Page 55 - American Conservative September/October 2015

in domestic cooking pots; human thighbones, scraped and dried, were set up in the courtyard of the households...”
Gray contends the Aztecs were superior to modern state-based killers in that their victims were not “seen as less than hu- man.” But only two pages later he claims, “In the ritual killings, nothing was left of human pride. If they were warriors, the victims were denied any status they had in society” and were “trussed like deer,” which certainly makes it sound as though they were seen as less than human.
In any case, Gray views Aztec society as a lesson in the inevitability of human violence. We tamp it down in one place, only to see it pop back up in another. He is skeptical of statistics that seem to show a long-term decline in violence. He cites violence-caused famines and epidemics, deaths in labor camps, the gigantic U.S. prison population, the re- vival of torture in the most “civilized” societies, and other modern atrocities to call these figures into doubt. And he sees the false sense that we have over- come this human tendency to violence in “enlightened” Western societies as connected to our arrogant approach in dealing with “unenlightened” societies:
By intervening in societies of which they know nothing, western elites are advancing a future they believe is prefigured in themselves—a new world based on freedom, democ- racy and human rights. The results are clear—failed states, zones of anarchy and new and worse tyran- nies; but in order that they may see themselves as world-changing fig- ures, our leaders have chosen not to see what they have done.
Gray turns his attention to French Marxist Guy Debord, finding “nothing of interest” in his standard Marxist sche- ma but noting that Debord was ahead of his time in analyzing celebrity. With work no longer giving life meaning, it is necessary that our “culture of celebrity” offers everyone “fifteen minutes of fame” to reconcile us to the “boredom of the
rest of [our] lives.” He quotes Debord on the rising social importance of “media status”: “Where ‘media status’ has ac- quired infinitely more importance than the value of anything one might actually be capable of doing, it is normal for this status to be readily transferable...”
This quote gets at the heart of why in 2015 we see headline coverage of a dispute between singer Elton John and fashion designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana on the proper form for the family. Are fashion designers or pop songwriters experts on child develop- ment or the ethics of the family? If not, why is anyone paying any attention to this feud? Well, because they are celeb- rities with high “media status,” and that status is “readily transferable” to any other field whatsoever.
Bored modern individuals are also rootless. Gray sees the rise of the sur- veillance state as tied to that condition:
When people are locked into lo- cal communities they are subject to continuous informal monitor- ing of their behaviour. Modern individualism tends to condemn these communities because they repress personal autonomy ... The informal controls on behavior that exist in a world of many commu- nities are unworkable in a world of highly mobile individuals, so ... near-ubiquitous technological monitoring is a consequence of the decline of cohesive societies that has occurred alongside the rising demand for individual freedom.
As The Soul of the Marionette draws to a close, Gray heads off into a sort of nature mysticism where his thinking is—to me, at least—at its most obscure. Considering climate change, he claims: “Whatever is done now, human expan- sion has triggered a shift that will per- sist for thousands of years. A sign of the planet healing itself, climate change will continue regardless of its impact on humankind.” But how does Gray know climate change is a “sign of the planet
healing itself,” rather than, say, a sign of its decline or something the planet itself is completely indifferent to?
Gray’s gloomy vision seeps through in his prognosis for the human race too: “However it ends, the Anthropocene”— the epoch of humanity’s rule—“will be brief.” Again, I wonder how Gray knows this? Here he appears as the anti-Hegel, somehow sussing out the future of man much like the German philosopher, but from pessimistic rather than optimistic presuppositions.
Although Gray is an atheist and a materialist of some sort or another, he correctly understands what science can and can’t tell us:
Nothing carries so much authority today as science, but there is actu- ally no such thing as ‘the scientific world-view.’ Science is a method of inquiry, not a view of the world. Knowledge is growing at accel- erating speed; but no advance in science will tell us whether mate- rialism is true or false, or whether humans possess free will.
He also gets at the deep meaning be- hind religious stories: “being divided from yourself goes with being self-aware. This is the truth in the Genesis myth: the Fall is not an event at the beginning of history, but the intrinsic condition of self-conscious beings.” (Albert Camus, like Gray a nonbeliever, understood this very well: see his novel The Fall.)
Yet there is a problem with the co- herence of Gray’s outlook. He urges us to adopt a stoical attitude towards our predicament as marionettes. But if we are free to choose our attitude, why are we not also free to make other choices about our lives? Then again, perhaps Gray isn’t really to blame for this inco- herence: it could be that some unknown puppeteer, pulling on Gray’s strings, made him write this book.
Gene Callahan teaches computer science at St. Joseph’s College in Brooklyn and is the author of Oakeshott on Rome and America.
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015
THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 55