[Vision2020] Summer Reading

[Chasuk]

> Book by British Philosopher John Grey, from the London School of Economics:
> "Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals"

> In a work of thoroughgoing iconoclasm, British philosopher Gray attacks the
> belief that humans are different from and superior to animals.

This is an odd sentence, as it implies that humans are something other
than animals.  I know many who argue that humans are different from,
and superior to, other animals, but none who would argue that we were
not animals.  Maybe this is just a quirk of reviewer Bryce
Christensen's phrasing.

I'll have to look this book up.  I'm a Peter Singer fan; it sounds
like John Grey and Singer are at least intellectual cousins.

Where I largely disagree wit Singer, and likely with Grey, is in the
weight I assign to my existence.  I may not be superior to other
animals, but I do value my own survival above theirs.  I will do
anything to guarantee my own survival and the survival of my progeny
(and loved ones, which I don't know how to justify in an evolutionary
sense), even if it means the certain extinction of other animal
species.

> Gray explains the human refusal to confront the darker realities of our nature largely as
> the result of how we have consoled ourselves with the myths of Christianity
> and its secular offspring, humanism and utopianism. Human vanity, he
> complains, has even converted science (which should teach us of our
> insignificant place in nature) into an ideology of progress.

Agreed.  The bible practically gave us a warrant to subdue the Earth.
I'm sure a lot of revisionist theology contradicts this, but the
damage was done on the earlier perceived mandate.

Thanks for the recommendation.

Chas