Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia

by John Gray

Black Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia by Gray, John [Farra...

Genres: Philosophy, Politics, Nonfiction, Religion, History, Sociology, Cultural

243 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2007

About the author

John Nicholas Gray is a English political philosopher with interests in analytic philosophy and the history of ideas. He retired in 2008 as School Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Gray contributes regularly to The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement and the New Statesman, where he is the lead book reviewer.

Reviews

[BlackOxford · Rating 4 out of 5]

Do-Gooders With Guns

Faith destroys politics. Because faith makes some desires non-negotiable, it leads inevitably to violence. It matters not that the faith is religious or ideological. Gray’s thesis is consistent with that of the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben ( https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ) and of the American social critic Chris Lehman (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...). Christianity introduced the idea of religious faith from whence it infected the world’s consciousness. Faith has since become a synonym for religion throughout the world.

Gray traces the intellectual/political history of Christian faith, particularly its apocalyptic and eschatological doctrines, from its early stages, into the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and finally the philosophical and ideological movements of the 20th century and the policies of national leaders. His claim is that as the Christian religion has declined the principles of its faith have been absorbed into secular ideologies. Various forms of political idealism - communism, fascism, democratic capitalism - are restatements of the myths of apocalyptic reform and salvation using modern vocabulary - war on terror, regime change, WMD, democratic values, etc.

Both Liberals and Conservatives, professed atheists and believers, revolutionaries and counter-terrorists share virtually the same metaphysical presumptions about human destiny - free will, the redemptive potential of humanity, the inevitability of final justice, etc. These are Christian fantasies, useful perhaps for providing personal meaning in the world, disastrous as the basis for policy-making and political action. They provoke a distorted appreciation of reality and suggest responses which almost always result in failure, disappointment, and considerably greater misery for all concerned.

I am in sympathy with Gray’s analysis. But I am also disappointed that he did not extend it from the political into the technological and sociological. Today, theologically generated idealism - in business, government, academics, and of course ecclesiastical theology - is taken for granted as the appropriate mode of thinking. We have faith in Science, Markets, Freedom, Technology, Elected Governments as well as often some Higher Power to prevent the worst consequences of environmental catastrophe, mass immigration, nuclear derangement, wealth imbalances, racism, and pandemics.

Meanwhile, society is being destroyed by single-issue aggrievements that have become matters of faith. Utopian idealism goes under the guise of ‘vision’ and ‘strategic thinking’ in business. Academia promotes idealistic faith like no other institution - in neo-liberal economics, phoney professional altruism, and redemption by algorithm. Do-gooders with guns line up against each other at every opportunity to demonstrate the intensity of their commitments - either to a tradition or to the annihilation of a tradition. That the past is not past at all but constitutes the excess psychic baggage we carry around that trips us up constantly suggests the need for some urgent cultural therapy. I presume this is the point of Gray’s analysis, to inject a smidgen of humility into a global culture of human perfectibility.

[Jim Coughenour · Rating 5 out of 5]

Picking up where he left off in his genuinely iconoclastic book Straw Dogs, John Gray turns his attention to the ineluctably human penchant for utopia and apocalyptic fantasy. His style here is less abrasive but no less bracing. A British commentator recently wrote of Gray, "He is so out of the box it is easy to forget there was ever any box" - which fairly describes the intellectual jolt he'll deliver to readers dulled by boxy thinking.

The previous reviewer has done a decent job of describing the argument, but any summary misses the electricity that hums in Gray's sentences. Gray's unsparing synopsis of the neo-conservative fantasy that led to the debacle in Iraq will have patriotic Americans grinding their teeth in fury at the waste of American and Iraqi lives and the betrayal of American ideals. He also lambasts liberals who delude themselves about "inalienable" human rights, and minces no words about born-again Christians who've sanctioned and supported the torture and carnage – which leads him to a grim conclusion: "Liberals have come to believe that human freedom can be secured by constitutional guarantees. They have failed to grasp the Hobbesian truth ... that constitutions change with regimes. A regime shift has occurred in the US, which now stands somewhere between the law-governed state it was during most of its history and a species of illiberal democracy. The US has undergone this change not as a result of its corrosion by relativism ... but through the capture of government by fundamentalism. If the American regime as it has been known in the past ceases to exist, it will be a result of the power of faith." (pp. 168-169)

Gray is explicit about the folly of religious myths, but he accepts that "the mass of humankind will never be able to do without them," just as he dismisses "militant atheism" as a "by-product of Christianity," mocking its pretensions at evading the conundrums of theology. He's equally clear on the ineradicable future of terrorism. "Nothing is more human than the readiness to kill and die in order to secure a meaning in life." (p. 186) Following the bleak logic of these observations to their conclusion, he can only advocate a clear-eyed realism about the nature of human being - which he confesses may in turn be a self-deceiving hope: "a shift to realism may be a utopian ideal."

As I read Black Mass, I couldn't help recalling the work of William Pfaff, who as a political analyst practices the realism Gray recommends, and whose fine study The Bullet's Song examines the "redemptive utopian violence" as it was envisioned by a rogue's gallery of 20th century artist-intellectuals. Neither of these books are comfortable reading; neither offer a panacea - because (as Gray puts it) "there are moral dilemmas, some of which occur fairly regularly, for which there is no solution."

Black Mass – despite its silly title – is one of the most stimulating books I read in 2007.

[Rob Cook · Rating 5 out of 5]

The paradox of this kind of brilliantly game-changing book is that most of the people who really need to read it won't, and those that do will dismiss it because it criticises them. What Black Mass essentially amounts to is a call for realism in politics (not the same thing as realpolitik at all), an acceptance and toleration of difference, and a plea for the civilised cause of modus vivendi. To get to that, though, you have to have your brain exploded by the most clear-eyed, devastating and downright terrifying analysis of how we got to where we are that I have ever read. You're either going to throw the book across the room (possibly several times) or be collecting your jaw from the floor by the end of it. Or both.

[Richard Newton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed, if enjoyed is quite the right word, this frightening and disturbing book from Gray. I often read a book like this at Christmas as an antidote to the vacuousness that pervades much of it - as usual, I got a bit more than I bargained for with Gray.

The challenge with the book is that it contains both a general thesis about the failure, but continued attempts, to achieve various visions of utopia through force - and a much more detailed analysis of the war in Iraq undertaken largely by the US and the UK. They are both good and they are related, but the balance between them does not always work as a single book for me. I think this could be a timeless classic. But whilst the focus on the Iraq war may have seemed core in 2007 when the book was published, in 2018 when I read it, it feels slightly dated. However, overall the book does make important points - points which have been reinforced by what has actually happened in the last decade.

In the general book, Gray paints an interesting intellectual exercise linking various strains of Utopian and apocalyptic thinking. For me most interesting was the connection between the type of "Muslim terrorists" we hear a lot about in the news (and which Gray criticises our lazy categorisation and naming of) - and shows how western revolutionary thinking rather than traditional Muslim theology has influence them. More people in the West should understand this.

In the analysis of the Iraq war Gray gives a critique of the thinking behind the war and the role of people like Bush and Blair that is a very damning criticism of them personally and the whole undertaking. This was fascinating, and if Gray is right, both disturbing and frightening.

Overall, I ummed and ahhed between 4 and 5 stars, but as he writes so well it got the 5.

[Guillermo Jiménez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hay tiempo para envejecer. El aire está lleno de nuestros gritos. (Escucha) Pero la costumbre ensordece.
Vladimir en Esperando a Godot, de Samuel Beckett

Hay un tipo de escenas en el cine que me capturan: aquellas de paisajes o detalles de paisajes; los trigales a media tarde, el fluir lento de un río, la niebla en una montaña al amanecer, y más si va acompañada de sonidos ambientales o de música como la de Claire Rousay, quien no sé si hayan puesto en la banda sonora de algo, pero que el día de hoy me tiene secuestrado.

Bien podría leerse una bibliografía reducida y educar alrededor de ella y lograr un tipo de estudiantes que tengan una mejor inclinación por cuestionarse el mundo y las reglas caprichosas que hemos decidido que lo gobiernan.

En esa bibliografía no podría faltar la obra de Gray.

Si bien le doy la razón a quienes señalan que la visión “occidental” de autores estadounidenses y europeos es una que deja fuera la mayoría de las veces los puntos centrales de América Latina, también es cierto que no deja de ser esta la visión dominante del pensamiento contemporáneo.

Creo que sí, es necesario que leamos a una Verónica Gago, a una Sayak Valencia, entre otras; pero no podría dejar de lado las aportaciones que han hecho Gray o De Waal.

En Misa negra, Gray continúa desarrollando su crítica severa del progreso social, entendiéndolo como un mito más:

Tanto si ponen el acento en los cambios paulatinos como si lo hacen en la transformación revolucionaria, las teorías del progreso distan de ser hipótesis científicas. Son mitos que responden a la necesidad humana de sentido. (p. 15)

El libro está dividido en seis capítulos, y es en los primeros tres donde plasma el contexto de lo que va a ilustrar en la época actual en los posteriores tres capítulos, centrándose en los gobiernos de la New Right, de Margaret Thatcher, y neoconservador de George W. Bush.

Al inicio, dedica una buena parte del libro a explicarnos las raíces del totalitarismo, rastreando sus orígenes hasta la doctrina milenarista y como su pensamiento desembocó en una idea de política apocalíptica.

Podríamos extraer que una de las principales tesis de este libro de Gray es la influencia que ha ejercido la religión y sus distintas organizaciones en crearnos la idea de que la humanidad progresa, o puede progresar, de que mejora socialmente hablando; y que esta idea ha justificado desde la invasión de otros países con objetivos de dominación y poder económico y político, hasta la instauración de una “religión” justa y buena y liberal para el beneficio de toda la humanidad, incluyendo a aquellos que tienen otro sistema de creencias.

Terminé de leer este libro poco antes de la salida de Estados Unidos de Irak y ha sido como tener asiento de primera fila en un acontecimiento que fue debidamente señalado por Gray aquí: el que la guerra que detonó Bush contra Irak tenía otras raíces más allá del buscar armas de destrucción masiva, o dar cacería a los perpetradores del 9/11: la paranoia y el miedo religioso de los líderes de dos de los países más poderosos del mundo EUA e Inglaterra.

Ya desde las primeras páginas, Gray da la clave de lo que va a desarrollar a lo largo del libro:

La política de la edad contemporánea constituye otro capítulo más de la historia de la religión. (p 13)

Nuevamente, como sucede con los buenos libros, uno entra siendo una persona y sale con un nuevo par de lentes, Gray no falla, su puntería sigue siendo superlativamente superior a muchos otros autores que he leído, y demuestra, en otra obra más, que su lectura del mundo y la capacidad que tiene de unir los puntos para que podamos ver con más claridad la figura que es la realidad, nos sea asequible.

Actualmente, el mundo digital, las redes sociales, elevan un ruido ensordecer en un sin número de temas, todos opinan, todos tienen su agenda, sus estrategias de difusión, de desinformación, sus opiniones: los gritos del mundo entero son muchas veces mudos porque solo son texto en un tuit; y es fácil caer en la tentación de hacernos los que no escuchamos nada, y quedarnos estáticos... o decidir que deseamos llegar a viejos con una comprensión distinta a la que teníamos cuando éramos más jóvenes.

Yo diría que no, que prefiero seguir leyendo a Gray y seguirme planteando preguntas y cuestionamientos que me lleven a entenderme mejor, y que me inviten a tratar de comprender mejor a los demás. Como este libro hace.

[Simon Wood · Rating 3 out of 5]

PESSIMISM OF THE WILL, PESSIMISM OF THE INTELLECT.

At the centre of John Gray's book "Black Mass" is the not unreasonable assertion that grandiose plans to turn the world upside down and reach Utopia overnight have entailed a great deal of human misery and very little Utopia. There is nothing particularly novel in this assertion, though it is a little more palatable from the pen of John Gray, than say Isaiah Berlin (see "The Crooked Timber of Humanity") who liked to promote his own particular -ism (Zionism), including spying for them while in British government service.

Some Gray's contentions are interesting, for example the link between the search for Utopia and Christian doctrine. At other times he seems to over egg the pudding, as when he draws a link between the Holy Trinity and the three stages of orthodox Marxism (I thought it was four?), as if there is something particularly important about the number three. The association appears meaningless and asinine, despite the apparent solemnity and objectivity of Gray's tone.

Another problem was the continual flow of questionable generalisations with regard to historical facts and figures. Cuba is categorised as a totalitarian dystopia, but not a word on the circumstances in comparable countries in the US sphere (say Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, or indeed any of the Latin American countries). With regard to Russia, he talks of "when Russian voters repudiated Yeltsin in favour of Putin" when such a choice was never before the Russian electorate. His account of the end of the British post-war consensus is light on historical context and essentially shallow. The assertion that preventive war was a unique Bush doctrine is questionable, and though his administration was a vocal promoter the idea has had a long history in American policy, and no doubt will continue to.

Having said that, the criticisms of the Iraq War are pungent, but again focus on the alleged Utopian dimension of that policy (the US and UK bring liberal democratic capitalism to the Middle East) at the expense of a full appreciation of the factors that played a part in that misadventure. His criticisms of Francis Fukuyama, Milton Friedman, and a number of other ideologues are sharp and reasonable. The sections that deal with Leo Strauss, and the intellectual influence he has had with the American right, was a real - and scary - eye opener, and almost worth the admission price alone.

As far as solutions go, Gray posits that a sense of realism should inform foreign policy, though he admits that the last self-proclaimed realist (Henry Kissinger) contributions were less than ideal in Cambodia. This is being far too modest about Mr Kissinger's contribution to mass murder. With regard to the broader questions of society, the feeling is one of helplessness and pessimism about the advisability of striving for anything that might be regarded as progress. This is the hole in the book, Gray has nothing much to say on how we should live collectively, though he does suggest that we would be better advised spending time with poets and hedonists. Pleasant company I'm sure, and not to be avoided if the chance presents itself, but does this really make him the "the most important living philosopher" as the back page blurb states?

With all those reservations, I still found it interesting, occasionally entertaining, informative, and always provocative reading. It just doesn't seem to me to be as profound, and as comprehensive as some are making it out to be. Read it by all means, but with a pinch of salt and critical faculties at the ready.

[Murtaza · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Straw Dogs" by John Gray was probably one of the most iconoclastic books I've ever read. In the years since, I've continued to follow Gray's books and essays, and, in general, I find that they all tend to be derivative in some way of the argument made in that book. In "Black Mass," Gray locates the roots of contemporary political ideology in religious myth, particularly Christian millenarian traditions. This is similar to what he did in Straw Dogs where he traced the genealogy of contemporary secular humanism in Christianity, essentially debunking its claims to secularity.

This book is strange in that it somehow feels both timeless and dated. During the period of the Bush administration there were a number of books that tried to unpack the ideological grounding of neoconservatism and this clearly fits into that genre. Being familiar with Gray's arguments, it was not surprising or revelatory for me to read that the teleological views of history endorsed by Marx, Lenin and Fukuyama had their antecedents in religious thought. This is very clear to anyone who understands that modern ideologies are the products of what came before them and not created ex nihilo, an argument that runs through much of Gray's work.

The thing with icons is that you can only smash them once. After reading Straw Dogs my view of the world was genuinely altered, which I think is the highest achievement a book can aim for. While this book is solid and worthwhile, it felt like a retread to me personally and did not have the same revelatory effect.

[Jay Green · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF. The grating "common-sense" style, which rests on too many unsubstantiated generalizations, is just too much for me. I want my social theorists to provide evidence of extensive empirical research and rigorous argumentation, not this home-spun contrarianism. Describing Marxism as utopian when Engels devoted an entire book specifically to explaining why Marxism was not utopian is just one example of the fast-and-loose approach adopted here. I had to wonder if Gray was simply trying to get up people's noses for the sake of it or if he simply knows his target demographic and is giving them exactly what they want. Either way, the writing feels sophomoric, rather than wise. Perhaps that's why it reads like a sophomore's idea of wisdom.

[Chris Lynch]

John Gray has written a powerful critique here of those who would seek to apply their prescriptive political formulas to the whole world, demanding that human nature re-shape itself to fit their narrow ideals.



Gray's thesis is that the globalist utopian political movements of the past century - first totalitarian communism, then unfettered capitalism, are rooted in western Christian eschatological thinking and an expectation that, after some great apocalyptic struggle or upheaval, the world will enter a post-historic utopia in which a single universal social and economic model will prevail. Gray believes that this utopian meme made the leap from religious to secular thought during the Enlightenment and has gathered steam ever since, and is now allied to an emergent latter-day religious fundamentalism that shares its ideals.



Readers who strongly self-identify with the contemporary political right will, I think, typically want to dismiss Gray as a 'leftie' - in my experience these people often want to lump everyone who disagrees with unfettered global capitalism under this heading - but in fact in this book he pours nearly equal scorn on political movements of all flavours. Marxist die-hards won't find much comfort reading this either. If anything, he seems to gives a respectful nod to paleoconservatism or traditional conservatism as having more of the right idea than the global capitalism/communism evangelists.



Gray presents many compelling arguments and pieces of historical evidence to support his case, and his narrative eventually builds towards an analysis of the Iraq war in the light of its true underlying motivations - yes, a resource war at heart, but also one that was justified by the aggressors in terms of utopian liberal democratic objectives that now lie in tatters, with an illiberal, theocratically dominated form of government similar to that of Iran being the most likely kind of state to eventually emerge from the post-war ruins by simple virtue of the fact that this is what the majority of the populace actually want. Though we will have to wait until the troops leave and observe how Iraq fares standing on its own two feet before we can pass judgement on Gray's prediction, of course.



Gray concludes with a call for realism to prevail - an acceptance that no single one-size-fits-all global system of economics and government is going to please all of the people all of the time. He believes that the role of government is to navigate a path between the poles of social and economic extremes, a path that is essentially a compromise that will leave some people disattisfied at its imperfections. This is to be accepted because when either individualism or collectivism are allowed to dominate the result is invariably misery for a far greater number of people.



Gray also believes that it is naiive to expect secular democracy to become the universal model for government anytime soon. He sees religion and faith - in their more moderate forms - as playing such an important role in the fabric of many world communities that it would be foolhardy to expect to wave a magic wand and have them all become secular humanists overnight.



Once I started reading this I couldn't put it down. I found a lot in this book that I could agree with and that resonated with my own lines of thinking. That said, my own belief in the value of a strong world government - albeit with a narrowly defined remit that is tolerant of regional and cultural diversity - might not find favour with Gray....or at least, he might see this as unachievable without resort to violence. But that's another story....this book has certainly made me think hard about the difficulties of bringing such a government into being, desirable though it may be for several important purposes.



I also felt that Gray was a little too fatalistic about the unchangeability of human nature at times, almost to the point of seeming to support the notion of biological determinism - though perhaps what he was really saying is that we should be more realistic in our expectations about how quickly human nature is capable of changing.



I was particularly amused by his analysis of Margaret Thatcher - someone who longed for a return to the social values of the 50's, but who herself wrecked any chances of that happening by her endorsement of a ruthless, liberalised, competitive economy. Britain's economy in the 1950's was managed by Keynesian principles of state intervention, by mutual agreement of Labour and the Conservatives, and Britain had just emerged from a war that encouraged a spirit of togetherness and cooperation - the antithesis of the social and economic spirit of the 80's. He's not totally dismissive of Mrs T, though, acknowledging that she did a necessary job during the early years of her tenure.



Highly recommended.

[Szplug · Rating 4 out of 5]

A singularly unsettling offering from John Gray, upsetter of apple-carts and disturber of conventional wisdom par excellence. In Black Mass he continues his assault upon Progressivism, this time concentrating on the pernicious effect of Western European monotheism - having infected philosophy and, subsequently, Enlightenment thought and science - on modern political and societal institutions, soaking the latter in eschatological and utopian myths and illusions and being ultimately responsible for the savage violence and sheer destructiveness that have followed in the wake of twentieth-century modernity.

Gray provides extremely thought-provoking interpretations and analysis of the surge-and-dominance of neo-conservative doctrines, putting forth his evidence for Tony Blair as a convert, tacking to the natural position left open after Margaret Thatcher's ideological and political "victories" created an inviting void in British politics. Fundamentalist Islam is dissected to reveal the flush strains of modernity - the same utopian dreams of the victory of (islamic) good - that lie at its core, underneath the medieval trappings projected to the rest of the world. Of particular interest is the middle chapter on the misguided beliefs, after the end of the Cold War, that there might have arisen an "End of History", and the subsequent exportation of global capitalism and liberal democracy - replete with fervent missionaries to spread the holy word - which, despite its seeming secularity, is really just a mutation of Protestant Christianity into a liberal version called humanism. The liturgy and forms of worship have changed - indeed, God has found Himself superseded by regnant Mankind - but the belief in History with a Purpose, of humanity constantly improving in every aspect - and improvable to perfection - remains.

Gray has written a thoughtful and persuasive book, in direct, engaging, and clutter-free prose that moves briskly from one position to the next. The Anchor-Canada edition that I read had enough typos to set my teeth on edge - it may be ridiculous how much a poorly-proofed book riles me, but that's just the way it is - and the title itself is actually quite misleading as to what the contents contain, but these are small irritants. Black Mass is that best of political/philosophical works: one that leaves the reader pondering and debating its theories and themes long after the final page has been reached.

[Judith Smulders · Rating 3 out of 5]

Even though this book is considerably less silly than Straw Dogs it is still full of empty criticism and half-truths. I get the point that there may be many different viewpoints in a society yet that doesn't mean that a capitalist system with a democratic system is anymore satisfactory than a communist system. This particular argument of pluriformity is only used by Gray against communism yet in democratic countries any real change on the economic side is barely - if at all -possible.
Another dubious claim is that Islamic radicalism/terrorism is a western creation. Gray should know that Ali Shariati, the creator of socialist shiism, was in fact educated in the west (at the Sorbonne in Paris) and therefore his writings show extensive similarities with western thinkers. It is sensible to pour the same ideas of Islamic renewal into a new form, mostly adapted from the west.
Whilst his arguments against the war in Iraq are largely valid, he fails to point out that, besides all the lies, Saddam Hussein did in fact have chemical weapons and had actually used them against the Kurds (most notably in Halabja) and Iran during the Iran-Iraq war. And if Saddam didn't pose any threat to his neighbours what about the wars that he had initiated against Kuwait and Iran. And despicable as might be, Bush and Blair's policy was bloody but Clinton's sanctions no less by starving the population of Iraq.
The most ludicrous comment of Gray on the current geopolitical situation is that Iran under repressive regime of the Ayatollah Khamenei is actually a sort of democracy. 34 Years of bloodshed, absence of freedom of assembly-opinion-expression, torture, unjust incarceration, torture, public executions, rigged elections, a ban on labor unions, assassinations of labor activists, enormous corruption: in what definition is this some sort of democracy?

[Ade Bailey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes I just have to read Gray to get centred. This is largely an interpretation of the fairy stories inhabiting many of the key players in the disastrous and wicked decision to invade Iraq. As ever, the whole is interpenetrated with a hatchet job on neo-enlightenment myths ofprogress.

[Matt Ralph · Rating 5 out of 5]

If anyone knows of a writer functioning at this level, on these topics and related (especially environmental issues), please let me know.
Brilliant.

‘(Hannah) Arendt also portrayed totalitarian states as impersonal machines in which individual responsibility was practically non-existent.’ P. 53

‘Less well known is the work of Ilya Ivanov, who in the mid-twenties was charged by Stalin with the task of cross-breeding apes with humans. Stalin was not interested in filling the world with replicas of Aristotle and Goethe. He wanted a new breed of soldier – ‘a new, invincible human being’, highly resistant to pain, that needed little food or sleep… (horse breeder Ilya Ivanov) travelled to a West Africa to conduct trials impregnating chimpanzees… humans were impregnated with ape sperm. A number of experiments were attempted, but unsurprisingly all of them failed.’ P. 58

‘For the most part western opinion saw in the Stalinist Soviet Union an image of its utopian fantasies, and it projected the same image on to Maoist China, where the human cost of communism was even greater. Some thirty-eight million people perished between 1958 and 1961 in the Great Leap Forward.’ P. 70

‘What the Nazis owed to the Romantics was a belief also shared by many Enlightenment thinkers – the idea that society had once been an organic whole and could so be again at some time in the future.’ P. 78
Remind you of anyone? Make America great again. The fantasy of the good old days.

‘No society has ever been a harmonious whole, and with its suspicion of conflict and diversity the idea of organic community is always liable to be used against minorities.’ P. 79

Quote from Oliver Roy
‘The figure of the lonely metaphysical terrorist who blew himself up with his bomb appeared in Russia at the end of the nineteenth century… The real genesis of al-Quaeda violence has more to do with a Western tradition of individual and pessimistic revolt for an elusive ideal world than with the Koranic conception of martyrdom.’ P. 97

‘If the débâcle in Iraq has undermined these hopes (of worldwide liberal democracies) the rise of authoritarian Russia and China has shattered the assumption that post-communist countries are bound to take western institutions as their model. Yet, despite this refutation by history, the myth that humanity is moving towards adopting the same values and institutions remains embedded in western consciousness.’ P. 104

‘The hideous facts of life in Iraq refute the post-modern dogma that truth is a construction of power.’ P. 148

Leo Strauss quote
‘the philosopher ceases to be a philosopher when certainty of a solution becomes stronger than his awareness of the problematic character of the solution.’ P. 187

‘They omitted to consider the possibility that these defectors might have been dispatched to foster the belief (which some of them may have believed to be true) that Saddam had an active weapons program, when in fact he did not. Insofar as it projected an image that enhanced his power in Iraq and throughout the Arab world it was a belief that served Saddam’s interests.’ Pp. 200-201
Good to see the work and sentiments of Dr David Kelly expressed (British scientist charged with investigating WMDs who suicided after not being listened to, being made a scapegoat). Saddam was playing a dangerous game, and it suited the Bush regime perhaps to exploit his lack of a denial about having WMDs.

‘A predictable effect of the war was to demonstrate to ‘rogue states’ around the world that they would be better off having the WMD that Saddam lacked – otherwise, like Iraq, they would be vulnerable to American attack.’ P. 211

‘A report by the US Department of Energy entitled Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation and Risk Management, which was released in February 2005, concludes: ‘The world has never faced a problem like this. Without massive mitigation more than a decade before the fact, the problem will be pervasive and will not be temporary. Previous energy transitions (wood to coal and coal to oil) were gradual and evolutionary; oil peaking will be abrupt and revolutionary.’ P. 213

‘Much that is dead doesn't today as terrorism was viewed in the past as insurrection or civil conflict and recognized to be part of struggles that are local in nature. Techniques such as the bombing of government buildings and the assassination of public officials are the stock in trade of national liberation struggles and were employed in places as diverse as Palestine and Malaya under British rule, French Algeria and Vietnam during American occupation. Terrorist techniques are used because they are cheap and highly effective. They are normally employed on a large scale over extended periods only in circumstances of severe conflict when other methods have failed. In other words, terrorism is often a rational strategy.’ P. 247

‘In the first rigorous empirical study of the subject, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, Robert Pape analysed all known cases between 1980 and 2004 and found that over 95 per cent of all incidents had clear political objectives.’ P. 249

‘The danger of Islamic terrorism is real, but declaring war on the world is not a sensible way of dealing with it. Except in a few countries – such as Saudi Arabia, Israel and Iraq – terrorists pose a security problem rather than a strategic threat. There is no clear enemy against which war can be directed or any point at which victory can be announced. As has often been noted, disabling terrorists is a type of police work that requires support from their host communities. It is not facilitated by futile wars in Islamic lands or by discriminatory policies targeting Muslims in western countries. While concentrated military action may sometimes be effective – as in the destruction of training bases in Afghanistan – conventional military operations are usually counter-productive. Enhanced security measures and continuous political engagement are the only strategies that have ever brought terrorism under control.’ P. 252

‘Nothing is more human than the readiness to kill and die in order to secure a meaning in life.’ P. 263

‘…humanity cannot advance or retreat, for humanity cannot act: there is no collective entity with intentions or purposes, only ephemeral struggling animals each with its own passions and illusions.’ P. 265

‘Realism requires a discipline of thought that may be too austere for a culture that prizes psychological comfort above anything else, and it is a reasonable question whether western liberal societies are capable of the moral effort that is involved in setting aside the hopes of world-transformation.’ Pp. 272-273

‘The heady certainty of faith, which sees every crisis as a heaven-sent opportunity to save humanity, is ill-suited to dealing with dangers that can never be defused. In times of danger, stoical determination and intellectual detachment are more useful qualities, and at its best realism embodied them.’ P. 274

‘Classical warfare (Clausewitzian) remains a major evil, but even when it is total it can be ended by agreement – diplomats can meet, negotiate a settlement and declare peace. No such agreement can be reached with global terrorist networks, which may be internally divided and lack negotiable goals.’ P. 283

As the writer and psychoanalyst Adam Philips has written, ‘Clearly, apocalyptic thinking is nostalgia at its very worst.’ The effect of seeking refuge in an imaginary future harmony is to bind us to the conflicts of the past.’ P. 292

I love the Sunday Telegraph review quote on the back of the book:
'A load of bollocks. Could hardly be more bonkers if it was crawling with lizards.'
They are a conservative British newspaper. It's sad there are enough people with those kind of views for that paper to function. Books like this are an antidote, even if Telegraph readers never read it, maybe the readers of this book can find a way to communicate the ideas to the less intellectually fortunate. Maybe as a comic strip.

[David Rush · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book. It offers a cool way to understand how the modern world has apparently been taken over by irrational but thoroughly convinced fanatics, be they jihadists, christian fundamentalists or simple tea-party nut-jobs.

He starts off with a review of Millenarian-ism. And thinks that the idea of utopia came from religion but is now taken up by the modern conservative movement and many radical religious people. Meaning there is a wonderful and almost perfect world that is an achievable goal, but only if you are pure enough and can rid the world of the evil that is all around us. I am reminded of Atlas Shrugged which I read as a teenager, where the goal was the purity of a un-alloyed capitalist system that was built in a mountain valley paradise (a Utopia). Where the true believers bring it to fruition away from the despoiled world they left behind. (Did Ayn Rand recognize the structural resemblance to Lost Horizon?)
 
And this does fit nicely into the traditional millennial views that include years of tribulation and pain where the world is purified AND the Chicago style economists who think the old impure systems have to be broken down in order to rebuilt correctly. Basically what Naomi Klein says in The Shock Doctrine.
 
And now that the neo-conservative movement is thoroughly tied to the evangelical movement, modern American politics is more like a medieval millennial worldview than an economic philosophy. And both see a utopian goal at the end of the historical tunnel.

And as usual Gray gives us many wonderful quotes.
 
“…the authors of the Federalist Papers, who viewed government as a means of coping with human imperfection rather than an instrument for recreating society.” Pg 33
 
“the political violence of the modern West can only be understood as an eschatological phenomenon  .” pg 34
  
“The particular achievement of Enlightenment racism was to give genocide the blessing of science and civilization. Mass murder could be justified  by faux-Darwinian ideas of survival of the fittest, and the destruction of entire people could be welcomed as part of the advance of the species” pg 62

 
“What is unique to the modern West is the formative role of the faith that violence can save the world” 73

“Ideological thinking tends to adopt a one-size-fits-all approach to society…”pg 83
 
The section on the invasion of Iraq does a good job of showing how once the Millenarian view is accepted facts are at best a secondary consideration, from the point of “truth is whatever serves the cause” (pg 103) and it is almost a Seinfeld-Costanza view of “It’s not a lie if you believe it”. Except in this case a country is invaded and thousands of people die.

This is followed up with the insightful quote from Joan Didion about Bush and Cheney…
 
“…What the vice-president was doing then, was not cherry-picking the intelligence but rejecting it with whatever self-interested rumor better advanced his narrative. ” pg 142
 
Gray explains how this is called "hermetic interpretation" of “Intelligence”, where what facts are found is much, much less important than what is not found. And since there is so much in the world of investigation that is “not” found, once you know what the goal is you can use the not found facts to prove anything. It is hard to explain but really quite clever.

One can image the powerful of the world getting on board with this since it enhances their power, but why do the millions of followers buy into it? And religion comes back into the story.

“By taking up terror they ceased to be drifters and became warriors” pg. 178

Admission that the Enlightenment hope of man perfected by man is gone we find that we are back to the old time religion. REALLY old time religion. But don't don't expect Gray to offer a Richard Dawkins condemnation of religion, because ultimately it is about people hating not having a sense of purpose. And with that in play, any other actions become possible once you have purpose. ANY action.

“Nothing is more human than the readiness to kill and die in order to secure a meaning in life”

He comes back around for a few jabs at the atheists again, mainly for their unfounded view that if people would just think for themselves ( i.e. Like the atheists do), they would stop all this religion nonsense. And he uses Spinoza to do it.

(For Spinoza)Religions are not literally true as their followers believe. They are myths that preserve in symbolic or metaphorical form of truths that might otherwise be lost on the mass of mankind who will never be able to do without them. Pg 186

In fact the more people think they are repressing longings for religion...

“like repressed sexual desire, faith returns in grotesque forms to govern the lives of those who deny it” 190

The closing section brings some themes together, with al-qaeda and Neocons both having a "teleological view of history". And both wrap themselves in a blanket of religion. And those who think religion will wither away are doomed to disappointment.

It also returns in the form of a “Framework of thought” as Gray points out that the evangelical atheists take on the same way of thinking as their bible believing doppelgangers.

But back to the objectively insane world we live in, where people eagerly give up what I would call freedom of thought and self.Or something like that, hey...he is the writer, not me. But he does have a nice way of describing the situation, where tyrants and states not only want control but..”they are also vehicles for myths, fantasies and mass psychosis” pg 199


------

A short afterthought...Why is it call the the Death of Utopia? At the very end he says the Enlightenment Utopia and Bush/Cheney Iraq Utopia are both dead.
But he spent the whole book tracing how a Utopian way of thought has been adopted by widely divergent worldviews, like the current crop of right wing idealists and Islamic extremists who have taken up Utopian visions. Maybe I just missed a crucial sentence in the last few pages.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book when I first read it and even on a subsequent reading but at no time did I think it was profound. It was clearly a book inspired by, not events, but headlines and more honestly sound-bites. As the events/headlines/soundbites that inspired it recede into the past and are forgotten except in broad outline it becomes ever less worth reading. My two stars reflect that it wasn't even when it came out very good but is now irrelevant, like all the other instant books.

[JCJBergman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this piece, though I don't think I got as much as I could have got out of it considering my interest in politics is less than that of philosophy and religion. Once my knowledge of politics is up to par, I will very likely understand this book far better than I have on my first time reading it. The first half of the piece I enjoyed more than the latter, considering the former is more focused on history whereas later on Gray focuses on modern politics of the past few decades.
Gray continues to be an excellent writer and his insights have not ceased to lose their quality now that I have finished a third book by him.

Some passages I found specifically interesting:

“The pursuit of a condition of harmony defines utopian thought and discloses its basic unreality. Conflict is a universal feature of human life. It seems to be natural for human beings to want incompatible things - excitement and a quiet life, freedom and security, truth and a picture of the world that flatters their sense of self-importance. A conflict-free existence is impossible for humans, and wherever it is attempted the result is intolerable to them. If human dreams were achieved, the result would be worse than any aborted Utopia. Luckily, visions of an ideal world are never realised. At the same time, the prospect of a life without conflict has a powerful appeal. In effect it is the idea of perfection attributed in some traditions to God. In religion the idea of perfection answers a need for individual salvation. In politics it expresses a similar yearning, but it soon runs up against other human needs. Utopias are dreams of collective deliverance that in waking life are found to be nightmares.” // Pg.17

“Marx showed how unreal are all visions of marrying the free market to bourgeois values. Far from being utopian, his account of capitalism is a vital corrective to the utopian visions that have distorted politics over the past generation. It is Marx's vision of the alternative to capitalism that is utopian. Though he understood capitalism better than most economists in his day or ours, Marx's conception of communism was dangerously impractical. Central planning was bound to fail: no one can know enough to plan a modern economy and no one is good enough to be entrusted with the power to govern it. Worse, Marx believed that with the arrival of communism the conflicts of values that had existed throughout history would cease, and society could be organised around a single conception of the good life. It was a belief that was to have disastrous consequences, as will be seen [in the Soviet Union].” // Pg.19

“The question remains how a utopia is to be recognised. How do we know when a project is unrealisable? Some of the greatest human advances were once believed to be impossible. The campaign to abolish slavery that began in the early nineteenth century was opposed on the ground that slavery will always be with us. Yet it was fortunately successful - the Slavery Abolition Act was passed in Britain in 1833 making slavery illegal throughout the British Empire, serfdom was abolished in Tsarist Russia in 186r and in 186s the Thirteenth Amendment was passed in the US making slavery illegal. These acts removed a barbarous practice and expanded human freedom. Does this not show the value of the utopian imagination? I think not. To seek to end slavery was not to pursue an unrealisable goal. Many societies have lacked slavery, and to abolish the institution was only to achieve a state of affairs others have taken for granted. At the same time, the condition of servitude was not abolished. During the twentieth century slave labour was used on a vast scale in Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia and Maoist China. Humans were not the tradable commodities they had been in chattel slavery; but they were resources that could be used at will, and exploited until they died. Slavery was reinvented in new forms, as horrible as any in the past. At the start of the twenty-first century, a form of chattel slavery has re-emerged in the form of human trafficking.” // Pg.20

“Nowadays "the West' defines itself in terms of liberal democracy and human rights." The implication is that the totalitarian movements of the last century formed no part of the West, when in truth these movements renewed some of the oldest western traditions. If anything defines ‘the West' it is the pursuit of salvation in history. It is historical teleology - the belief that history has a built-in purpose or goal rather than traditions of democracy or tolerance, that sets western civilisation apart from all others. By itself this does not produce mass terror - other conditions including large-scale social dislocation are required before that can come about. The crimes of the twentieth century were not inevitable. They involved all kinds of historical accidents and individual decisions. Again, there is nothing peculiarly western about mass murder. What is unique to the modern West is the formative role of the faith that violence can save the world. Totalitarian terror in the last century was part of a western project of taking history by storm. The twenty-first century began with another attempt at this project, with the Right taking over from the Left as the vehicle of revolutionary change.” // Pg.73

“It is not always because human beings act irrationally that they fail to achieve peace. Sometimes it is because they do not want peace. They may want the victory of the One True Faith - whether a traditional religion or a secular successor such as communism, democracy or universal human rights. Or - like the young people who joined far-Left terrorist groups in the 1970s, another generation of which is now joining Islamist networks - they may find in war a purpose that is lacking in peace. Nothing is more human than the readiness to kill and die in order to secure a meaning in life.” // Pg.186

“Secular thinkers find this view of human affairs dispiriting, and most have retreated to some version of the Christian view in which history is a narrative of redemption. The most common of these narratives are theories of progress, in which the growth of knowledge enables humanity to advance and improve its condition. Actually, humanity cannot advance or retreat, for humanity cannot act: there is no collective entity with intentions or purposes, only ephemeral struggling animals each with its own passions and illusions. The growth of scientific knowledge cannot alter this fact. Believers in progress - whether social democrats or neo-conservatives, Marxists, anarchists or technocratic Positivists - think of ethics and politics as being like science, with each step forward enabling further advances in future. Improvement in society is cumulative, they believe, so that the elimination of one evil can be followed by the removal of others in an open-ended process. But human affairs show no sign of being additive in this way: what is gained can always be lost, sometimes as with the return of torture as an accepted technique in war and government - in the blink of an eye. Human knowledge tends to increase, but humans do not become any more civilised as a result. They remain prone to every kind of barbarism, and while the growth of knowledge allows them to improve their material conditions, it also increases the savagery of their conflicts.” // Pg.187-8

“Contemporary atheism is a Christian heresy that differs from earlier heresies chiefly in its intellectual crudity." This is nowhere clearer than in its view of religion itself. Marx held to a reductive view in which religion was a by-product of oppression; but he was clear it expressed the deepest human aspirations - it was not only the opiate of the masses but also 'the heart of a heartless world'. The French Positivists wanted to replace Christianity by a ridiculous Religion of Humanity; but they understood that religion answered to universal human needs. Only a very credulous philosopher could believe that showing religion is an illusion will make it disappear. That assumes the human mind is an organ attuned to truth - a quasi-Platonic conception that is closer to religion than science and inconsistent with Darwinism. Yet such seems to be the view of contemporary unbelievers.
The chief significance of evangelical atheism is in demonstrating the unreality of secularisation. Talk of secularism is meaningful when it refers to the weakness of traditional religious belief or the lack of power of churches and other religious bodies. That is what is meant when we say Britain is a more secular country than the United States, and in this sense secularism is an achievable condition. But if it means a type of society in which religion is absent, secularism is a kind of contradiction, for it is defined by what it excludes. Post-Christian secular societies are formed by the beliefs they reject, whereas a society that had truly left Christianity behind would lack the concepts that shaped secular thought.” // Pg.188

“The modern age has been a time of superstition no less than the medieval era, in some ways more so. Transcendental religions have many flaws and in the case of Christianity gave birth to savage violence, but at its best religion has been an attempt to deal with mystery rather than the hope that mystery will be unveiled. In the clash of fundamentalisms this civilising perception has been lost. Wars as ferocious as those of early modern times are being fought against a background of increased knowledge and power. Interacting with the struggle for natural resources, the violence of faith looks set to shape the coming century.” // Pg.210

[Clark Hays · Rating 4 out of 5]

Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia, John Gray, is not for everyone. Here’s a short list of people who probably shouldn’t read this book:

* Supporters of the Iraq war — you’ll be distressed to see all of the justifications ripped to shreds and various lies and contortions of “logic” laid bare.
* Opponents of the Iraq war – you will be distressed all over again.
* Religious fundamentalists – if you think religion (any of them) has the answers to the world’s problems, you will be distressed.
* Rational humanists – if you think science (particularly social evolution) and rational thought can answer the world’s problems, you will be distressed.

Also likely to be distressed: political theorists in general, neo-cons, liberals, the far right, the far left, people who think America (or Great Britain, or any country, for that matter) has a special significance in the world, communists, rapid climate change deniers, supporters of the war on terror … actually, it might be easier to list the people who will like this book: realists.

John Gray does his usual fine job untangling the threads of philosophy, social and religious history and human hubris that drive the worlds many historic and current missteps. In this particular book, he traces a peculiar strain of apocalyptic, end of the world Christianity and how it shapes, and continues to surface, in political and state systems including the Enlightenment, communism, Islamic fundamentalism and the current (he wrote the book in 2007) neo-conservative religio-political thought gripping America and driving the gloriously misguided Iraq invasion. At heart, all of these systems and many more are motivated by a belief that a glorious utopian “end of history” is coming and can be hastened by things like human-guided wars of democratization.

Gray does a great job of explaining, patiently but with a hard edge, why they are all mistaken. It’s a short but fascinating trip through the soaring excesses of the humans motivated by a sense of precious exceptionalism, a belief system that blinds us from obvious truths – we are part of history, not masters of it.

Here are a few of the jewels he throws out:

* (Concerning the Iraq war): No constitution can impose freedom where it is not wanted or preserve it where it is no longer valued.
* (Concerning why conflict seems to be ever present in the human condition): Nothing is more human than the readiness to kill and die in order to secure meaning in life.
* (Concerning the myth of collective progress) “…humanity cannot advance or retreat, for humanity cannot act: there is no collective entity with intentions or purposes, only ephemeral, struggling animals each with its own passions and illusions.
* (Concerning the human condition and the role of realism) The cardinal need is to change the prevailing view of human beings which sees them as inherently good creatures unaccountably burdened with a history of violence and oppression.

Clearly, this is not a book designed to make us feel good about the future, but it should be required reading for realists, and for anyone who wonders how to rise above our own short sighted obedience to an impossible “harmony of ethics” or utopian future in which struggles cease.

I enjoyed Straw Dogs more than this book, but still found it well worth the time and I hope his particular kind of realism comes to increasingly shape political and religious life.

[Riley Haas · Rating 3 out of 5]

"This is somewhat difficult for me because I mostly agree for Gray, but there are some very serious problems with this book.
First off, Gray's analysis of communism and Nazism is cursory and repetitive. It has been done better by many, by Voegelin (whom Gray cites once), Kolakowski (whom Gray also only cites once) and probably by Cohn (whom Gray seems to have gathered his argument from, since he doesn't claim to have taken it from Voegelin or Kolakowski).
I must take issue of his dismissing of Arendt (particularly two very disparate books of hers in about two paragraphs) as I don't think he takes her seriously enough. Things really improve when he moves on to his critique of neo-conservatism and his critiques of Bush and Thatcher (though the critique of Thatcher is half-assed). His points about neoliberalism and neo-conservatism are well taken and I am annoyed that he made them because I wanted to write a book about it. Boo.
Anyway, he's mostly right and this is the strength of the book. Honestly, in recommendation, I'd say read those chapters and don't worry too much about the initial chapters. If you really want to understand how communism (and to a lesser extent Nazism) is a religion, you should read Kolakowski, not Gray.
So things are going well, but then he says "The faith in Utopia, which killed so many in the centuries following the French Revolution, is dead." I thought he was joking. That's the kind of thing I would have written in a book like this only to say "Fooled You! Hahaha" (booming in Darth Helmet voice). He criticizes people for proclaiming the end of history and then proclaims the end of an idea. Has he not darkened the door of a university in a while or what? Utopianism is alive and well, not just in the remains of neo-conservatism (which, I hate to break it to him, is alive and kicking in the United States) but also in the numerous emancipatory "post-" ideologies. It is disguised better, but it's still there.
In this same chapter he also weakly admits that conservatism can be utopian, but he does not spend time critiquing it, like he was willing to criticize socialism and liberalism.
Finally, his conclusion that Realism (capital r) is the only solution is a little bizarre (partly because one of the guys he cites as a realist, Hedley Bull, is hardly a realist is the conventional sense). Are we talking about international relations or internal politics? He isn't sure.
In the final chapter he lumps in the liberal tradition of political theory with the liberal tradition in international relations, which are two very different things. Realism may be a reasonable critique of the liberal tradition of international relations, but it is not even a critique of the liberal tradition of political theory. I could go on and on and on.
Chapters 3-5 are very worth your time, if repetitive. But the rest of the book has some major issues."

[Scriptor Ignotus · Rating 3 out of 5]

The leitmotif of Black Mass is the historical relationship between progressive or revolutionary thinking and religious apocalypticism. Gray argues that the very notion of revolution, conceived as the turning over of society into a new era and a metaphysical "rebirth" of humanity, is the consequence of a legacy of religious apocalyptic expectation. Christianity and Islam, the two great occidental religions, infused the religious quest for meaning into the fabric of history itself, producing a conception of history as a linear pathway, with a beginning and an end, along which good and evil wrestle and truth unveils itself. This marked a radical departure from the pagan/polytheistic conception of history as an essentially meaningless series of happenings with no ultimate metaphysical purpose; good and evil were held to be timeless and there was no conception of an endpoint in which evil would be vanquished for all time.

Gray argues that modern utopian ideologies, from the Jacobinism of the French Revolution to the Neo-Conservative project to reshape the middle east under the Bush and Blair governments, represent a continuation of the religious historical progressivism that may be, more than any other ideological impulse, the defining feature of western history and civilization.

After an impressive beginning in which Gray lays out the tradition of apocalyptic expectation in western history from the radical reformers of the late middle ages to the Soviet experiment to neoliberalism, Gray ends up taking up a very typical line of conservative criticism of the Bush-Blair era. It is foolish to think that the west can simply impose its own ideological agenda on a people with a very different culture and history and different values, and all that.

Although the book shows its age a bit, I was drawn to reading it in the context of the rise of the Islamic State, which has dominated international news for months now. I've suspected that there is some sort of intellectual convergence between the mentality of militant islamists and militant secular leftists, and Gray, to my satisfaction, also notices a similarity. Islamism and Jacobinism are similar in their iconoclasm, their radical egalitarianism, and their anticipation of the coming of a new era in which the primordial follies of human nature will be overcome.

The Islamic State, according to Graeme Wood's fantastic article in The Atlantic, expects an epic final battle between the forces of good and evil to take place at Dabiq, in northern Syria, between the armies of Islam and the armies of "Rome", which the Islamic State's supporters take to be either the secular Turkish government or the United States. In an era in which religious eschatologies clash, it seems the apocalypse is here to stay.

[pat]

*goes to a history of ideas class once*

Obviously the political landscape was looking different in 2007, when this was published, but damn. Like I mentioned in an update once, his whole argument hinges between points that are too large to refute (basic history of ideas stuff like "what if I told you your idea of progress is a myth..." and "modernity is a project") and language games that function as scams allowing him to write more; for example, there's a statement in here about how American military involvement in the Middle East doesn't really count as imperialism, because even though (Gray admits) the US is more or less a nation-state making gains as imperialist empire, it lacked the necessary intent required for it to be considered "classic imperialism." What is the point of making note of something like this? Gray's writing is full of these uselessly padded differences without distinction. He sure has a lot to say about post-enlightenment ideas and their inconsistent relations to utopic and "apocalyptic" thought. But for him, the point doesn't go farther than tying various political policies, essentially, into the same relational web by picking out their utopic or apocalyptic attributes. It isn't impressive; history has happened, my mind is not blown. It's kind of like someone being obsessed with the idea of Die Hard being a Christmas movie; under a particular set of criteria, that is true, but we all know what is usually meant for something to be characterized as "A Christmas Movie," you aren't clever...
Finally, the last chapter, which tepidly advocates for some kind of pseudo-ideological "Realism" seems absolutely stupid– why is this sort of approach any better than all of those that have failed us before? Oh, it's just an attitude we should adopt towards foreign policy? What? It isn't worth it to get to upset, nobody even knows this book. But it's crazy he went on for 300 pages and really phoned it in– and it really doesn't pay off. All in all if this book shocks you then you're probably kind of a coward or a baby

[Dave · Rating 2 out of 5]

John Gray's a pretty interesting character. Most writers I can fit into a category within the first 10 pages. With this guy I'm still not really sure how I feel about him. He definitely said a lot of things I hated but there are good things here as well. He points out that communism and capitalism, contrary to popular belief, are not polar opposites, that history isn't teleological, that humanity isn't better off trying to converge on one universal system of perfect governance and that many of the goals of modern science are influenced by our culture's superstitious religious past. Unfortunately he's way off in other areas. He advocates nuclear power and GM crops, and totally misses the issues of scale and complexity (so of course sees "anarchy" as an evil on par with tyranny because it's just chaos that ensues during a collapse or coup rather than an arrangement of people living together without hierarchy). He actually gets really carried away with all the badly named political ideologies that are already so confusing to everyone, and only adds to the confusion by using them as provocatively as possible (neo-conservatives are apparently liberal and progressive?) He even comes across as kind of a weird combination of nihilist and elitist at times, sounding like any attempt at doing anything is utopian. Particularly, he seems to consider any form of violent resistance to be silly. Freedoms come from repression, leaders believe they're doing right even when they're obviously lying to further their agendas, we can't go back to a low-tech lifestyle, going forward is even worse, blah, blah, blah.... Too logically inconsistent, pedantic and pointless for my taste. To be fair though, it was at least interesting enough that I am willing to read one of his newer books. I figure maybe in the last 8 years he's come a little closer to "getting it."

[H Wesselius · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant so brilliant I read it twice. He describes the Enlightenment and its offspring's visions of progress as merely the secularization of the Christian eschatology, positioning the New Jerusalem on earth. Like all utopian movements its adherents are so faith driven they become compelled to impose it by force. Thus, he compares the Reign of Terror and the Purges to the Crusades and the Inquisition. Of interest is the tracing of secular utopianism from the left to the right in the form of neo-conservatism. A good perspective on Thatcher as a neo-liberal reformer not a neo-con. For Gray, the neo con vision of a universal application of American liberal democracy is similar to the universalism of Christianity and Communism. He advocates for realism and the loss of utopia providing a tonic to those of us dismayed by the endless crusading and wars to end all wars, drugs and terror. And great to see Spinoza appreciated for the genius and forerunner that he was.

[Manuel Correa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Creo que pensar en John Gray es como hacerlo con Michel Onfray, en el sentido en que ambos son filósofos que discuten desde el ateísmo y hacen una crítica a los sistemas de creencias de nuestro tiempo y sus consecuencias éticas y políticas. Además, ambos usan un lenguaje accesible y, acaso no serán tan aparentemente inescrutables pero con sencillez se aproximan a problemas ontológicos contempoeráneos. Esta lectura resulta estimulante, sobre todo por el carácter crítico con relación al rescate del realismo contra el utopismo que el laicismo hereda del cristianismo primitivo, sobre todo, el apocalíptico.

Este libro entra en el debate acerca del aspecto de la Modernidad como proyecto político y cultural que no termina de deshacerse de sus influencias ontoteológicas cristianas. En esta paradoja -que Gray explica a lo largo del libro- se colocan los problemas contemporáneos que precarizan la condición de los pueblos a largo plazo.

A diferencia de otros críticos como Carl Schmitt o filósofos como Hans Blumenberg, Gray parece dar por sentada la genealogía ontoteológica de la Modernidad como un conflicto que no podrá ser superado o resuelto. La crítica a la idea de progreso en el pensamiento moderno y la necesidad de lidiar con la diversidad de perspectivas (indeseables para el pensamiento de los filósofos modernos y posmodernos) es, para Gray, una premisa incuestionable.

[Al Bità · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another bracing foray by the maverick John Gray; this time essentially to critically examine the international politics of the last few decades or so. No one escapes his acerbic writing, and as he writes it, none of them should!

Gray's main thesis is that the horrors and stupidities perpetrated by the powers that be are all tinged with the grievous error of Apocalytic Religions which posit some kind of Utopia which they believe is achievable on earth through the implementation of military force if necessary. Such a Utopian view actually results in more misery then before, and the desired goal seems forever unachievable. For Gray, this stain can be directly attributed to the particular type of Apocalyptic vision created and developed by Christianity, and he argues that many if not all leaders of the West are tainted by that stain. He even argues that idealistic ideas about society developed more scientifically by the thinkers associated with the period of the Enlightenment are also subconsciously perpetuating the same fallacy.

What's great about this approach is that Gray is simply unafraid to tread on people's intellectual toes; and this is a perfect text for giving our more cherished ideals a good shaking over.

It is only in the concluding parts of this book that, unfortunately Gray seems to succumb to a kind of post-modernist kind of confused 'answer' to the dilemma he describes — and not that post-modernists are also often enough the target of Gray's attacks (how post-modernist can you get?!) Gray asks us to become 'realists', and by that he seems to argue that, politically speaking, someone like Machiavelli would be a good role model... On a more general note, he argues that certain Daoist attitudes are acceptable realism (I presume that here he means to refer to the earlier Philosophical Daoism, not the later Religious version with its Immortals and other types of gods...). Yet despite attacking religion, he also argues for an acceptance of them and an acceptance of their diversity as somehow coexisting and benefitting humanity through their acknowledgement of 'mystery'.

I happen to believe with Hitchens that religion poisons everything. I think that this is a realistic truth (in Gray's sense), and that arguing that it will be impossible to eliminate it from what and who we are does not diminish that truth. But to argue that we should all accept the varieties of religions equally, and that they should be allowed to co-exist harmoniously together is, in my opinion, an even more iniquitous position to hold. It is naive to think that religions can accept this. By their very definitions, they each stand for their 'absolute truth'; to acknowledge any other religion as equal would be considered an abomination. Even if it were possible for a time to coexist happily for a time, eventually the forces within each religious group will press the issue or what laws should be followed, what customs should prevail, what languages, what moral codes, etc. etc. We will soon again be at each others throats. And here we return to Gray's original thesis: we are all prone to being violent, cruel and sadistic.

In a sense, I don't think Gray has gone far enough. Sure, we all want the 'best', however we define it; but to blame wanting the best on some kind of Apocalyptic vision is surely only part of the problem. An earlier 'error' on which this is based is the Persian Dualism of Zoroastrianism — the mistaken notion that 'good' and 'evil' are separate and distinct ways of being created by different gods. And even further back, another even more basic 'error' is Animism, the belief that things have 'souls'. Maybe the real reality should start from there: there are no Spirits. If we can all accept that, then perhaps we can develop other alternative narratives to the miseries religions all seem to condemn Mankind with.

In the meantime, Gray's work here is a good 'cleansing' station for at least some of the problems we suffer today.

[Ioan Prydderch]

The fact that as a man who considers himself very much of the Left finds himself nodding along in agreement with a conservative philosopher underlines the ideological relationship between socialisms and conservatisms. The crux of the argument that the Enlightenment, rather than a liberation of humanity from religion has merely re-worked itself into modern political utopian ideologies, namely those of liberalism and, by extension, socialism is a compelling one.

The historicisation of the development of 'neo-conservatism' shows that despite its name it has much more in common with the political utopianism of the Enlightenment thought that was key to the founding of the USA; this in itself is useful for the re-appropriation of traditional conservative thought.

His argument that Enlightenment thought is an extension of religious theology has serious implications on the current school of atheists arguing for secularism and rationalism against supposedly 'religious' values. Furthermore it has implications for the radical Islamists who claim their culture and political thought as distinct whilst denying some of the more Nietzschean influences on their ideology.

I would argue as with any book has its many potholes: I'm not sure that there is such a thing as a notion of Arab exceptionalism towards democratic regimes given some of the successes of Arab democracy prior to European colonialism. Although I would agree that the export of democracy through the violence exercised by the American superpower is undesirable but Gray argues furthermore that this is the only way that democracy can come about. As he refers to in the case of US federalism, the significant role of the civil war is often understated which leads to similar thinking in the case of Iraq. Of course there is a gross historical and philosophical oversight in failing to look at successful examples of self-organisation along utopian communes i.e. Mondragon, Transition Network.

His denial of any tradition of Russian absolutism seems somewhat incongruent to what little else I have read on the subject. Gray's defence of Tsarism and his criticism of Stalinism falls into the same revolutionary thinking of communism in the sense that it denies any historical continuity within those two regimes. One might argue also the current state of Russian democracy and the rise of Vladimir Putin who may, or may not run again for the presidency if he can interpret the constitution loosely enough, displays that even post-Cold war the remnants of Russian absolutism are still there which would disprove Gray's claims that Russian Tsarism was not all that bad.

Furthermore on a topical note his argument that "by
almost any standard the US is a less secular country than Turkey" is somewhat more contestible following this week's referendum. The fact that the website of Richard Dawkins is banned in Turkey may be enough to argue that it is definitely not.

What Gray leaves us with us a gripping, polemical and therefore flawed history of political thought and also its links to the apocalyptic religions of the Middle East.

[Dimitrije Vojnov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pročitao sam BLACK MASS Johna Graya, knjigu u kojoj ovaj politikolog razjašnjava pitanja uticaja religije u savremenoj politici, prepoznaje njene konstruktivne i destruktivne uticaje, i slično mnogim drugim teoretičarima otvara pitanje sekularizma, i njegove povezanosti sa religijom odnosno neizbežne sprege religije i sekularizma. Međutim, ono što je ključni doprinos koji Gray donosi jeste iznošenje teze da su veliki utopijski projekti, od komunizma i nacizma do neoliberalizma zapravo bili bazirani na hrišćanskim milenijarističkim učenjima, i da pseudonauke koje su se krile unutar njih zapravo mnogo više duguju hrišćanskim tradicijama, kojoj god formi njene tradicije one da pripadaju, nego bilo čemu drugom, čak i kada su direktno usmerene protiv crkve i vere.

U osnovi militantnih ideologija koje su želele da menjaju svet i učine ga savršenim mestom za nekoga (bili to svi ljudi, ili pak samo jedna nacija) po Grayu se mogu prepoznati osnovi potekli iz Prosvetiteljstva ali iz rezonovanja o apokalipsi, ne samo kao kraju sveta već i kao novom početku.

Gray eksplicira ovaj niz teza na vrlo pitak način, kroz atraktivne primere kako je Prosvetiteljstvo preuzelo hrišćansko verovanje u Spasenje i ugradila ga u razne ideologije.

Iako pojmovi koje sam naveo u ovom razmilšljanju o knjizi deluju vrlo složeno, i obećavaju naporno čitalačko iskustvo, Gray uspeva da ih vrlo neposredno definiše i da svoju tezu iznese iznenađujuće komunikativno, ako imamo u vidu ubedljivost njegovog diskursa. Štaviše, ne znam da li se u samoj knjizi koristi imenicama kao što je recimo "diskurs".

Bilo bi lepo da John Gray dobije svoj srpski prevod. Pitkiji je od Žižeka a mislim da bi Srbima bio pravo otkriće, upravo sa knjigom BLACK MASS čiji podnaslov "Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia" lepo sumira o čemu je reč.

[Ryan Murdock · Rating 5 out of 5]

Consistently brilliant, original and thought provoking, this time John Gray takes on the apocalyptic religious thread at the heart of utopianism.

That thread is obvious in Marxism and Nazism, but he traces the same hopeless utopian line of thought through neo-liberalism, neo-conservatism, globalization, and radical Islam.

This passage is about the Bolsheviks, but he could just as easily be describing today's 'woke' theology:

"For the utopian social engineer it is not enough to reform institutions piecemeal. Society as it presently exists is beyond redemption. It must be destroyed in order to create a new way of life. One difficulty of utopian social engineering is that it contains no method for correcting mistakes. The theory that guides the construction of Utopia is taken to be infallible; any deviation from it is treated as error or treason."

"Destroying an existing social order for the sake of an ideal is irrational, as Popper argued. Where Popper went astray was in supposing that by demonstrating the irrationality of utopianism he had disposed of it. [...] the utopian mentality is not nurtured on falsifiable social theories. It feeds on myths, which cannot be refuted."

[Taka · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good—

The first 100 pages or so is trademark John Gray, covering familiar terrains—so familiar to me after reading five of his books that it was actually rather repetitive and dull—but when he begins to scrutinize American politics in light of the millenarian genealogy he uncovers, things get more interesting. His trenchant analysis of the Iraq War is so on point and water-tight that I couldn't help nodding along even though I was not interested in the topic itself to begin with. Finally, his argument for a need for realism in international politics in the last chapter is sober, intelligent, and compelling. Unlike Straw Dogs and The Silence of Animals, this book is much more focused on politics—a topic I'm usually uninterested in—but overall it does still offer many great insights into world politics today (even though it was written over a decade ago) and so even though I thought about putting down the book a few times, it was well worth the effort.

[Jill Hudson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have just finished this book - then immediately started again, with annotating pencil in hand. I started reading it out of a kind of sense of duty - I don't normally enjoy political philosophy - but the sheer brilliance of this book creeps up on you page by page. Gray is retired professor of European Thought at LSE. His analysis of what has gone wrong in British and American politics since the 1980s in particular is stunning. Gray is an atheist, but as a Christian I still agree with one of his most fundamental points: that political enterprises which fail to take into account the flawed nature of human beings are doomed to disaster. Highly recommended - and so easy to read!

[g026r · Rating 1 out of 5]

Abrasive tone, playing fast and loose with definitions to make things fit your theory; all-in-all, it feels like he came up with a conclusion and then chose the facts he wanted to present in order to make his case, while ignoring or misrepresenting those that don't fit.

In the end, there's nothing interesting here that I haven't read presented elsewhere in a far more interesting and far less caustic manner.