Disunited Colours of Modernity

John Gray, a distinguished British political philosopher, whose earlier book False Dawn has become something of an anti-globalisation classic, argues that nothing could be farther from the truth. Modernity will not produce a convergence of values and the West is under a delusion that there is a standpoint from which history will finally resolve our fundamental conflicts. Much of modernity will not be benign, but will instead unleash horrendous political movements like fascism, communism and fundamentalism that Gray pithily describes as a combination of bad ideas and mad ideas. The rule of reason will not unambiguously triumph. The expansion of knowledge will give us the feeling that we are acquiring collective control over human destiny, but this is all an illusion. Knowledge has exposed us to new forms of vul-

nerability as much as it has protected us from great evils, and human destiny is more rather than less uncertain.

For Gray, the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center on 9/11 did more than merely kill thousands of people. They demolished the West’s ruling myth that modernity would produce a benign convergence. Al-Qaeda is an organisation that defies any “rational” explanation, that refuses to subscribe to liberal pieties, that subverts the rule of reason, that refuses to be charmed by consumerism and questions the proposition that the world is waiting to be America. But Al-Qaeda is a modern movement, more akin to the anarchists of the 19th century than to the medieval theocracies. It is wonderful at using technology, a skillful user of all the things globalisation has made possible, and adept at the most sophisticated financial and political techniques.

If 9/11 has any lesson, it is this: the rest of the world is not merely America is the waiting; the attempt to impose American values, liberal democracy or markets, individual choice or a faith in technology, will be self defeating. That is the lesson Al-Qaeda teaches us, the light it throws on what it means to be modern. Societies need to be transformed, but each one must do it at their own pace, in light of their own values and structures of power, and not be driven by the allure of the one right way to be.

The book is a success largely as a polemic that briskly raises many large questions. It is fluently written and passionately felt, but the argument is too general to be of any practical use in actually explaining anything. So modernity takes many forms and not all the world is America. Did we need Al-Qaeda to tell us that? And as a piece of causal analysis the book is even more dubious. Can most of the political faultlines that exist in our tumultuous world be attributed simply to the intellectual mistake of thinking that there might be one modernity? What about the disarray internal to most societies in the world? Won’t any society that cares to expand the space for pluralism and protect the right to dissent need to be, in some measure, liberal? Should we not converge on those ideals?

Gray’s analysis ultimately falls victim to the same mistake he attributes to modernisers. Like them he too is looking for a singular meaning in history, except that he finds it in the revolt against progress, rather than in progress itself. Perhaps ultimately all of us are fooled by history and are destined to become the fools of history.