A piece in yesterday’s NYT Book Review caught my eye, a review of a new book, Black Mass, by John Gray, the British political philosopher.  Gray has popped up here on The Useless Tree twice before, once in a post about inherent human morality and once in a comment by a reader recommending one of his books.   I must admit, however, that I have not yet had the chance to read Gray.  But this most recent review pushes him further up my reading list. 

    He seems a pessimistic man, especially with this subtitle to him most recent book: "Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia."  Here’s the reivewer’s summary of his argument:

In Gray’s telling, the doctrines of Soviet Communism, Nazi racism, Al Qaeda’s
technophile fundamentalism and the Bushian “war on terror” are various
forms (however incompatible) of an essentially utopian impulse derived
from an Enlightenment notion of progress. That notion is misguided:
scientific knowledge and technological power increase over time, but
there is no reason to think that politics or morality can progress in
the same way. The belief in progress is just a secularized form of
Christian theodicy, infecting even those minds that otherwise seem
combatively atheistic. Apocalyptic impulses are coded into every
ideological genome.

And it gets worse. The coming century, Gray
argues, will be one of ecological disaster and resource wars;
technological improvements that will be promptly turned into
instruments of destruction; and mutually reinforcing tendencies toward
anarchy and violent order. Hostages of the crypto-theological belief
that human beings are in some sense a uniquely important part of the
world, we will continue to try to impose our illusions on it until the
world proves we are wrong.

 Sounds rather bleak.  The Taoists out there may be picking up on some resonances with the Tao Te Ching here (the idea of human progress as folly…).  And you would be right.  Gray makes an explicitly Taoist move:

“In ancient Chinese rituals,” Gray writes, “straw dogs were used as
offerings to the gods. During the ritual they were treated with the
utmost reverence. When it was over and they were no longer needed they
were trampled on and tossed aside.” That is our probable fate. He
quotes Laotzu: “Heaven and earth are ruthless, and treat the myriad
creatures as straw dogs.” If we don’t wipe ourselves out first, the
cosmos may do it for us. 

     I’m not sure if Taoism would necessarily come down as pessimistically as Gray does, but it is refreshing to see a accomplished Western philosopher bringing some ancient Chinese thought into the conversation.  Indeed, his previous book is titled Straw Dogs and, as my earlier commenter, the estimable Zoomzan, pointed out, is loaded with Taoist references.  Here is Zoomzan’s distillation:

One key theme of this book is that there is no fundamental
difference between humans and animals, that all artifices (technology,
politics, economics) merely enable humans’ rapacious nature. While
artifices accumulate, true wisdom cannot be passed on. Ignorance of
this fact produces the various religious and secular myths of progress.
While the Christian myth left salvation in the murky water of theology,
secular quests for social progress lead to unpredented catastrophes.
John Gray suggests that we shed the illusion that we can somehow master
our future, and instead take our cues from animals, who know how to
live better than us.

We cannot contain our current proliferation of artifices (genetic
engineering, nuclear weaponry), because the world consists of many
warring nations. All advances in artifices will fall into the hands of
criminal gangs, corporate interests, and secretive government programs.
Neither can we, as a whole, check our continuing exploitation of nature
– because humans are by nature rapacious. Therefore, the only plausible
end in our engagement with nature is a Malthusian backlash, where
nature rebalances herself through climate change.

John Gray is critical of all secular traditions, including
neoconservatism, neoliberalism, capitalism, fascism, socialism,
communism, interventionism, humanism, atheism. He also criticises many
religious traditions, except Taoism. It appears that many Amazon
reviewers, as well as literary critics, don’t get the Taoist
references. Nevertheless, this book has received high praises from many
critics.

 Maybe it’s time to get our Taoism on….