THE BOOKS OF CRAIG MAINS

Craig Mains is a writer, an author. His work, like the man himself, is to be found in the fiction of another writer – Iain Brimswall. Mains appears as a character in Missed Chapters and, more prominently in terms of role, in The Shepherdess, these novels being the second and third parts of the Zoo Keeper trilogy.

The books of Craig Mains are five in number. It is the three most recent (see below) that have brought him recognition and good sales. He has learnt, with encouragement from his agent and publisher, how to tap controversy. Only one of the other books is referred to in Brimswall, though not by title; the earlier book can apparently be regarded as a stage in the development of Mains’ ‘favoured shallow tone adopted and employed before an eventual rounding on the intellectual core.’ Elsewhere, a passing reference is made to Mains’ tendency to restate material.

Man has achieved his position at the top of the Tree of Being by a neat evolutionary trick. Natural selection for all other species is essentially a passive process. Environmental challenge is something that ‘happens’ to the species population, delivered from outside and imposed blindly on individuals or clusters within the population. An individual may survive because it is physically equipped to meet the challenge, or it may perish because it is not. Those that survive carry with them the correct genetic template by which to produce an improved stock, improved in the sense that subsequent generations have a higher probability of being endowed with the particular feature that equips them to counter the challenge. The drawback to this system of natural selection is that, where there is no environmental challenge, there is no evolutionary change. The species does not progress. It becomes marooned in time. Relatively speaking, it loses position on the Tree of Being. Man, however, has developed a unique means by which to ensure continual progress. It is the capacity for self-culling, for selectively removing the less progressive elements of his own species.

The basic animal brain is wired so as to not bring certain death to its own kind; to instead have the creatures posture and make noises, to resolve disputes and establish precedence with the least physical damage inflicted on the contending parties. This protects the species, though arguably it also holds the species back. Some researchers believe the violent ape that is Man is some sort of an evolutionary aberration. Not so – indeed, the opposite is true. Man’s brain has advanced substantially beyond an organ providing the procedures necessary solely for survival and is now the very source of its own advancement. The proof, if any were needed, is the superior position of Homo sapiens in the grand scheme of life as we know it.

It works like this. Not only does each individual have to deal with whatever nature may throw at him but has in addition to be ever alert to the threat presented by his own kind – from a species he instinctively knows is capable of murder. The continual universal pressure accelerates the process of evolution quicker than can be achieved by responses to sporadic environmental changes. There may have been rapid evolutions in the past but the evolution of the human brain almost certainly holds the record for biological improvement over a brief span of time. And the show has only just begun. Man is merely crawling along the nursery slopes of a biological learning curve that has the potential to ascend far beyond our present imagination. Fast-track evolution takes place precisely because we can deliberately be bad to one another.

In modern society, where large groupings are essential for realising the ambitions of leaders, acts of savagery and intertribal annihilation are generally outlawed for practical reasons – though of course the urges continue to lurk just below the surface and occasionally the self-culling imperative breaks through, increasingly on a genocidal scale.

Meanwhile, we exercise the drive by exploiting our fellow citizens for all we – and they – are worth. Social and economic exploitation – that is: misinforming for gain; taking advantage of; sucking dry and spitting out – is the civilised, attenuated form of killing, rape and plunder. Politicians know it as a job requirement; big business is built on it. Capitalism is a synonym for it. We’re all at it, for god’s sake. The fact is, Man owes his very social development to systematic victimisation and exploitation of his own kind.

The secret of successful exploitation is in convincing people they themselves are making the decisions that deliver them to the cleaners. The present generation are therefore persuaded to mortgage the homes they live in, commit chunks of their earnings to pension schemes, and collect credit cards by the walletful. These examples of supreme manipulation are sold as the sensible thing to do. The greater mass of society is brainwashed into believing this is the only way it can all work.

[Missed Chapters, pp63-66.]

The hominid evolution was launched by the move to stand bipedally on the parched savannah in order to scan the surrounding terrain. Because of climatic change, the hitherto lush habitat had vanished, and the long grasses replacing the trees provided excellent cover for predators. To be able to see above the swaying bines was to survive – it assisted the tracking of quarry while at the same time helped to avoid being the quarry. The very punity of the species became an advantage. With no specialised body parts offering effective defence against predators and the elements, the proto-human had to invent protection. All hominid hope rested on the brain.

As the organ developed, its remit progressed from mere reception and reaction towards reason and abstract thought. A danger or an opportunity did not have to be there, before the eyes, for a response to be prepared; the threat or treat could be in another place and at another time. The hominid brain was, if you like, able to see round corners. But the constantly expanding perception of a universe beyond the near and immediate was potentially mind-blowing. Literally so. If things that could be understood entered the mind in a trickle, things that could not be understood fairly poured in, threatening to engulf the immature delicate cerebral fabric. The brain needed a means of accommodating the flood of the not understood, the myriad unanswered questions. Hey, there! Are you looking for a universal metaphysical receptacle, able to handle everything, everlasting, easy to use, totally reliable, available twenty-four seven three-sixty-five? Then you need GOD!

[Missed Chapters, pp72-73.]

“God sent his first son – let us go with the assumption of first – sent him to Earth to announce among mankind a revised manifesto. ‘An eye for an eye is out,’ the son told the listening multitudes, ‘to turn the other cheek is in.’”

[...]

“This was just one of a whole raft of radical ideas – which today we might regard as left wing. And how did the conservative Jews react to the new thinking? They crucified the messenger. Or, to be accurate, panicked the Romans into doing it for them. This upset God, as you might imagine. Intensely so. Sensibly, he took a couple of millennia to calm down and think things through, before sending another son. Perhaps the heavenly household is all male, but there you go. Anyway, the son carried with him a message which read: don’t mess with God and his boys – and this time it’s personal. The son was instructed to give the Jews something that would help them remember the message. If the Jews preferred the old rules, God was perfectly willing to play by them. ‘You take something of mine, I take something of yours. That’s fair, isn’t it?’

“Well, the son was sent to Earth, was given an earthly form and called by an earthly name. God chose very carefully the time and place of the Second Coming. Not a dusty Third World backlot under the thumb of repressive imperialist occupiers, like the first time, but into the very cradle of modern civilisation, among some of the most gifted and refined people ever to inhabit the planet. You see, God wanted it made clear that what was about to take place was his doing, and his alone. It had to be obvious to the world that this could only be the work of a revengeful Almighty. When the Lord, who – we are assured – is at bottom a decent enough guy, decided the point had been made, he instructed his son to take his own life, and destroy his own body, so that it would not become part of the world.”

[Missed Chapters, pp67-68.]

“You know, at some time in the future, perhaps measured in terms of four or five centuries, maybe before that, possibly much later, the full meaning of Hitler’s work will be appreciated, and future faiths might place him at their centre. Remember how it took a while for the first son to elevate from loud-mouth peasant rabble-rouser to world-class saviour. His early followers were considered weird enough to be thrown to lions. In time, Hitler could be hailed as the Lord’s second sacrifice, and that’s the title I’ve given to this essay. Followed by the all important question mark, of course – for the sake of distance.”

[Missed Chapters, pp69-70.]

This book enters the best selling charts during The Shepherdess which, according to clues, is set in 2008. The opening line of the Mains book reads, ‘Religion must be regarded as disease, for religion is a disease – of the mind.’ Soon afterwards, Craig Mains appears in a television studio discussion of his latest output. He defends his position by describing religion as a disease in the sense that alcoholism or a narcotic dependency is a disease, and pursues his case as follows. Religion once served a vital function (as explained in previous work) when the human species was in its infancy. Much later, it was used as a method of social control and, often, to legitimise aggression. But in the modern civilised world religion represents a throw-back.

He argues that, as a natural response to circumstances, our brains are hard-wired for trusting a precarious existence to never-seen greater beings, though we’re also hard-wired to kill for lunch, and to copulate promiscuously. The development of social culture, however, promised to curb these natural instincts for the greater good of the species. Social culture is in fact speeded-up evolution. The continued practising of religion threatens the process. “Its detritus clogs the evolutionary artery,” he insists.

Mains often displays an evangelical energy – as one voice puts it – in his assault on religion, therefore leaving himself open to accusations of devotion to the god of commercial atheism, but there is intellectual depth to his reasoning, too. His warning is that the disease tends to intensify, with mortal implications for the rest of us, among susceptible groups in certain conditions which the present global socio-politico-economic climate is particularly effective at producing. Later in The Shepherdess, with Craig Mains no longer sharing the dialogue, there is an attempt to strip away the somewhat complacent personality in order to get at the raw ideas.