Sunday 2 January 2022

Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of UtopiaBlack Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia by John N. Gray
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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.

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