Straw Dogs: Thoughts On Humans And Other Animals

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His 2002 book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals has received particular praise. J. G. Ballard wrote that the book "challenges most of our assumptions about what it means to be human, and convincingly shows that most of them are delusions" and described it "a powerful and brilliant book", "an essential guide to the new millennium" and "the most exhilarating book I have read since Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene." [24] Will Self called the book "a contemporary work of philosophy devoid of jargon, wholly accessible, and profoundly relevant to the rapidly evolving world we live in" and wrote "I read it once, I read it twice and took notes. I arranged to meet its author so I could publicise the book – I thought it that good." [15] [24] BBC Radio 4 – A Point of View, Greece and the Meaning of Folly". Bbc.co.uk. 21 August 2011 . Retrieved 9 August 2013. BBC Radio 4 – A Point of View, John Gray: The revolution of capitalism". Bbc.co.uk. 4 September 2011 . Retrieved 9 August 2013. A Point of View - Proportional Representation and a New Politics - BBC Sounds". www.bbc.co.uk . Retrieved 8 May 2023. Gray, John; Pelczynski, Zbigniew, eds. (1984). Conceptions of Liberty. London: Athlone Press. ISBN 978-0-485-11236-8.

Gray, John (2016). Gray's Anatomy: Selected Writings (Rev.ed.). London: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-198111-6. Human beings may not develop but human institutions do. Sometimes they develop in good ways and sometimes they develop in bad ones, and whether the development is good or bad it is never irreversible. Of course such freedoms and rights and securities as we have won could all be swept away if another Hitler came to power. That is what makes the fight for justice not just worthwhile but necessary. Gray wants us to believe that this fight is no different from the one waged by Christians and communists alike. He is wrong. To seek to make things better is not the same as thinking that they can be made perfect. The problem we face – that humanity faces – is not faith in the future but indifference to it. Resource wars are already in progress and population growth is out of control. A catastrophic change in our climate, growing inequality, the prospect of a nuclearised Middle East: these problems are not on the horizon – they are upon us. In The Silence of Animals, Gray talks about the ‘current fad for evolutionary theories of society’. I don’t know what theories he means. But there is one thing I do know, or think I do: without a little ‘evolution’ or ‘progress’ in the political sphere our flawed and wonderful species is doomed. References It’s sometimes supposed that I want to convert those whose lives are informed by a myth of progress to some other world-view – my own, for example. Nothing could be further from the truth. My writings are aimed at a particular kind of reader – one who isn’t completely satisfied with the prevailing view of things. If these readers see things differently after reading me, that’s great – but I’d be disappointed if they saw things in only one way.Asteroid 91199 Johngray, discovered by astronomer Eric Walter Elst at ESO's La Silla Observatory in 1998, was named in his honor. [38] The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 18 June 2008 ( M.P.C. 63174). [39] Gray is a member of World Minds. This is a book I both love and hate. It will probably be the most impactful and memorable book of this year. Yet, I’m not sure anyone is better off by reading it. Unless what you look for is sleepless nights and existential angst. We might be doomed on a collective basis in the end, by I still like to believe that on an individual basis it still makes sense to strive for the good. Cats live for the sensation of life, not for something they might achieve or not achieve,” he says. “If we attach ourselves too heavily to some overarching purpose we’re losing the joy of life. Leave all those ideologies and religions to one side and what’s left? What’s left is a sensation of life – which is a wonderful thing.”

It is a most un-British experiment, owing more in influence and ambition to the great continental tradition of the philosophical aphorism and gnomic utterance, as perfected by Pascal, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus and the French-Romanian nihilist EM Cioran, than it does to the arid language games of the Anglo-American tradition.

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Modern humanism is the faith that through science humankind can know the truth and so be free. But if Darwin’s theory of natural selection is true this is impossible. The human mind serves evolutionary success, not truth.” – John Gray, Straw dogs In 2002 Straw Dogs was named a book of the year by J. G. Ballard in The Daily Telegraph; by George Walden in The Sunday Telegraph; by Will Self, Joan Bakewell, Jason Cowley and David Marquand in the New Statesman; by Andrew Marr in The Observer; by Jim Crace in The Times; by Hugh Lawson Tancred in The Spectator; by Richard Holloway in the Glasgow Herald; and by Sue Cook in The Sunday Express. [ citation needed] He formerly held posts as lecturer in political theory at the University of Essex, fellow and tutor in politics at Jesus College, Oxford, and lecturer and then professor of politics at the University of Oxford. He has served as a visiting professor at Harvard University (1985–86) and Stranahan Fellow at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center, Bowling Green State University (1990–1994), and has also held visiting professorships at Tulane University's Murphy Institute (1991) and Yale University (1994). He was Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics and Political Science until his retirement from academic life in early 2008. Gray argues we are not masters of our fate. We are just like other animals, and we are driven by Darwinistic forces that only care about the reproduction of our genes. On top of that he adds that faith in progress and humanity is just a secular version of the Christian Faith. That salvation is possible for each and all.