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WRITING|CREATIVE WRITING|ESSAY|PHILOSOPHY
Why Utopia Is a Mug’s Game
Could our lives be better and more fruitful if we focused more on the immediate reality around ourselves instead of the unattainable?
Many years ago The New Humanist carried an interesting interview with the philosopher John Gray. At the time I was familiar with Gray’s work through his book reviews for The New Statesman and The Guardian. This time, though, the guns, or should I say, the mike was turned on him and the ensuing conversation was pretty interesting.
The interview was a tie-in for John’s book, The Silence of Animals, in which he explored man’s alleged slow self-annihilation. To Gray civilisation was a pretence which, when challenged by reality, fell away.
I confess to having felt somewhat uncomfortable at the beginning of the article. I’m a pragmatist with a 99.9% realistic view of the world. But that 0.01% leftover counts for a lot. It counts for a romanticism and idealism that have kept me believing in my fellow humans for many years, atrocities notwithstanding.
Gray’s initial comments were coloured by a pessimism which I’ve noticed is typical of certain Western authors. His notion that human beings will never be able to…
