Straw Dogs and Christian Myths
The following notes were written after reading John Gray's Straw Dogs [1].
On Hope
Hope is the illness of man that gives him his disease. It is the belief in progress, in betterment. It accepts self-determination as life’s bedfellow. Hope makes us believe that we can achieve something memorable to someone, something of value for someone before we die and presumably never have the opportunity again.
There is no denying partial determinism in us animals. Built up like a mega-tron, of robots upon robots, we are programmed to let the memes persist. Some of this programming is deeply-embedded and nearly impossible to release: the demand from our genes to reproduce. Some is looser and emphemeral: the demand from religious thoughts to be shared.
What is the antidote to this illness called hope? It could be fear – but if we live persistently in fear we can still hope to survive. What about donning a mask? To don a mask and pretend that we can choose, that we can will, control, decide and be certain.
Writing? Commitment? What about self-expression? And creativity? The creative act is hopeful is it not? Born out of the tension between security and novelty.
On Humans as Other Animals
The dominant Western view is different [from Nietzsche’s view that the Socratic virtues are animal: ‘a consequence of that drive which teaches us to seek food and elude enemies’].
[The Western view] teaches that humans are unlike other animals, which simply respond to the situations in which they find themselves. We can scrutinise our motives and impulses: we can know why we act as we do. By becoming more self-aware we can approach a point at which our actions are the results of our choices. When we are fully conscious, everything we do will be done for reasons we can know. At that point, we will be authors of our lives.
John Gray on the Western view.
But what would Dostoyevsky say to the above? He would say that man becomes like a piano to be played. Man would never allow himself to reach this state. The unknown or unconscious would stay unknown.
Humans are no more special or better than other animals. We are as inventive, self-determining as any other animal and any other animal suffers as much as we do. What were Schopenhauer and Tolstoy’s views on animal welfare?
On Christian Myths of Progress and Salvation Through Work
The myths we hold from the Christian tradition. The myth that we are progressing in this life (humanism) or the next (Christian). Progress is a myth. There are other religions and philosophies that better reflect our experiences such as Taoism and Buddhism.
As Wyndham Lewis said, progress is time-worship. We do not value things for what they are now but what they may someday become. To value the things as they are now is to see them and recognise them as they are in the moment.
Other animals do not need a purpose in life. A contradiction to itself, the human cannot do without one. Can we not think of the aim of life as being simply to see? ...
... The idea that the aim of life is not action but contemplation has almost disappeared.
John Gray on the aim of life.
See! Look! Watch! Pay attention!
Perhaps it is better to act without purpose and instead play for playing’s sake. Gray says:
In thinking so highly of work we are aberrant. Few other cultures have ever done so. For nearly all of history and prehistory, work was an indignity.
Among Christians, only Protestants have ever believed that work smacks of salvation; the work and prayer of medieval Christendom were interspersed with festivals. The ancient Greeks sought salvation in philosophy, the Indians in meditation, the Chinese in poetry and love of nature.
John Gray on sources of salvation.
Alastair Clarke
c. 2016
References
[1] Gray, J., 2003, Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humand and Other Animals, Granta.