“Black Mass” Book Review
| John Gray is a former professor of philosophy at Oxford and the LSE, and not to be confused with the pop psychology author of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. In 2007 he published one of the most thought provoking intellectual works of the past decade. The title derives from the fact that a Satanic Mass takes Christian forms and inverts them – but, like Satan himself, the process takes its substance from Christianity.
Gray’s thesis is that modern life is a Black Mass, and that the roots lie deep within Christianity itself. The latter, right from its origins, was apocalyptic and utopian. Most religions lack a linear sense of history, or indeed any conception of a beginning and end time. Salvation, if perceived at all, is largely seen as as release from an unending worldly round. Christianity injected teleology- history has a purpose and an end time, when its purpose will be fulfilled. This to some extent predates Christianity, with Jewish and Iranian roots, but Christianity is the vehicle by which such thinking was spread to the wider world. |
This is familiar stuff, but Gray’s contribution is to examine at length the pervasiveness of the apocalyptic utopianism. Millenarian movements recurred from time to time in medieval history, but were constrained by the institutions of the Church (notably the Inquisition) and by Augustinian original sin, which precluded or at least limited the belief that life on this earth could be perfected.
In modern times, these constraints were loosened by two developments. The first was Protestantism, which never had as effective a machine to define or constrain “heresy” as the Catholics. Thus it spawned milleniarist movements by the score, who sought to build the City of God upon the Hill – including, tellingly, a key strain in American culture. Europe chose other forms of Christian heresy, secularism (the term has no meaning outside of monotheism, until the City of God was separated from the City of Man). If so far you have thought that this is yet another anti-religious tirade, then Gray is at his most venomous when discussing the secularist heresies. The totalitarianism of the Left, from the Jacobins to Stalin, makes an easy and familiar target, the apocalyptic myth a crude parody of Christianity. Nazism is often seen (notably by Isaiah Berlin, Gray’s erstwhile mentor), with its emphasis on Kultur , as a lineal descendant of the (largely German) Counter Enlightenment. In fact Gray makes a good case that it was another Enlightenment –influenced apocalyptic heresy, if a somewhat bizarre one (salvation only for Germans); certainly Hitler would not have been possible without Lenin.
Gray, however, implicates as well the most benign and successful Enlightenment belief system, liberal democracy. Though apparently tolerant, it still seeks to convert everyone on the planet – at gunpoint if necessary; there follows a lengthy section on the Iraqi tragi-comedy and the “War on Terror”, where ex-Marxist neocons formed an unholy alliance with the American Christian right. The other unexpected target is Islamism. Sayyid Qutb, the Karl Marx of the movement, was well versed in Western philosophy and impressed by Nietzsche it seems – hardly the traditional Muslim by any means. The latter would accede to Allah’s will, not actively seek to build the perfect Caliphate in an all-too-Western mimicry of the Christian reformation. No wonder it all appeals to disaffected educated Muslims in the diaspora, and spoilt rich kids from Saudi construction magnates.
Demolition is easy, but what to do? Turning one’s back on religion is not the answer: Gray believes that it is innate in humans, and if thwarted simply finds unconscious paths, as described above; indeed he feels that Dawkin’s style atheism is distinguished by its intellectual crudity. Christianity and Islam, historically the two most aggressive and intolerant faiths, demand belief – while others are content to stand in awe before mystery, and perhaps to commune mystically with it. Meanwhile, realism rather than idealism can rule the everyday world.
All very sensible, but the objection is: who wants to live in a sensible world? It would be uncreative and rather dull. The Western world (which has now infected the rest) is like a manic depressive, whose creative highs justify the depressive and destructive lows. Fine until the depression verges on suicide: Gray clearly feels that we are near the latter, as the book ends with an environmentalist tirade. Perhaps,or else he is no more immune to apocalyptic religion than others: or else, with no utopias left to believe in, it is time for Western(ised) man to grow up.
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