Blowing my ****ing mind by presenting perspectives on life and living that jibe with my deepest suspicions and perceptions and give up the ghost of Alan Watts' biggest problem: the centrality of man. Is man central? No. Central to US, as a living being. But so little of who we think we are is consciousness. So much of what we are is reaction, subconscious comings and goings, especially creativity. If Gray had really taken the leap and tried to turn this into an organized treatise instead of a rambling but thematically connected series of thoughts and observations, it would be a canonical text for me.

POSTSCRIPT: This book was a sudden, highly charged affair that leaves one feeling a bit empty. Gray's final statement is Wattsian: Can't we simply see? As if observation is an end. In all his railing against morality, against church and technology, against consciousness ... he leaves us with nothing concrete or even astonishing. Better leave the talk of nothingness to the Taoists, whom you quote well and often, my friend.

I remember reading about Tao--room temperate water and living without worrying about what to do, simply trying to enter life and live in life as a part of a stream, following the way you should go. It's a good idea, I think. More delving into Tao for me, yes? ( )

I've rated it highly for its value in starting a debate, not because I agree, or because it is a particularly great read.
In some ways there is no overarching theme to this book - reflected in the fact that it is broken into discrete subchapters, none longer than 3-4 pages, and several coming in at half a page or less. As a stimulus for a series of discussions in a philosophy classroom it would be brilliant. As a book to read...well, it depends.
Not that this lack of structure would worry the author, as the book is about challenging some of our more deeply held convictions - progress, modernity and human exceptionalism in particular.
Parts of it I found more convincing than others - I am not a biological determinist at all, and parts of the book leant that way. For me it was on much stronger ground in the musings on the challenges society faces and the way it will (and won't) tackle them.
Also worth noting is, unlike much philosophy, his writing is extremely accessible in terms of the language used.
It will make you think, but it will enrage progressives; indeed, it will make some people realise they are progressives. Nonetheless you should read it, because it will certainly make you think about why you agree or disagree. It demands self-reflection. I have no doubt I will read it again shortly. ( )

This smallish book is one of the most depressing and pessimistic 200 pages I have read in a long time. John Gray has been getting darker and darker in his vision of the world and Straw Dogs finally brings him round to bleak nihilism.

The book has many virtues. It is written in an admirably simple and clear way, with thoughts broken down and laid out in Pascalian pensées, some of them only a sentence or two long. The content is never less than thought-provoking. In six broad chapters, he outlines his theory that humans are mere animals, that faith in science is no more rational than faith in religion, free will is a myth, progress an illusion, and morality "a sickness peculiar to humans". His vision of the future is one of wars which are "certain to be hugely destructive" and in which humans will probably die by the billion, ultimately to be replaced by machines. Not only is this inevitable, it is not even particularly undesirable: humans are "not obviously worth preserving".

It takes a kind of herioc cynicism to be quite so relentlessly negative, and that alone tells you that Gray must be overlooking quite a lot. But at any rate the book, though rather fascinating, is a mass of inconsistencies. On the one hand he spends a lot of time trying to demonstrate that humans should become less obssessed with action and more content with simply being. But on the other hand he insists that humans cannot change and any attempt to alter human nature is doomed to failure. Similarly, he bangs on about how pointless the concept of truth is – "the worship of truth is a Christian cult" – yet what is this book if not an attempt to put forward his own view of truth and overturn the "untruths" of others? If this book does not offer a kind of truth, it offers nothing.

His criticism of science is too extreme to be valuable. Gray views it as a kind of modern mystical religion, an object of faith every bit as irrational as its religious ancestors. This allows him to make some pretty silly statements:

“Yet after all the work of Plato and Spinoza, Descartes and Bertrand Russell we have no more reason than other animals do for believing that the sun will rise tomorrow.”

Call me a bluff old traditionalist, but I feel that Copernicus, Galileo, Newton and so on have given me a much firmer basis for that belief than simply past evidence. Gray's failure to recognise progress is perverse. Of course, people will always feel unhappy and will always suffer, but there can be no denying that modern civilisations have raised the general standard of living, demonised inequality, established systems of justice and law enforcement, produced great works of art, and so on and so forth. Gray, when he acknowledges such things at all, merely suggests that this is a blip which will soon be followed by more misery and extinction.

Yes, there is a danger in blind faith in progress or undue veneration of science. But all Gray has to offer as an alternative seems to be an even more unreliable amalgam of Eastern philosophy and Gaia theory. It's not enough. The apocalyptic romance of his vision is itself more akin to mysticism than rationality. And so the leaps in logic pile up. It is worth stressing (though hardly a new idea) that we are animals like any other species. But it takes some effort to go on to say that we are therefore in no way unusual in our accomplishments both good and bad. Similarly, Gray is right to show that morality breaks down in extreme circumstances. But he is wrong to conclude from this that it has no value.

Liberal humanism has had so many demontrable benefits that any attack on it has to offer some comparable alternative. Straw Dogs sidesteps this competition by arguing that belief in progress or development is silly, and we should rather simply accept that we are ultimately heading for annihilation both personally and as a species. That may be so, but this book fails to prove that bleak resignation is the most appropriate response, either for personal happiness or for social stability. ( )

Bravo! Wanna know what it's all about mate? - read this. You may not agree with all of it - the challenge is to defend your arguments, and your beliefs as they come tumbling down one by one. A short book to start off thought, debate and reading: the bibliography was very useful. ( )

p.5
"The idea of humanity taking charge of its destiny makes sense only if we ascribe consciousness and purpose to the species; but Darwin's discovery was that species are only currents in the drif of genes."

p.8 (A Plague of People):
""...then humans will have created or themselves a new geological era, the Eremozoic, the Era of Solitude, in which little remains on the Earth but themseves and the prosthetic environment that keeps them alive."