The Silence of Animals – John Gray: A Review

Date Finished: March 27th 2019

Ending a month of narrative nonfiction reads (I’m doing an anal thing where I read a different category/genre each month), we come to the work of John Gray, who I’ve read before. Straw Dogs was, as I recall, an interesting work but that’s about as much as I recall. In it, Gray set out a vision of humanity’s banality: the idea that we aren’t as special as we tell ourselves. Though eminently quotable, the work was marred by its lack of central argument, framework and tendency to fire-on-all-cylinders.

The Silence of Animals, billed as a sequel to Straw Dogs is more focused, with Gray taking the time to frame and cohere his thoughts into something constituting an argument. He begins with the “old chaos”, in which he recounts the various ways in which humans in recent history have attempted to find freedom, only to lock themselves into new tyrannies, as well as the myths we have told ourselves about human exceptionalism. In the second part, he tackles these myths head-on, deconstructing these fictions in an effort to reveal the underlying void of meaning which we need not fear. In the final part, Gray gets into the ways we can transcend our parochial perspective and engage with that which is real on a deeper, more profound level by looking to those who have tried to look outside of themselves for meaning.

“‘Humanity’ is a fiction composed from billions of individuals for each of whom life is singular and final. But the myth of progress is extremely potent. When it loses it power those who have lived by it are – as Conrad put… ‘like those lifelong prisoners who, liberated after many years, do not know what use to make of their freedoms’. When faith in the future is taken from them, so is the image they have of themselves. If they then opt for death, it is because without that faith they can no longer make sense of living.”

Gray rails against the idea that humans are any better than any other animal, arguing that humanism and atheism extol a dogmatic faith in the idea of a human progress that is historically incoherent. Though living conditions, technology and society do develop, the same patterns of ignorance, self-deception and hatred continue unabated, albeit in new forms. We are now, uncontroversially, reliving the patterns of history that occurred just under a century ago – myths of nationalism, the scapegoating of minority groups, turning away from globalisation, the rise of populist demagogues. We’ve been here before.

“Philosophers will say that humans can never be silent because the mind is made of words. For these half-witted logicians, silence is no more than a word. To overcome language by means of language is obviously impossible. Turning within, you will find only words and images that are parts of yourself. But if you turn outside yourself – to the birds and animals and the quickly changing places where they live – you may hear something beyond words. Even humans can find silence, if they can bring themselves to forget the silence they are looking for.”

So what’s the alternative? Exploring the ideas of Freud in relation to the stoics, Gray argues that a resignation to chaos is necessary: “Resignation did not mean shrinking the self to the point where it could live without being thwarted by fate. It meant fortifying the self so that human beings could assert themselves against fate.” He goes on to explore the fictions we tell ourselves about our lives – our personal myths, and how we can have these fictions, acknowledge their fictional nature, and still resign ourselves to chaos.

“As Malaparte saw it, Naples was a pagan city with an ancient sense of time. Christianity taught those who were converted to it to think of history as the unfolding of a single plot – a moral drama of sin and redemption. In the ancient world there was no such plot – only a multitude of stories that were forever being repeated. Inhabiting that ancient world, the Neapolitans did not expect any fundamental alterations in human affairs. Not having accepted the Christian story of redemption, they had not been seduced by the myth of progress. Never having believed civilization to be permanent, they were not surprised when it foundered.”

Gray’s thoughts are very much in-line with my own, so he is mostly preaching to the choir. Obviously, I could never outline such a thorough and well-argued version of his argument, so it’s nonetheless fascinating to read. As I noted in my review of Straw Dogs, accepting the idea that humans have no free will does not mean we have to live according to this. Similarly, accepting that the world is chaotic doesn’t mean we need live defined by this chaos. An approach similar to that of meditation can be invoked: observe the chaos and accept it without judgment, then forge ahead as before.

“People who love other creatures are often accused of anthropomorhpizing them. This was not true of Baker. Rather than anthropomorphizing other species, Baker tried the experiment of deanthropomorphizing himself. Seeing the world as he imagined hawks might see it, he was able at times to be something other than he had been. He too raced to oblivion, losing himself as he followed the peregrine.”

The work does lose steam in its third part, but perhaps because nothing Gray is saying is especially radical as these concepts are recognisable in modes of thought like mindfulness. He nevertheless provides a number of intriguing examples of people who dedicated themselves to pursuits that allowed them to transcend themselves, with his chapter on J. A. Baker, author of The Peregrine, proving one of my favourites (“Beauty is vapour from the pit of death”).

“The old order had blown up, and there was nothing to replace it. Not only were the interests and objectives of social and ethnic groups in conflict. Ideals and values were irreconcilably opposed. In these circumstances gradual improvement was just another utopian dream. Progress in civilization seems possible only in interludes when history is idling.”

More coherent and better told than its predecessor, The Silence of Animals refines and adds to the arguments posited in Straw Dogs successfully. Gray’s easy, aphoristic style is eminently quotable (as you can see!) and his pithy insights beg to be communicated further. He synthesises the analyses of many great thinkers in an explorative manner – never preaching absolute truths, never claiming to hold the keys, but providing enough food-for-thought to give anyone pause. It’s an engaging work on a discomfiting topic, but one that is valuable for exactly that reason. “Embrace the chaos, know who you are”, as my favourite musician would say.

8/10