In the above-noted and strongly recommended book, John Gray seeks to define modernity in its present day manifestations. A society or civilization is governed by a “ruling myth”. The West’s is that “modernity is a single condition, everywhere the same and always benign.” It is a faith in the ability to remake the human condition through reason, science and other purposeful action. Gray claims that this myth was destroyed on September 11, 2001.
Gray claims that Al Qaeda showed there are many ways to be modern, obserrving how it is a global multinational that uses the byproducts of globalization to achieve what it deems to be progressive and righteous ends. Al Qaeda understands the tools of modern society as much as do Westerners. Thus, claims Gray, they are modern and share a common desire with engineers of American hegemony to transform the world.
Gray’s true intention is to attack the neo-liberal doctrine of the “end of history” set forth by Francis Fukuyama, that free markets have been demonstrated to be the successful economic model and command economies of thje Marxist model have failed, so the world will join the global market economy which will encourage democratic polities to follow. As states modernize (ie. Americanize), values are expected to converge, and conflict to disappear.
But the ability to maintain the global free market is challenged by more than opposition from groups opposed to American values. The neo-Liberal (or, if you like, neoconservative) model is threatened by the instability of the American economy, increased resource scarcity and population growth, failed states, and the reluctance of Americans to maintain, paying the blood and the treasure for, global hegemony. This is the message around which Gray’s arguments and references is intended to deliver.
Two crucial issues are left unfully answered. How should we fight terror and, does Gray even think we should do so? He recognizes terror as a problem that must be addressed if we are to preserve “any kind of civilized existence”. But what is conspicuously absent from his conclusions is the language of right and wrong. Even if he believes terrorism is wrong, he gives no indiction that he believes it is any worse than American universalism. Gray’s argument is valuable because it questions the version of internationalism, now perhaps abandonned, adopted by the Bush administration.
