straw dogs, the book.

transperson

wondering if anyone has read "Straw Dogs" by john gray.

i just read it a while back, i found that its tirade against the established intellectual and philosophical traditions of the world particularily the west,struck a cord. am curious what people on the philosophy board thought of it!

DadaKopf

I doubt many of us had read it, but if you could summarise his argument, I sure we'd all have something to day .

transperson

yea sure, that would be a good idea!

Gray is a professor of Modern European Thought in the london school of economics and former Thatherite free-marketeer now turned sceptic and critic of all that is held as unchallengable and all that is not!

basically he veiws people as animals.
hence we have as much chance of freedom and progress as animals
progress is an illusion,humans aplugue on the earth[from Gaia theory-Lovelock] humanism is the placing of homo sapiens above nature. this is a hang over of the christian and greek traditions, they are false, humans are not above anything they are part of the world not above it, consiousness is has been exagerated. utopia, equality, peace is impossible.morality is but superstition people demonstrate this and their animal nature,again and again with their actions. god is a grand collective illusion, atheism is no more free of misconceptions, liberalism places ungrounded faith in the human, conservatism too is trapped in the falsity of existing paradigms. philosophers by basing their system of knowledge on the veiws of a handfull of 2500 year old greek monkeys have been on a strange path. some ,Schopeanhaur in particular have managed to escape this but most have not realised what is going on. the legacy of the greeks and the church colours everything we see and think. science has inherited these misconceptions and sustaines the belief in human mastery, in a new form.we have fallen victim to our own illusions.there is never escape and why should there be we are animals on our world why have these beliefs and ideas, just live and see.

its a kind of stoic taoism from an angry sceptical sceptic

if anyone has opinions that disagree, i will try and argue for Gray's position,

academics and "educated" normally disregard this type of thing and this they did, but im not so sure that they can!

DadaKopf

I never covered Schopenhauer. Is Gray's point that Shopey realised that the world is nothing like we like to imagine it or are capable of imagining it?

transperson

ive not done old Shopey either but i think Grays point was that as animals or as rational humans we cannot ever even hope to grasp the ultimate reality of what the world is, so the noumenal world is out side our grasp and the phemonenal world is just a play of sences, the Buddhist idea of reality as flux, flow, impermance that can never really be known either.
it is this eastern twist that Schopeanhaur incorporated into his veiw and this that Gray sees as truth, also Schopeanhaur's view of life one big struggle and misery broken by moments of happiness hangs well with Grays view .
so yea gray thinks that there is no way we can even get close to how the world actually is,

but gray kinda says that it really doesnt matter, we just have to get on with what ever it is we get on with.

on thing i thought was good was the whole way he attacked humans in general for the whole environmental disaster that is supposedly happening, ah you know, species extinction rates that are said to rank with the dinosaur extinction, temperature rises that rival any in history, a species that has taken over the whole planet and is "devouring" it for resources in the name of "progress".
[personally i do think it is the biggest problem facing the planet and us, not that i can do any thing or really care, cuz i am just a selfish monkey, one of 6billion:) ] .
the fact that people are ignoring the whole thing and continue to drink oil ,burn stuff etcetcetc ties in well with Gray's view of man as a blind proud self interested and absorbed animal.


i dont know why there is a big grin in the title over my post!