Product Description

The utopian ideologies that shaped so much of the history of
the last century claimed they were based in science, rejecting traditional
faiths and serving the cause of human enlightenment.

BLACK MASS, John Gray's powerful and frightening new book, argues that the
most influential secular ideologies were actually shaped by suppressed
religion. They were versions of the myth of Apocalypse - the belief in a
world-changing event that brings history, with all its conflicts, to an
end. Religion has returned in perverted form: a 'black mass' of political
myths.

The war in Iraq was the last of these secular utopias, promising a new era
of democracy and producing blood-soaked anarchy and an emerging theocracy
instead.

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,
apocalytic religion has returned as a major force in global conflict.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #122035 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

Will Self
The most important living philosopher

Will Self
'[Gray is] the most important living philosopher'

Morning Star
'This is a stimulating enquiry into the religious roots of present day conflict...a total page-turner from start to finish...exciting and rewarding'

Customer Reviews

Repeating the lessons of history to devastating effect
In Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia, John Gray explains how Utopian thought recurs throughout human history and is as powerful a force today as it was in the Middle Ages.

After tracing the history of Utopianism though the ages via Sir Thomas More, John of Leyden, the Jacobins of the French Revolution and many others, Gray turns to the 20th century, where Utopianism dominated the main ideologies of Communism, Nazism and Maoism, leading to unparalled disasters for humanity. Gray quotes Leon Trotsky, "the average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. And above this ridge, new peaks shall rise", amply demonstrating the belief common to all Utopians that there is no limit to human advance.

The Utopian mindset was all too visible in Nazism, with its vision of impending disaster, to be quickly followe by a new world. Hitler's "Volk" was a mystical entity, conferring immortality on its participants, and the potent mixture of beliefs bears comparison with any of the mediaeval millenarian movements. Even militant Islam is shown to be Utopian in nature, with its intellectual founder, Sayyid Qutb being heavily influenced by European thinkers, particularly Nietzsche, and ideas lifted from the Bolshevik traditions.

Of course, the thrust of this book is to illustrate how the same tendencies have infected the political movements currently surrounding us. Gray shows how the post-war settlement broke down through the 1980s leading in Britain to the rise of Margaret Thatcher, who believed that the unleashing the free-market would transform the economic state of Britain, restore bourgeois "Victorian" values, and also result in enrichment for all via the "trickle down" effect of wealth (which never happened!) - a Utopian philosophy indeed!

Gray's book comes together in showing that the Iraq adventure, launched by the Americans and the British, was shot through from beginning to end with Utopian or millenarian thought. George Bush actually believed that there was a fledgeling Iraqi government waiting in the wings, which only needed the liberating "shock and awe" of American force to release it into establishing a new age of democracy and pro-Western thinking.

Tony Blair, who was so infected with his belief in the rightness of his "doctrine of international community" that he took Britain into war five times over the span of six years. It mattered little whether the hoped-for outcome of these wars was Britain's self-interest or not, because for Tony Blair, there was a far wider goal, the establishment of global institutions based on an American/British understanding of the ideal society. Blair's wars were not about neutralising threats, but about promoting the new world order which was just around the corner.

Gray writes a devastating critique of Blair's mindset: possessing an objective certainty, deception could be used to bring about his aims. Every stage of the Iraq war was deceptive; the compilation of "intelligence", the pretence that a United Nations resolution would be obtained before the conflict, the secret planning for war which was always denied. Blair's complicity in deception came about because he "lacks the noraml understanding" of truth. For him, "truth is whatever serves the cause" and in concealing uncomfortable facts, Blair was only "anticipating the new world that he is helping to bring about"

John Gray has written an immensely valuable book in Black Mass, providing not just a historical analysis, but a philosophical context which helps us understand and judge the political forces which surround us today. I would recommend it to anyone who knows that something is amiss with the way politicians think but can't quite put their finger on what it is. My own response was to long for the days when politicians will once again be concerned with national interest, housekeeping the economy, and reducing leglislation - in other words, the deconstruction of political ambition.

Two books for the price of one!
I enjoyed this book. Although its central premiss wasn't totally original and the two parts of the book didn't hang together too well, it was thought provoking and well written.

Gray's central theme is that the apocalyptic and millenarian beliefs of religion, in that this world will end and be replaced by a utopian paradise, have been replaced by secular beliefs that wish to recreate this world around their own ideas. Gray's main examples show how the French Revolution, Communism, and Nazism attempted to end history be establishing a new, utopian order.

I don't think Gray subscribes to simplistic notions of 'secular religion' or 'fundamentalist atheism', and his examination is far more nuanced and complex. Gray explains secular beliefs about the end of history as,'the central myth of apocalyptic religion framed in political terms.'

Within two chapters in the centre of the book Gray claims that the last of these political myths of a utopian future was the neo-conservative belief that American style democracy can be exported across the globe, and Gray spends these chapters discussing how the Iraq war was as a direct result of the American government believing their own myths. Although these chapters are interesting they don't sit together with the rest of the book too well, and feel slightly that they have been shoe-horned in.

However, the book is defintely worth reading. especially if you are interested in current global political affairs and their relationship to history and religion.

Vaguely Taoist philosopher guilty of a number of factual errors
Assuming this book is still representative of John Gray's views (he has been ridiculed in the past for changing his mind regularly, then speaking rather disparagingly of those who subscribe to his former viewpoints) it is fair to say that in "Black Mass" he is guilty of a number of errors and equivocations.

Some of his factual errors are laughable. He claims that Christianity introduced the concept of teleology into Western thought. What about Aristotle?

The most alarming fallacy is his use of the oxymoron 'secular religion'. There is a difference between a worldview that revolves around a supernatural god, and one that does not. Gray insists that a secular viewpoint is a religion, skewing his whole argument throughout the book.
If one was feeling particularly malicious, one would be tempted to argue that he started with a conclusion and then worked his way backwards, indulging in some questionable reductio ad hitlerum arguments on the way.

Secularists are not aiming for some sort of Eutopia, Mr Gray. They do not believe in the inevitability of human progress. They do think incremental progress and improvments in quality of life are worth struggling for.

This book seems to be an essay on the Iraq war and gung ho neo cons that has been padded out to book length by a man who has been described as the 'Screaming Lord Sutch of academe'. Only read if you are going through a particularly grumpy phase of misanthropy.