The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths Hardcover – June 4, 2013

That's a quote from Llewellyn Powys, younger brother of better known writer John Cowper Powys (Porius, which is on my 2014 reading list). Llewellyn is just one of the many writers and thinkers, most of them obscure (oh, to spend some time in John Gray's library), profiled and sampled and pressed into something new and original and wonderful: The Silence of Animals, on Progress and other Modern Myths.

I love this book. To be fair, I'm a huge John Gray fan, so I pretty much knew I was going to love it from the outset. I was right. By using the lives and words of others to build his arguments and illuminate his world view, Gray creates a haunting, moving dreamscape of thought, a ghostly fortress of logic, that carries readers along to his inescapable conclusions: progress is a myth, humans are animals (and unexceptional animals at that) and we do ourselves a disservice by hiding behind religion and other myths which prevent us from just being ... and therefore being happy.

It's not for everyone. If you enjoy having your belief systems shaken like a martini, or relish in seeing atheism called into question for falling short of the mark, or wonder if faith in science and progress is really just the recycled and misguided faith of the religious, this short, epic, sad, funny, tragic, exasperating, ultimately uplifting book is for you.

Some of my favorite lines:

"According to some historians, inequality in America at the start of the twenty-first century is greater than in the slave-based economy of imperial Rome in the second century. Of course there are differences. Contemporary America is probably less stable than imperial Rome."

"Denying reality in order to preserve a view of the world is not a practice confined to cults. Cognitive dissonance is the normal human condition."

"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."

"A type of atheism that refused to revere humanity would be a genuine advance."

"If you admit your need for silence, you accept that much of your life has been an exercise in distraction."

"Every sentient being is a world-maker."

Don't be fooled by the slender nature of the book, it's packed with enough insights and a-ha moments to remake a dozen worlds, but certainly (hopefully) not in our own image. After all, "there is no redemption from being human. But no redemption is needed."

Gray urges us to look past our mistaken belief in exceptionalism, and past our mistaken certainty that things will get better in some mythical afterlife or in some mythical, distant and never-realized point in the future when science and society finally amend away the bad habits that prevent a utopian existence. The secret, he thinks -- and I agree -- is that those bad habits, and the good ones, ARE us. Always looking to the future prevents us from living fully here and now. Better to understand who we are than to dream impotently about who we could or should be.

A side note: for someone who so ably and vigorously denies the existence of meaning outside of our own existence, his use of and reliance on literature stretching back to early Greek philosophers creates a sort of enveloping sense of meaning that exists outside of and above our own miserable, glorious meaningless lives -- art.

There are very few interesting books written by philosophers these days, and this one of them. To say the least, it is not written like most philosophy books. It is something like a stream of consciousness narrative, but the author is very clear in citing various sources to make his points, and he takes us on an atypical tour of history and intellectual history. Let's say he relates the thoughts of many disparate authors to promote his views, and he is mostly convincing. One example of this is relating the Buddhist idea of nirvana to Freud's idea of the death instinct.
It took me two weeks after reading John Gray's book to understand why he titled it the way he did, but more of that later. He has two main theses. First, the idea that humanity is progressing to a better world is a myth. The myth of progress started in the nineteenth century and has picked up steam since then. It originally had to do with advances in science and technology, and that is probably what still propels it to this day. But while, as my father once said, even middle class people today live better than kings lived in the past, we still have the stubborn problem of human nature. And while we read articles about how things are really better in the world right now than they have been in many years, the events of the twentieth century by themselves should make us cautious in our optimism about the future. As Gray points out, it does not appear that human nature has changed over the course of the millennia. Humans are capable of doing good and evil, and it seems that the balance of these things in the world tips back and forth. Mark Twain, in his now little read "The Mysterious Stranger," has that stranger teach his erstwhile students that the history of humanity is a history of war. And if one studies recorded history which goes back 5000 years, the only times wars were not fought in particular areas was when the closest peoples were isolated from one another by forbidding land; in other words, it didn't pay. We know who the bad actors are in the world today, both individuals and governments, and there is no reason to think that such actors will disappear in the future.
As a part of discussing his claim that humans can have no ultimate understanding of life or the world, Gray's second main idea has to do with seeing the world as other animals do. Humans are the only beings on the planet who have language (regardless of what some scientists who have been working with a particular chimpanzee for 10 years want us to believe). Language may be a wonderful thing, but it is very difficult for humans to get away from it. When we are not talking with others we tend to carry on what are usually called inner dialogues, but are really inner monologs. He tells us about several people who have tried to see the world the way other animals do, that is , without the monolog, and he recommends that we try to follow their example.
As far as Gray is concerned, there is no special spiritual insight here. There is no seeing yourself as part of a greater whole, an all-encompassing unity. As he writes on page 206, "Contemplation can be understood as an activity that aims not to change the world, or understand it, but simply to let it be." Thus the title of his book. He is not saying we should live like the other animals; rather we should from time to time look at the world as they do, without language getting in the way. It's a good thing to do in itself.
As someone who practices Buddhist techniques of meditation and promotes all esoteric spiritual paths, I do not think people who seek nirvana are, in effect, seeking death. Rather they are seeking to go beyond their egos or psychophysical individualities for a little while. I believe we are part of something bigger than our little selves, and we can become aware of that something. While Gray does not share this view, nothing in his book counts against it. And if reading his book can persuade people like him to try looking at the world wordlessly for a little while, so much the better.