Two fascinating books: They’re wonderfully short and easy to read (if a bit repetitive). Both offer what seem like simplifications of more complex ideas written for general readers, <\/P> Gray turns everything on its head, claiming for example that Al Qaeda, far from being a Gray, you should know, is a former conservative who did a one-eighty. (“To the right, he is Here’s a chapter<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A> from Financial markets came to price assets accordingly. The effect of the attack on the World <\/P> He continues: <\/P> <\/P> What is striking is how closely the market liberal philosophy that underpins globalisation <\/P> Postscript:<\/STRONG> In yesterday’s New Statesman Gray Two fascinating books: They’re wonderfully short and easy to read (if a bit repetitive). One is “Al Qaeda and What It Means to Be Modern.” The other is “Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals” (with a terrific bibliography). They’re both by John Gray, professor of European thought at the London School of Economics and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-753","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-c9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nOne is
\nother is
\nDogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals”<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A> (with a terrific
\nbibliography). They’re both by John Gray, professor of European thought at the London School of
\nEconomics and formerly professor of politics at Oxford University.<\/P>
\n
\nbut they are provocative. Here’s an informative if scathing
\nagree with. It begins accurately:<\/P>
\n
\nJohn Gray has a bone to pick. His latest book, Straw Dogs<\/I>, takes aim
\nat a host of targets in what appears to be a wholesale deconstruction of human thought. Religion,
\nhumanism, philosophy, belief in progress (indeed, belief in anything), industrialization, even
\ncivilization itself has, according to Gray, kept us from realizing our true nature: that we are just
\none more species of animal.<\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\n
\n
\nreversion to medieval thinking, is peculiarly rooted in the Enlightenment not unlike such
\ndiametrically opposed Western ideologies as Marxism and humanism. The main culprit for what’s
\nwrong with humanism (as we’ve come to understand it) is, in his view, the Positivism of
\nAuguste Comte, a philosophy derived via Saint-Simon. I take Gray’s seeming
\npessimism for well-substantiated realism.<\/P>
\n
\nan apostate; to the left, a sinner who repented,” says the British magazine
\nwho does not believe in progress.”) <\/P>
\n
\nGray’s 1998 book
\nwhich George Soros has described as “a powerful analysis of the deepening instability of global
\ncapitalism.” And here’s Gray writing in the New
\nStatesman<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A> two weeks after 9\/11 about the impact of the attacks in
\nNew York and Washington on the idea of globalization:<\/P>
\n[They] inflicted a grievous blow to the beliefs that underpin the global market.
\nIn the past, it was taken for granted that the world will always be a dangerous place. Investors
\nknew that war and revolution could wipe out their profits at any time. Over the past decade,
\nunder the influence of ludicrous theories about new paradigms and the end of history, they came
\nto believe that the worldwide advance of commercial liberalism was irresistible.
\n
\nTrade Center may be to do what none of the crises of the past few years — the Asian crisis, the
\nRussian default of 1998 and the collapse of Long Term Capital Management, an over-leveraged
\nhedge fund — was able to do. It may shatter the markets’ own faith in
\nglobalisation.<\/P><\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\n
\n
\n
\nIt is worth reminding ourselves how grandiose were the dreams of the
\nglobalisers. The entire world was to be remade as a universal free market. No matter how
\ndifferent their histories and values, however deep their differences or bitter their conflicts, all
\ncultures everywhere were to be corralled into a universal civilisation.
\n
\n
\nresembles Marxism. Both are essentially secular religions, in which the eschatological hopes and
\nfantasies of Christianity are given an Enlightenment twist. In both, history is understood as the
\nprogress of the species, powered by growing knowledge and wealth, and culminating in a
\nuniversal civilisation. Human beings are viewed primarily in economic terms, as producers or
\nconsumers, with — at bottom — the same values and needs.<\/P><\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\n
\n
\ncritiqued the latest book by Francis (“the end of history”) Fukuyama,
\ncentury.”<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A> Read the
\nreview<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A> and see how persuasive Gray is. He takes Fukuyama apart,
\ndrawing a conclusion especially pertinent to Iraq.<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"