Mr Arthrobalanus: “a minute marine monument to mutability.” R. Stott.
Another archival review, once again from the period around or shortly after Darwin’s bicentennial (2009), brought over to my blog on account of recently reading and really enjoying Peter Burke’s The Polymath.
In this wonderful book Rebecca Stott relates the tale of Darwin’s foray into marine biology; how it came about and where it lead, setting it all in a beautifully rendered portrait of Darwin’s personal, family, and socio-cultural context.
Connecting the various epochs of Darwin’s life, Stott skilfully tells a fantastic story, of how the disaffected ex-medical student, embarked on studies for a career as a clergyman, instead pursued his natural-historical instincts, ‘transmutating’ himself (and indeed all of us) in the process.
Little did Darwin’s father realise, when he finally acquiesced to uncle Josiah Wedgewood’s support for Charles’ wish to join the Beagle expedition – “Natural History … is very suitable to a Clergyman” – where it would all lead.
As another reviewer (on Amazon UK’s website) notes, the barnacles themselves aren’t quite as prominent in this book as the title might lead one to expect, but they do nonetheless provide a fantastic central theme from which to tell a really very engaging story about what amounts to almost the whole of Darwin’s life and work, but from a new and refreshing perspective.
I loved reading this, and found it exciting, engaging, informative, entertaining, well-written, and just plain good old-fashioned fun!
Fascinating book about ‘a constellation of extraordinary individuals’.
Another archival review, from about a decade ago. Again, stimulated to post this now having just read Polymath, by Peter Burke.
The Lunar Men certainly were ‘a constellation of extraordinary individuals’, as Uglow herself concludes in her epilogue to this weighty tome.
It was reading widely about Charles ‘Origin’ Darwin, around the time of his bicentennial (2009), that lead, almost inexorably, to an interest in the Lunar group, with Stott’s book Darwin’s Barnacle sealing the deal, via the chapter on Charles’ grandfather Erasmus. Erasmus figures large in Uglow’s book too – something of a Titan, both literally and figuratively; a man whose interests (and physical girth) seemed to know no bounds! – and learning more about him is fascinating.
But then there are also the many other ‘Lunatics’: Boulton, Wedgewood, Watt, Priestley, Edgeworth, Whitehurst, Keir, Day and several others. Some of these others are very much Lunar Men, whilst others are just passing through their orbit, like American polymath Benjamin Franklin, or Joseph Wright (‘of Derby’) the painter. Whilst not strictly a Lunar Man, as such, Wright, like Franklin, nonetheless figures prominently in the book.
Some of these names will doubtless be familiar to those with a little general knowledge, Wedgewood for his pottery, Watt for his work with steam engines, Priestley for his politics as much his science, and so on. But the lesser known figures are often equally fascinating, from the fussy-in-love Rousseauian romantic and reactionary Day, to the perhaps a little hapless Withering, who gets into a scientific spat with Erasmus Darwin that reminds me a little of that between Dawkins and Gould in our own times.
Jenny Uglow
One of the many fascinating things about the many subjects covered in this book is how they all mesh together at a particular point in time: coming out of Enlightenment thinking, and based (for the most part) far north of London, they represent a growing blurring of old feudal social distinctions and an increased independence (of both mind and pocket), whilst their voracious quest for knowledge connects them to both emerging ideals of political and personal liberty, and the birth of industrialisation and commercialisation, which would simultaneously lift levels of material wealth, and increase ‘alienation’ and the dependence and insecurity of the working population.
Largely pro-liberty, despite the ties of the patronage system many of them cooperated in and profited by, they initially embraced the French Revolution, but as The Enclosures bit deep into the land, and Britain reacted against the threat of revolutionary and then Napoleonic Europe, various aspects of the Lunar Men’s interests fared unevenly: Wedgewood thrived, advancing industry through increased chemical and practical knowledge, and (like Boulton) bringing higher levels of finish to ever wider markets, whilst Boulton and Watt’s steam power quite literally boomed, in every possible respect. And of course Erasmus’ interests in evolution would be picked up and developed by his son, Charles, with epoch-shattering revolutionary effect.
But Day’s reactionary politics and Priestley’s libertarianism (his fate in relation to riots and ‘anti Jacobin’ unrest is rather sad) would both succumb to the strange mix of the pragmatic advances of capitalist industrialism (what Day, along with the likes of William Blake – Uglow uses the lunar theme to connect the Lunar Men’s reaching ‘so eagerly for the moon’ with Blake’s engraving mocking scientific hubris [the famous ‘I want, I want’ with a ladder reaching to the moon] – feared was the pollution of an English Eden by the ‘dark satanic mills’) with the great reversals to emancipatory progress which had looked imminent (Keir’s progressive optimism re the ‘diffusion of a general knowledge … [a] characteristic feature of the present age’ contrasting with the anti-intellectualism of Burke, who saw science as ‘smeared with blood … arrogant and uncaring’) resulting, at more prosaic levels, in setbacks to British liberal reform.
And all of this occurs at a specific moment, at a time when the gentleman amateur was perhaps more common as a leader in science than the professional or academic, and when events in Europe would have immense impact here in the British Isles, both strengthening our own imperial position – although it looked terribly insecure at the time, as America fought for and won its independence, causing the axis of our power base to shift from west (America and the west-indies) to East (India and the East-Indies) – and setting back the course of reforming liberal politics at home by many decades. All of which developments continue to inform our culture life even now. From our pride in Darwin to our troubled and alienated relationship with Europe. Re-posting this post-Brexit this aspect seems even more poignant. .
Many of those in this story were also proto-capitalists, as well as industrialists, making and sometimes losing fortunes, speculating with their investments. Erasmus Darwin had to earn his own living, as a doctor. His desire to publish much of his scientific work anonymously, and disguised as poetry, was influenced by a need to secure his reputation and private practice. His involvement as an investor in canal building, speeding the pulse of British industrialisation in a manner akin to the effect steam engines would shortly redouble, was what ultimately meant that Charles Darwin could work on evolution as a gentleman of leisure. Fascinating!
Vast in size and coverage – so big – like Erasmus at his dinner table (which had to be modified with a semi-circular cutaway), I couldn’t always fit it into my reading rest – this is a very interesting, informative and enjoyable book. Whilst I kind of wish it had been a bit leaner, given how much Uglow covers it’s understandable that it should be a bit of a mammoth.
This is yet another archival post (and there are many, many more to come!). Slightly updated on being transferred here. Probably first wrote this over a decade ago!? I was prompted to get it posted here having just read Burke’s Polymath. There seemed to me some overlap/relation.
The Darwin bicentennial (2009) got me reading much more about science, scientists, and all sorts of similar related stuff, for which I’m extremely grateful.
After an orgy of Darwin related reading and viewing, I felt I needed to broaden my horizons, so I bought this. It’s a real tour de force, and makes for very compulsive reading. I was barely able to put it down to perform basic functions like eating and sleeping.
My favourite chapters were those that featured the Herschels, William and his sister Caroline. I love the idea of the ‘Renaissance Man’ (or woman, for that matter), or polymath. In my own humble way I work in several fields, as writer, musician and artist. I make no claims to excellence in any of these fields, nor pretend to compare myself with people like William Herschel, who was an accomplished musician, composer and teacher, as well as becoming one of the world’s leading astronomers and cosmologists.
But I do find the energy and industrious enthusiasm of people like him, his sister, and many others detailed in this superb book, enormously inspiring. Reading about Herschel’s obsessive casting, grinding and polishing of his mirrors, the construction of his ever larger telescopes, not to mention the drama of Caroline’s own discoveries, or her terrible injury sustained whilst working in the dark (you’ll have to read the book to find out what happened, but it makes me wince just to recall it), was truly exciting.
When I was at school the sciences seemed extremely drab. The more I educate myself about science, the more I realise what an amazing branch of human inquiry it is. This book helps capture the vibrant energy, the multifarious voraciousness for knowledge and understanding – not to mention the wonderful state of awe-inspired humility, almost a sublime trembling, if you will, in the face of nature and our experience of it (this latter part is what the books subtitle conveys; a little melodramatic perhaps, but it does convey how exciting it all is) – that lie at the roots of scientific inquiry.
Well done Mr Holmes: I’ll certainly be seeking out more of your work!
As someone with many and varied interests myself, the idea of the polymath has always exerted a powerful fascination.
Having read books like The Age of Wonder (Richard Holmes) and The Lunar Men (Jenny Uglow), and stuff by or on polymath folk like Darwin, Newton, Kepler, William Herschel and others, my appetite for more knowledge of knowledgeable bods of this ilk is always strong.
So, on a recent visit to a favourite bookshop (that I’d not been to in about three years, thanks to Covid and other things), this caught my eye. I’m very glad I followed my instincts and bought it. I’ve been glued to it ever since.
What a cover! Further reading…
500 polymaths are covered from ancient Greeks like Eratosthenes, to Jakob ‘Ascent of Man’ Bronowski’s daughter, Lisa Jardine, who actually very briefly taught me, and a bunch of pupils from my VI form, many moons ago.
The biggest chapters are given over to different ‘Ages’, or eras, of polymathery (bagsy coinage of that word!). But the subjects are also considered by type – ‘fox vs hedgehog’ (read the book to find out what this means!), serial, cluster, etc – and character/habitat.
Such an ambitious and broad survey is necessarily brief in how it addresses its many individual subjects. But the daunting maelstrom of names, places, dates and so on, is leavened by the connecting or contextual materials.
Further further reading!
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. And have learned of many more polymaths than I knew before. I’m also inspired to do lots of follow up reading. Always a good sign, in my books (so to speak!).
Perhaps inevitably some of the polymaths I expected to read about didn’t make Burke’s list. Here are a few I was surprised not to find: Napoleon (his name appears at least twice, but neither as a polymath, nor even in the index!), William Herschel (his son and grandson, however, are included!), Isaac Asimov, Arthur Koestler and … Stephen Fry!?
But the cast is huge, and dazzling. From those I knew, Hooke, Kepler, Wren, Leibniz, to those I didn’t, Pico, Comenius, Kircher the two Rudbecks, etc. And the book fizzes with the omnivorous hunger and boundless energy of its subjects. Educational, inspiring, hugely enjoyable.
Teresa suggested we watch this. I don’t know how long we lasted, maybe 15-20 minutes? Maybe a little longer?
What awful dreck! When I announced the fact that my bile was rising, Teresa concurred, and we bailed. I googled the film, and discovered it’s a Baz Luhrmann thing. That figures.
Luhrmann has the budget to employ decent actors and technicians, so there are aspects of the overall production that have skill invested in them. But the whole thing is so ludicrously fake, and piles on the ‘effects’ as if they alone will carry the film. They don’t.
We didn’t even get to meet Fatsby (we did see his brooding back!). And I can’t even be arsed to change that mildly amusing predictive typo. This bilge doesn’t merit the effort. Like so much modern culture, the actual Gatsby story has been gutted, and what we’re presented is naught more than shiny reflective surfaces.
In some ways this suits or somehow echoes the slightness of F Scott Fitzgerald’s story. But as the Robert Redford version showed, even a will o’ the wisp type parable of an age of illusion, can at least have feeling, even if not great depth. There is at least a dreamy whimsical quality in the ‘74 film, akin to the actual text. Baz just gives us loud garish tinsel.
And the music? The appalling anachronistic sounds are, to my mind, illustrative of a retrogressive and solipsistic slide, backwards into ignorance. Possibly a sign of our times?
Traditions in art have typically recast other times dressed up in styles of their own era when they are in their intellectual infancy. At some point we realise the past is a foreign land, and make the effort to faithfully evoke that – or to at least try and do so – in our arts.
But here everything is subjected to a kind of kaleidoscopic free for all, in which only the slickest design aspects, mostly the costumes, pass through the digital machine, buffed and polished, brilliantine and dazzling, in their glassy mirrored lack of substance.
Has Baz actually triumphed as a latter day alchemist? Inventing a material that is all surface, that has absolutely no depth or substance whatsoever?
Both his alchemical invention of a new material, and his taking the visual and sonic anachronisms to such gaudy heights, bespeak a pre-renaissance world of illusion. Perhaps this makes his films suitable for our era’s wilfully gleeful dumbing down?
As art historian Kenneth Clark said, in his terrific Civilisation series, when criticising the ‘heroic’ aspect of renaissance classicism, when all actors are reduced to the ‘beautiful people’, something is lost. This movie is populated by mannequin like ciphers – himbos and bimbos, I call ‘em – not characters, and feels more like an endless pop video than a story.
Communism has long been lambasted in the so called democratic west, in no small part for the overt and bloody ways that the social engineers of the state-fascist versions of that creed often brutally liquidated their intelligentsia. How ironic is it if Capitalism achieves the same ends via self-inflicted lobotomies?
As the cover blurb and preface point out, the Battle of the Atlantic was really a campaign, or lots of battles, skirmishes, and so on, rather than a singular event, like, say, the battle of Waterloo, or even Kursk.
Even whilst Britain endured the so called ‘phoney war’, conflict had begun in earnest from day one on the high seas. And it would only finally end, or at least the movement of the ships themselves would only end, after Germany had officially surrendered. This makes it the biggest and longest battle or campaign of the war, for the British/Allied forces.
Thus many individual battles fall within the scope of this superb single volume account of what is a truly massive subject. From individual convoy battles, known by their convoy names/numbers, such as the calamitous PQ17, to larger scale actions, like the Battle of the River Plate, all the way through to huge operations, from Pedestal to Overlord.
Dimbleby proves himself very adroit at that highly effective kind of contemporary history that zooms in and pans out from the micro to the macro, from the rolling brine-washed decks of individual vessels to fleet manoeuvres, and from housewives and lowly ratings to Admirals and world leaders.
Rather oddly, perhaps, given the aforementioned ‘whole war’ scope of the subject, the book is most detailed on the 1939-43 period, which actually takes the reader to right near the end. The remainder of the war, including D-Day is somewhat rapidly glossed over.
That is my only real gripe, re this otherwise utterly brilliant work (oh, a glossary would’ve been useful). And in a way it’s not even a gripe as such, as Overlord, Dragoon – the latter not even mentioned – etc, whilst connected, are outside of the remit of the books’ core subject.
That said, over the book as a whole Dimbleby doesn’t baulk at including relevant stuff from other theatres. So the political horse-trading aspects, and what was happening in say the Pacific or on the Eastern Front, figure in this extremely wide-ranging and gripping account.
As with any good book, this inspires further reading. I now want to read Dimbleby’s recently published account of Barbarossa (the Atlantic book is subtitled ‘how the allies won the war’; the Ostfront one, with a pleasing symmetry, ‘how Hitler lost the war’). I’m also keen, having read numerous hefty volumes on Hitler and Stalin, to read more on Churchill and FDR.
Anyway, this was a truly epic read. Brilliantly written, telling a fascinating and compelling story. Utterly superb, and very highly recommended.
Occasionally interesting insights, lost, adrift in seas of postmodern academic claptrap.
Hmm? Pretty poor, in my opinion. I recently read and reviewed the much, much better critique of Capitalism, Post Growth, by Tim Jackson. Both books are published by Polity, who specialise in this sort of stuff.
First of all this is a collection of short essays, most (but not all) of which have been published elsewhere before. A consequence of this format is lots of repetition. Not great. These essays cover numerous topics, the chief of which is criticism of capitalism/neoliberalism. But other areas talked about include refugees, Europe, Covid and the arts. The first two thirds are short essays, the last part interviews.
Han is a South Korean living/working in Germany (so it’s all translated from German), as a philosopher and lecturer in an arts university. This embedding in such an institution is crucial, as it informs his language and points of reference, both of which are mired in the tediously opaque traditions of postmodernism. These are more or less unchanged from when I studied art/art history at Goldsmiths, with frequent use of buzz-words such as affect, and haptic, and references to Barthes, Adorno, Baudrilard, etc.
The author.
At certain points, in essays about contemporary arts culture, he discusses pornography vs eroticism, and rhapsodises about the latter, as being far better (capitalism favouring the ‘in your face’ m.o. of porn). And in these passages you get a glimpse of the crux of the postmodern problem (or rather one of many such problems), namely that obscuring is preferred to ‘unveiling’. Put another way, florid verbiage trumps understanding!
There are many valid insights, scattered throughout the text. But there are just as many vapid unfounded (or rather unsubstantiated) remarks. And the dominant register is negativity. Endless critique – neoliberalist capitalism isolates us all, and makes us internalise blame, and burn-out in hyper performance (he’s also written a book called The Burn-Out Society) – which might be true; but with no real suggestions of better ways out of such contemporary impasses, eventually it comes over as carping.
In the landmark ‘sledgehammer’ series Civilisation, stuffily patrician art historian Kenneth Clarke remarked, in his inimitable and oft very prescient manner, that the German language lacked a clear workable prose, such as English has developed, much to the ‘troubling’ of Europe. If one understands what Clarke was getting at, this book is – to my mind – a prime example, albeit from the left, as opposed to the right. And, ironically, by being so windily obscure, it plays into the hands of neoliberalist capitalism, effectively neutering itself. And, to use one of the buzz-words Han overuses, is all affect, to no effect.*
I find books on the topics this covers of interest. But I can’t say I either enjoyed or would recommend this one. It belongs, frankly speaking, to a tradition – the postmodern – that I hope will wither on the vine sooner rather than later.
*I also find it annoying when books of this ilk bandy round buzzwords with no attempt to define them. That’s the case with ‘affect’ here, amongst others. The sense of the word in postmodern-speak strikes me as closer to the meaning of the word ‘affectation’ than the normal dictionary definition of affect, as a verb, the doing of which produces the equivalent noun, or effect.
Intellectual? Misanthrope? Dilettante of depression… what is Gray up to?
Another archival entry, this is a slightly longer version of a review I first posted on Amazon in 2013.
One little addition – amongst quite a few, as it happens – to this review, and something I had intended to include in my original review for Amazon, is this, what is Gray getting at with the title? The most obvious response is to assume he means that animals aren’t talking all the time, like us humans. Does he, by extension, mean they have no language, and from there, no consciousness? If I’m even just partly correct in this guesswork, then, like the book itself and so many of the ideas contained within it, this little statement is so freighted with assumptions, and potentially massively erroneous ones at that, as to make the reader potentially astonished that such thinking could be accorded the respect it routinely is.
Anyway, let’s dive in. On the penultimate page of part three, the final part of this brief and very thought-provoking book, Gray says ‘There is no redemption from being human. But no redemption is needed.’ Right… So, your point was? Well, I guess his point is that, in his view, progress towards a better humanity is a modern myth: rooted, so he argues, in an outgrowth of Christian ideas of end-times and redemption. An unattainable chimera, belief in and pursuit of which just causes us both actual and mental/psychological/spiritual anguish.
I’ve not read any other Gray yet but, judging from this book, he appears to be a professional essayist in the poetic-philosopher mode, happiest when he is simultaneously displaying his erudition and making us all feel miserable. Towards the end of the book Gray quotes American poet Robinson Jeffers, who at one point defends his own philosophy as being ‘neither misanthropic nor pessimist’. On the evidence of this slim volume Gray appears to be both.
Still, briefly changing tack for a bit: it seems silence is in the air, with this book of Gray’s coming hot on the heels of Diarmaid McCulloch’s Silence: A Christian History. Strengthening possible links between these two titles, and much to the chagrin of some, including several reviewers here, Gray casts humanism (and science) as the offspring of Christianity – ‘the Christians and their disciples, the humanist believers in progress’ – in a process whereby alleged former pagan visions of cyclic/seasonal time have been replaced by ideas of progress towards an ‘end of time’.
In many respects quite a lot of what Gray says makes sense, at least in places. For example, it seems quite natural that modern thinking would have, within its DNA so to speak, traces of the ideas and cultures that preceded it. But Gray goes well beyond this observation, evincing a visceral loathing of humanism, and it’s this that lies at the root of my charge of misanthropy. His position, which I suppose may stem from an understandable distaste for the solipsism and self-regard of the human animal, leads him to make some assertions that I find plain bizarre.
Some of these assertions include: ‘True myth is a corrective of fantasy’; ‘Religion was a poetic response to unchanging human realities…’; ‘the idea that Jesus returned from the dead is not as contrary to reason as the notion that human beings will in future be different from how they have always been.’ The first two of these statements only address very partial aspects of what either myth or religion might be. Most of the time Gray doesn’t support such statements at all, and where he does the bulk of the ‘supporting evidence’ for his ideas are quotations drawn from poetry and literature. So, for example, the legends of Icarus and Prometheus are invoked as evidence for myth as a corrective.
In the third quoted statement above (and the second also, to some degree) Gray reveals himself to be remarkably ignorant of, or resistant to, the findings of evolutionary science: humans are not a static and unchanging entity. There was a time before humans, there will be a time after humans. And whilst we are around, we evolve, both physically and culturally. Who is Gray to legislate for closed parameters to either our physiology or our behaviour, within that unknown span of time?
I might go along with him, inasmuch as the evidence of the last several thousand years of human life doesn’t, at first glance, give immediate cause for optimism, regarding the kind of ideas of moral progress which seem so anathema to Gray. But appearances can be deceptive, and science proves itself a very effective tool not just because it can replace wildly poetic myth with something much closer to reality, but because it’s such a potent ‘corrective of fantasy’.
Perhaps Gray should dwell less on the horrors of modern times (the first part of this book – well, nearly all of it, actually – but the first part particularly, is a litany of recent calamities), read less poetry and literature by suicidal authors, and instead try, for example, Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature: A History of Violence and Humanity? But of course it’s exactly such books and thinkers that Gray is attacking.
Pinker’s book seeks to counter precisely the kind of resolutely pessimistic contemporary myth Gray appears to subscribe to, which says that humanity is currently more barbaric than it’s ever been. When he fulminates against humanism for replacing beautiful old myths with horrible new anthropocentric ones, I just groan: except for those stages in our religious evolution that have dealt more with our relationship with raw nature (and even then, to some degree), the anthropocentrism of myth and religion has been at least equal to, or if anything then perhaps even greater than in the past, often because it was that way without much self-consciousness.
Gray may feel that, as the pop band Blur once put it, ‘Modern Life Is Rubbish’, and that we’re more repellently violent than ever, but that isn’t what all the research into the subject necessarily suggests: per capita, Pinker argues (and this depends on whether his evidence is sound, and apparently there’s much heated debate around this) humanity is now less violent than ever before (and most demonstrably since the advent of agriculture). Pinker backs his claims up with evidence, rather than poetry: where’s Gray’s evidence to support his Jesus claim, regarding the plausibility of the dead being brought back to life as greater than any changing of humanity?
The author (source: wiki).
Along the same lines, and equally egregious, is where Gray equates humanism, via the idea of a ‘myth’ of progress as embodied within modern science, with Genesis, implying that the Genesis myth is preferable! The only part of the Genesis myth that I find resonant with any profound meaning is the darkly depressive idea that consciousness might be some kind of curse. Having finished this book, the fact that such pessimism should be attractive to Gray is not the shock it was when I first read the relevant passage. But, like his ‘true myth’ and religion as ‘poetic response’ ideas, his approach to some of these ideas is spectacularly limited, skewed in numerous ways, and leaves out much that, if re-introduced, brings significant changes of perspective.
Yes, myth can act as a corrective, and sure, religion is, in part, a poetic response to understanding human life. But myths and religions have also functioned as both literal explanations and harshly enforced rules, i.e. tools for control. Looking at both Genesis and the ‘myth’ of progress in humanism and science more broadly, which is the preferable delusion to suffer from: that we (well, rather one small tribe among us) are God’s specially created and chosen people, and can do as he wills (or rather, as we see fit, but justified in his name), in a world he made for our usage? Or that that we are products of evolution and, endowed as we are with some degree of consciousness (however flawed and limited that may be), we might strive to live in better ways?
I think the latter is both more realistic and, in every way (morally/practically) preferable. Only when presented in Gray’s highly partial and selective terms – wilfully misrepresented I would say – could the reverse be made to appear even remotely reasonable.
Whilst The Silence of Animals is fascinating and very thought-provoking, I also find it massively irritating. I imagine he would dismiss my problems with his book as being those of a believer in the myth of progress. I think he’s wrong: he continually tars humanism with the same brush as religion, equating ideas of progress with ideas of the Christian ‘triumph over death’ theme. But he’s quite mistaken. Just as it would be wrong to believe ‘that rejecting religion [means] renouncing any idea of order in the world’ (in paraphrasing Llewelyn Powys Gray slightly skews what he says: Powys clarifies his own position by referring to an ‘ordained moral order’), so to is it wrong to conflate the legacy of Christian ideas of triumph over death with all modern humanist ideas of progress.
These problems appear to stem from a combination of Gray’s attachment to ‘the old ways’ (read Christianity) and his apparent inability to grasp fundamentals of evolutionary science: all life, vegetable and animal, never mind just human, is precisely the temporary imposition of both order and even increasing complexity (against an otherwise universal tendency to disorder and simplification), whereas the Christian idea of triumph over death – or, in other and more biblical terms, eternal life – is, as Addy Pross states in What is Life?, an oxymoronic concept. So, in fact, the sciences Gray attacks give constant and irrefutable evidence that, actually, order is everywhere apparent (and in no way based upon human religious systems as a fundamental footing), and categorical proof that one of the most central and cherished aims of Christian religion is a nonsensical impossibility. Failing to understand or address any of this, Gray gets nowhere near tackling the more interesting link, often dealt with around the ‘natural fallacy’ idea, of the kinds of order that just are (in nature at large), and the kinds we feel there ought to be (in our societies).
Just as he notes that evolution is actually a process of drift rather than directed change (Gray doesn’t address the idea of constraints on pathways in evolution), one can conceive of our moral or ethical progress as a form of drift, but no less real for it. In terms of absolute values this can therefore remain ‘random’, but to us, as human beings embedded in the matrix of the moment – and that’s why I’m what I understand to be humanist (we are all human after all, so what else can we honestly be, other than humanist?) – it is not random. Whilst we know that we are not, in point of fact, the centre of the universe, yet we are, each of us, as Gray himself notes in relation to animals, when he says ‘every sentient creature is a world maker’, still the centre of our own cosmos of perception and experience.
Gray has introduced me to some new writers and thinkers, for which I’m grateful. His ideas have also been something for me to work around, re-examining my own understanding, and I think this sort of process is healthy and useful. But, in the end, his overall tone is, like his name, rather Eeyore like. Several times I was put in mind of Woody Allen, in Annie Hall, where his character says “I feel that life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.” Woody Allen’s brand of pessimism can at least make us smile, and perhaps even occasionally laugh out loud. Gray didn’t have that effect on me, and, more to the point, I’m not even sure he’s right either. In fact, in many fundamentals, I think he really and very clearly couldn’t be much more wrong.
So, very annoying at times, but nonetheless – precisely because it challenges many of my own views – a stimulating read.
NB – This is not an academic treatise, by the way, but a ruminatory opinion piece. I’m just chewing over some thoughts!
A ‘desert religion’ turned equal parts fluffy and apocalyptic; a Jewish heresy adopted by a Serbian, who just happened to become Roman Emperor; how and why did a palimpsest of Chinese-whispers become the religion of ‘The West’?
Well, first off, all religions or creeds are ultimately palimpsests of Chinese whispers. They evolve over time with their users. Christianity is neither unique nor exceptional in this respect.
The next thought is, ‘Why, Constantine?’ I’ve read a bit about this, and to be honest it appears that historians feel his adoption of Christianity was about equal measures personal faith/conviction, and an awareness of the faith’s potential for socio-political utility.
But going back a bit, the Christian God actually evolves in plain sight. In the Old Testicle any reader with insight will quickly become aware that the many and various peoples all have their different gods. And even the God of the Israelites is, as Alexander Waugh explores in his book God, a slippery polynomial entity.
The later Roman adoption of Christianity was a ‘saltation’ event, of sorts; prior to this the world was peopled with many spirits and gods. Roman Christianity distilled this down to one god. Monotheism as opposed to polytheism was to be very useful for the ‘divinely sanctioned’ authority of a singular emperor/ruler. And lest we get too parochial, this was a trend worldwide; as humanity and societies evolved, so too did our myths of the divine.
But returning to the older modes of what we might call a more pagan plurality; even the tribal/racial name Israel is actually itself etymological evidence of this cultural and ‘spiritual’ evolution: containing within itself, as it does, the names of three older deities, Ish (poss’ a form of Isis?), Ra(h?), and El. And thus the tribe of three Gods evolved into a tribe of just one, albeit one with a dizzying array of names and natures.
I remember being either first made aware of, or reminded of this, on a BBC TV programme called The Bible’s Buried Secrets, or something like that. The lady presenting that show was, I think, Greek. (And rather buxom, if mammary serves?) And I have vague mamm… er… memories of her noting that some of the deities in this muddled gene pool were female.
Interestingly Robert Crumb picks up on this gender related theme in his notes on his illustrated Book of Genesis. I mention this because it’s illustrative of how, rather than religion being some conduit to fixed divine truths, it in fact reveals and reflects the people who create and ‘curate’ it, and their shifting needs and values.
I was prompted to write this post when thinking about mutton-headed racists in places like the UK and the US, who so proudly and belligerently claim this confused, arcane, dusty eastern Mediterranean set of fables as their own. Hence the use of a George Cross flag as a crucifix, at the head of this post. I
It just makes no sense. I mean, it can be understood, quite easily, as a very primitive form of conservatism: fidelity with the religion one is brought up in. But there’s an enormous irony in the blind loyalty to this ‘alien’ creed in contrast with the tendency amongst this same very angry demographic to regard all government as a kind of oppressive crypto-conspiracy.
I suppose that once again, the simplest most obvious explanation – Occam’s razor! – fits the best: the lower orders, the dispossessed, rightly aware that government isn’t always working in their best interest, seek solace in a creed that promises redress hereafter. But the submission to an arbitrary and unmerited authority, in either case (and indeed if it really is arbitrary and unmerited), smacks of a profound and unexamined cognitive dissonance.
The horrible ironies pile up so deep and so rapidly: the church itself is a government and oppressor. And even when church is not itself government, in many instances appeals to religion ‘validate’ authority. And then there’s also the fact that actually sometimes our governments are acting in our better interests (even if at times for questionable or complex and convoluted reasons). But for the small-minded small-c conservatives at the bottom of the pile, there seems to be a tendency to always go for the worst ‘reading’, achieving the worst of all poss’ worlds.
If one takes this path, one surrenders critical thinking to an alien creed, and then violently attacks other very similar alien creeds, such as Islam, for example. Totally unable to see the irony or hypocrisy of such a position. And yet one retains the mistrust of authority. So, having deferred to the imaginary and unreal heirarchies of religion – and often swiftly thereafter monarchy, as an earthly equivalent – one then refuses to acknowledge the legitimacy of the far more real governance of fellow human beings.
And here we come to the very atavistic lizard-brain level of religion as a tribal identifier. What’s so bizarre is that a collection of arcane gobbledygook, open – like horoscopes – to an infinitely variable range of interpretations, can come to be seen as the immutable and incontestable ’truth’.
It’s also very clear that parts of the Old Testicle are a repository for a lot of very specific tribal memory and myth. How bizarre that such a specific set of stories, so deliberately and singularly attached to one small ethnic group, can eventually become so transferable. This leads to such bizarre moments as when a European theologian calculated the age of the world using a combo’ of the Bible’s creation myths and lineages.
And how sad, pathetic, in fact, that two bastard heresies sprung from the same parents – Christianity and Islam, begat by Judaism – should become the heraldic emblems of warring factions.
Having used their religious traditions to survive as a more or less itinerant minority, how bizarre is it when the ‘unnaturally selected’ or bizarrely bred mutant offspring of the old Jewish faith get attached to other ethnic groups, and weaponised in a tribal war of cultures?
This book isn’t perfect, by any means. Occasionally dazzled by his own prose, and prone to that impressive but somewhat cloying tradition of drowning in quotations, Tim Jackson may also be in danger of only preaching to the converted.
Like Karl Marx before him, he puts forward a damningly cogent and incisive critique of Capitalism. Where he diverges from Marx is in both his more florid and emotional tone, a more up to date view of neo-liberal capitalism, and his proposed answers to the vexatious questions that some of the more obvious failures of capitalism pose.
Several key concepts emerge, such as virtue (understood here in an older more Aristotelian form, rather than the current yet rather Victorian sense), working wisely within limits (as opposed to simply ignoring them), and the slightly more vague-sounding balance and flow.
Countering the very dominant neo-Darwinian (or should that really be Spencerian?) 19thC ‘law of the jungle’ style models of Capitalism, and exposing them for the inherently flawed myths they are, Jackson says the only sustainable way beyond capitalism is a ‘post growth’ vision that learns wisdom by acknowledging limits.
That such ideas are being openly discussed nowadays is quite reassuring. But sadly, with the recent/current eras of Trump in the US and Boris and co in the UK, TJ’s wisdom of balance within limits still looks and feels rather like a utopian pipe-dream, struggling against myths that, for whatever twisted tragic reasons, like weeds, take root and multiply so much more readily than do the more attractive flowers of wisdom.
There are occasional moments where I find myself quibbling with certain key readings of history within his narrative. But overall his arguments are, at least to me, pretty compelling and essentially sound. But then I’m not amongst the rapine disaster capitalists that need to be ‘converted’ by such reasoning.
This said, even as someone who considers themself very in tune with TJ’s thinking and desires, regarding a better future for humanity, this book has helped shine a light on how inescapably insidious so much of contemporary capitalist life is. From my own seeking of solace in over-consumption – both in literal dietary terms and the more metaphorical but equally material terms of ‘I shop therefore I am’ – to the devastation of the mental and ‘spiritual’ life Capitalism wreaks, as it devalues labour and marginalises dissenters.
This book is a wake up call to all of us, from the cowed victims, like me, hiding in the margins eking out a subsistence life, away from the glare of the capitalist mainstream, to the ‘captains of industry’ and their apologists and enablers, merrily driving humanity over a cliff of short-sighted short-termist greed.
I do think the ideas presented here need to somehow be successfully communicated to ‘the enemy’, the Trumps, Bojos and their hordes of zombie enablers. And as most of them don’t even read, let alone read this sort of book, that’s where TJ’s vision falters. One can imagine, or rather hear already, the contemptuous dismissals such ideas as are presented here will typically encounter from the currently dominant Capitalists.
As someone who has dallied with Buddhism for many years, it was interesting that, towards the end of this book, a Buddhist perspective was used as a positive foil to contrast with capitalism: both, as TJ points out, start with a vision of life beset by suffering, but the responses are very different. This section was kind of nice for me, on an almost personal level, as I’d become very disillusioned with Buddhism in the end. And this has reminded me that I wasn’t actually wasting time, as some of the philosophical aspects of Buddhism are, as it turns out, potentially useful antidotes to some of the ills of capitalism.
As is often the case with books like this, at the end it reaches an almost rhapsodic climax of peroration. I always get a little queasy at this point. It’s as if the authors of such ‘visionary’ writings have to whip themselves and, they hope, their readers, into a kind of rapt ecstasy. To finish on an orgasmic high! To stick with the sex metaphor, the more frequently one encounters such intense !happy endings’ the more quickly ecstasy potentially slips into ennui, leaving a lingering sense of uncertainty. Was that really as good as it tried to be?
Anyway, for all my caveats and criticisms, in short, this really is a superb and very timely work. Drawing together numerous fascinating insights, ranging across everyone from good ol’ Aristotle, philosopher of the Classical Greek era, on virtue, to the more contemporary work of biologist Lyn Margulis, on the essential role of collaboration at the heart of evolutionary progress.
And – always a good sign, in my books (boom-boom, pun fully intentional!) – this book has really stimulated a desire to read further on numerous related topics: be that The Limits of Growth, by The Club of Rome ‘think tank’, to the powerful poetic writings of Emily Dickinson.
This book challenges both the individual and society to substitute old and poisonously unsustainable myths with better healthier narratives, and thereby enable positive change. And both we as a species, and the planet on which we depend, need humanity to awaken to the urgency of such change. Great stuff, highly recommended.
