Coup @ US Capitol, Human Nature & Wisdom Of John Gray

Let me try and be more precise. I don't deny that some states of human history are better than other states. Europe in 1990 was better than Europe in 1940. I don't deny that. And I don't deny that some programmes of reform have enhanced the lot of human beings to a considerable extent. And peace is better than war, freedom is better than anarchy, prosperity is better than poverty, pleasure is better than pain, beauty is better than ugliness. But there is a another very specific belief that I would guess you subscribe to: the belief that advances in ethics or politics can in principle become like advances in science in the sense of being cumulative. This is the belief that there is nothing inherent in human life or human nature to prevent cumulative improvement. We'll get to the point where there is no poverty in the world, where there is no anarchy in the world. 

My view is that all gains in ethics and politics are real but they are all also reversible and all will be reversed and often reversed very easily. For example, I know many liberal humanists myself and I know that when I said two and a half years ago that torture would come back, they were incredulous. That doesn't tell me they are stupid. That tells me they are in the grip of a belief that makes such a thing unthinkable. They have a narrative, a notion of stages. But when I look at history I don't see any kind of thread, however tenuous, however sometimes broken. What I see is cyclical change, cyclical transformation.

- John Gray tells Laurie Taylor why he believes we're all deluded

John Gray is a realist (not a pessimist). Most folks when they read him think he presents a bleak version of past, present, and future. In other words, it is real albeit bleak and dark. 

Another common complaint about John Gray is that he doesn't give us hope nor a way out of this darkness. 

If I had only one hour to save the world, I would spend fifty-five minutes defining the problem, and only five minutes finding the solution. 

- Albert Einstein 

To state the obvious; John is spending his entire life helping us to define the problems with human nature. 

To understand the problems with human nature, please read John Gray's books Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals and The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths