrophobic. Reason and morality are decoupled from knowledge and technology. Modern progress is an illusion—brought to us by modern religion, which is also an illusion—but those are as enduring as the seasons. And on the matter of seasons, the cycles of winter, spring, summer, fall are no more inevitable than those of cruelty, greed and willful ignorance. What, then, is the point? That is to say, why should we live at all, and why spend our warlike lives on harrowing ideas such as these? Gray’s answer: ‘Mere being. There is no redemption from being human. But no redemption is needed.’
  
  Readers may find that to be a dangerous conclusion. I am sure Gray has been confronted with such sentiment, and no doubt he replied approximately this way: humankind was fallen—in the secular meaning, of course—long before The Silence of Animals came around.
  
  As philosophical books are concerned, it is a seamless read: quite an achievement, considering so much dialogue between imported and original material. For many, pages will turn quickly because of the blockquotes, not in spite of (the lovely work of immortal writers is not difficult to anthologize). I’m among those readers: it was a treat finding Borges, Nietzsche and Freud joining up for a 200-page theory.
  
  But two things nag the reader along the way. First, did Gray fall into the same trap as Harris? One has unscientific praise for science and the other, irreligious praise for religion. Second, it is difficult to separate our interest in Gray’s dismal subject from our anticipation of whom he will next bring into the room.
• 
  Luis Servet

  I must say that I do not hold much knowledge in philosophy theory thus my opinions are entirely subjected to my lack of understanding deeper concepts. Having said this…
  
  Never a book had changed so thoroughly my way of looking at life, my own and human life in general. Gray's ability to not only assemble fascinating wisdom from past intellectuals and novelists, but also to explain it in a way that is understandable to the general public without betraying the purity of said wisdom has mesmerised me. From Conrad to Seneca, from Herzen to Hulme. Through these pages I have rediscovered the world as if I was bestowed a glimpse inside the mind of such incomprehensible thinkers and writers. And most of all, Freud. Oh, how has this book catapulted my interest towards Freud's writings! Never before I had found myself researching an author in such depth without having to be forced to so by some unpalatable essay for class.
  
  Mainly, what I believe I take from this experience is the understanding that running away from pain and suffering is as useful as running in a dream. Your legs move fast and you get tired but no progress is achieved. Rather, the opposite happens, as anxiety clouds your mind and your throat feels smaller and dryer. Accepting, not loving, suffering as an unavoidable part of our fate is the first step towards being able to ‘contemplate’ life. This lesson was underlying throughout the book but I was not able to put it into words inside my own mind until I came across the explanation of J. A. Baker's The Peregrine. The fantastic analogies hidden in this text flicked a switch inside my head that shall never be switched off again.
  
  I am very thankful to have had access to such wonderful wisdom, and I am also thankful that this wisdom was made understandable via analogies, poems and metaphors that made this one of the most beautiful philosophical readings of my life.