I decided to read a book that would lead me to the world of a Mr Gray. But, thank heavens, I haven’t read a single line of that social-acceptable pornography regarding a Mr Grey.
What I have been doing is trying to introduce myself to the world of Philosophy. Why? Well, I enjoy a good argument, this is no secret. If being the Devil’s advocate was a genuine occupation, I would have investigated the company pension scheme and other benefits long, long ago.
My main issue is that I am a slow thinker. It takes me much time to process information and think of a suitable response. Thus despite my desire to cause controversy, my debates often fall flat.
The best way to counteract this is via knowledge, training your brain to pre-consider responses to your statements, making you far more efficient at continuing the rally.
So, this is where Philosophy comes in. I know little about it apart from that it acts as a method of explaining things. Naturally, I began my exploration with a beginner’s guide to the subject.
This book was great. The fact it was 15 years old worried me a little. At university, this would have been considered quite a historic document. But then I heard that Socrates hasn’t changed his mind about stuff that much since then. This reassured me.
If anyone is tempted by a guide in this series, it comes recommended. It’s basically a black and white picture book taking you from the very start of the discipline through to the 1990s. The comic cartoons inside not only offered welcome humour to the sometimes heavy context but also gave the reader markers to fix memories to – a proven revision technique. The only issue I found was that, it was literally just trying to cram in as much as you physically can about Philosophy in 173 pages. Made it feel rather rushed.
But this was a minor concern as the fast-flowing narrative dominated by pictures allowed me to plow through the book with much pleasure.
It was a few days later when I was browsing the shelves of Waterstones’ flagship Piccadilly branch for a book on Polish regarding thing #45. And my eye was suddenly drawn to a stand devoted to one particular book.
It was promoting the recent release of John Gray’s The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths. And this triggered me to recall an event that I had come across on Meetup.com – a talk by John Gray himself for the London Philosophical Club the following week. Considering this philosopher is respected enough to have his own dedicated segment of the Waterstones book store, would attending this event and gaging what he is talking about not be a good measure of whether I can understand Philosophy?
I’d taken an early dinner at the Lamb and Flag on Duke Street before heading up Marylebone High Street for my talk. The location was Marylebone Gardens felt like it was an outdoor arena with the chill I experienced but it sat as an oddly shaped multi-performance centre with a fully licensed bar at the back.
I joined a table of 4 other people who had, like many of the 150 other attendees, just rocked up by themselves out of curiosity. Before long a man, boasting a tweed jacket/polo neck combo that would make many an academic envious, strolled up to the stage effectively fading the volume of the chatter around the room.
He began speaking. Surprisingly, it was most understandable. He spoke of progress as a myth. Defining myths as beliefs people hold to satisfy inner noises, he differentiated humans from animals as animals only have to worry about exterior noises (hence, The Silence of the Animals). So, people maintaining such myths to satisfy these inner voices means progress cannot happen. As a result, barbarism is natural and Gray predicts the return of such, similar to that of Nazism and the racism of the 20th century provided the correct stimulus is there – like a major European economic crisis if there was to be one…
Aside from recognising the gravity of the arguments Gray was putting forward, I also used my research to follow some of the philosophical details he used. Socrates, falsification and evolution all popped up in my memory in cartoon form.
Furthermore, during our intermission discussion I feel that my arguments had justification and a little bit of weight. I didn’t agree with a lot of what was being said around me (that Londoners avoid politics with a passion and that 1.5 million were killed in the recent Iraq war – I may be wrong but my data puts the figure at less than a 10th of that).
So, I think I could reasonably argue that I have understood some philosophy. I might not be able to tell you all of Gray’s 50 shades but I’m pretty confident I know the difference between his black and white.
