Black Mass - How Religion Led the World into Crisis

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Fascinating, enlightening, and epic in scope, Black Mass looks at the historic and modern faces of Utopian ideology: Society’s Holy Grail, but at what price?

During the last century global politics was shaped by Utopian projects. Pursuing a dream of a world without evil, powerful states waged war and practised terror on an unprecedented scale. From Germany to Russia to China to Afghanistan, entire societies were destroyed.

Utopian ideologies ...

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2008 Trade paperback Very goodCovers have some scuffing & wear/bending to edges/corners, pgs are clean & intact Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 243 p. Audience: ... General/trade. Read more Show Less

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More About This Book

Overview

Fascinating, enlightening, and epic in scope, Black Mass looks at the historic and modern faces of Utopian ideology: Society’s Holy Grail, but at what price?

During the last century global politics was shaped by Utopian projects. Pursuing a dream of a world without evil, powerful states waged war and practised terror on an unprecedented scale. From Germany to Russia to China to Afghanistan, entire societies were destroyed.

Utopian ideologies rejected traditional faiths and claimed to be based in science. They were actually secular versions of the myth of Apocalypse–the belief in a world-changing event that brings history, with all its conflicts, to an end. The war in Iraq was the last of these attempts at creating a secular Utopia, promising a new era of democracy and producing blood-soaked anarchy and an emerging theocracy instead.

John Gray’s powerful and frightening new book argues that the death of Utopia does not mean peace. Instead it portends the resurgence of ancient myths, now in openly fundamentalist forms. Obscurely mixed with geo-political struggles for the control of natural resources, apocalyptic religion has returned as a major force in global conflict.

From the Hardcover edition.

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Editorial Reviews

Kirkus Reviews
Seeing history as a progressive narrative, especially one with a utopian ending, is a practice that has doomed earlier civilizations and threatens our own, argues Gray (European Thought/London School of Economics). Having dealt with the concept of human progress in such previous books as Al Qaeda and What It Means to Be Modern (2003), the author sees no reason to revise his core belief: "Human knowledge tends to increase, but humans do not become any more civilized as a result." He urges Western powers to adopt a political philosophy of realism. Look, he says, not at the Middle East you want to see-a cluster of none-too-peaceable kingdoms transformed by force into little democracies whose oil wells gurgle merrily to supply the West-but as it really is, a volatile place whose populations have always hated one another and probably always will. Gray spends lots of time painting the historical and philosophical background. He examines the apocalyptical aspects of Christianity and other religions, all of which in his view share a number of traits, most significantly the notion that the end is near. He takes a look at utopian communities of earlier times and notes that inhumane means have almost always been used to attempt to achieve humane ends. In a troubling chapter about the 20th century, Gray characterizes both Communists and Nazis as "children of the Enlightenment," employing the "scientific" principles of economics and eugenics to justify their political goals. The English author has some harsh words for both Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair (equally deluded, in his view), but he bashes Bush continually for reliance on "faith-based intelligence"-with Iraq serving as a compelling argumentfor the pitfalls of this approach. Throughout his impassioned text, Gray's prose is thick with allusion and quotation, but even thicker with erudition and provocation. Makes a discomfiting case that Western liberal democracy just is not suitable for much of the world. Agent: Tracy Bohan/Wylie Agency
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780385662666
  • Publisher: Doubleday Canada
  • Publication date: 7/8/2008
  • Pages: 256
  • Product dimensions: 5.48 (w) x 8.17 (h) x 0.68 (d)

Meet the Author

John Gray is the author of the critically acclaimed books Straw Dogs, Heresies, False Dawn, and Al Qaeda and What It Means to Be Modern. A regular contributor to The New York Review of Books, he has been a professor of politics at Oxford, a visiting professor at Harvard and Yale, and is currently professor of European thought at the London School of Economics.

From the Hardcover edition.

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