Liberalism was a creation of Western monotheism and liberal freedoms part of the civilization that monotheism and gendered. 21st century liberals reject the civilization, while continuing to assert the authority of a hollowed-out version of its values. and this hyperliberal vision, all societies are destined to undergo the deconstruction that is underway in the West. 111
Gray believes that liberalism is coming to an end. It is not going to spread across the world and make peace and progress universal.
What is liberalism? Gray says there are four beliefs: Individual rights are more important than group priorities. People are equal in moral worth. People are equal everywhere, regardless of other factors like location, time, culture. People/society can be improved indefinitely.
These beliefs arose from Christianity, and shaped beliefs and institution in the West. Following the end of the Soviet Union, it seemed those were the dominant values, and that they would spread.
That was an illusion. It only seemed that way when the US was the most powerful nation by a wide margin. That margin is shrinking.
The US couldn’t spread liberalism by the sword in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Libya. At home, hyperliberals decry the failures of the west, while projecting those values onto identity groups that don’t hold them, and believing that some western values should be spread (which, noted above, failed).
The endpoint of liberalism is to choose everything about one’s identities, without constraint. But this is a problem:
“if their identity is to be more than a private fantasy, they must somehow induce others to accept it. hyperliberals aim to achieve this by capturing institutions that divide people into distinct categories, which then become competing groups. the stakes are not only the cells that are chosen but the positions in society that go with them. the result is to make self-definition a battle for power in which words are the weapons of choice.”
As with all of Gray’s books that I’ve read, I’m not sure I’m actually summarizing his message or his beliefs adequately above. He knows a lot of history and political philosophy and there’s a lot of density in this short book.
It’s pessimistic, which matches his style, and highly readable. After writing this review, I feel motivated to read it again.
Idea Density – High
Related Books – How the World Really Works, Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, The Dictator’s Handbook, other Gray books
Recommend to others: yes, if interested in topic
Reread personally: probably
Quotes
Even as they promise safety, the new leviathans Foster insecurity. by deploying food and energy supplies as weapons of war, Russia has projected famine and poverty across the globe. China has established a surveillance regime which through exports of Technology threatens freedom in the west. within Western societies, rival groups seek to capture the power of the state and a new war of all against all between self-defined Collective identities. there is an unrelenting struggle for the control of thought and language. enclaves of freedom persist, but a liberal civilization based on the practice of Tolerance has passed into history. 5
Paraphrase: what is liberalism? individualist in that it asserts the moral Primacy of the individual against claims of any social collectivity
egalitarian confers on all men the same moral status and denies the relevance to legal or political order of differences in moral worth among human beings
Universalist the moral unity of the human species
Meliorist Humans can make progress and be improved
Old fashioned tyrannies are like clouded leopards, a Vanishing breed that kills only to feed itself. the Soviet union, Nazi Germany and maoist China killed in order to perfect humanity, or the part of it they judged fit to survive. Neo totalitarian States today aim to deliver their subjects from the burdens of freedom . 19
The faith of liberals that their values were spreading irreversibly proved to be self refuting. believing they could speed this process through regime change, Western governments plunged into Evangelical Wars of choice. with the American LED Invasion and 2003, Isis was released from the grip of Saddam secular dictatorship and the power of Iran’s theocracy increased. toppling Muammar Gaddafi and Libya in 2011 left a stateless Zone fought over by rival jihadist militias. a conclusive demonstration of Western Folly came when, after 20 years of aimless occupation, American LED forces made a spectacularly squalid departure from Afghanistan in August 2021. to describe these debacles as unsuccessful exercises in democracy promotion is too charitable. none of them had any definitive objectives of the kind that are required for failure. 20
During the short post Cold War era of globalization, it rules-based Global liberal Order seems to be in place, which some believed would endure indefinitely. this supposed liberal order is now history. if there was ever such a system, it exists no longer. it’s passing his exposed the realities that concealed. 49
Fossil fuels account for around 80% of the world’s current energy mix. phasing them out completely would ruin states that rely on them for revenues. bankrupted by Falling prices, Saudi arabia, Iran and Russia would implode. the upshot would be anarchy, with contending ethnic and sectarian groups contending for whatever resources remained of marketable value. 50
The Earth treats human regimes with impartial indifference. it does not care whether they are capitalist or socialist, authoritarian or liberal. only their material impact matters. societies that treat climate change is a morality tale in which they are the villains will disappear, or be absorbed by others that are more pragmatic and resilient. those that survival understand that climate change is a shift that humans have caused but are unable to arrest. the only practical response is to adjust to it. conceivably, global warming may occur at a rate that makes adaptation impossible. 55
The current generation of liberals never tires of denouncing the West is the most destructive force in history – racist, imperialist and sexist. education must be decolonized in order to expose the West’s unique crimes. Western Civilization has been a curse for humankind.
yet these same liberals insist that Western values – Human rights, personal autonomy and the like– must be projected to the last corners of the earth. the allowed goal is to liberate human beings from identities they have accidentally acquired. stripped of these contingencies, they can be whatever they wish. 71
Any Utopia must be dystopian, for a life of rational Harmony is the death of the soul. 103
Liberalism was a creation of Western monotheism and liberal freedoms part of the civilization that monotheism and gendered. 21st century liberals reject the civilization, while continuing to assert the authority of a hollowed-out version of its values. and this hyperliberal vision, all societies are destined to undergo the deconstruction that is underway in the West
within Western societies, the hyperliberal goal is to enable human beings to Define their own identities. from one point of view this is The Logical endpoint of individualism: each human being is Sovereign and deciding who or what they want to be. from another, it is the project of forging new collectives, and the Prelude to a state of chronic Warfare among the identities they embody.
human beings can never be holy self-defined. if their identity is to be more than a private fantasy, they must somehow induce others to accept it. hyperliberals aim to achieve this by capturing institutions that divide people into distinct categories, which then become competing groups. the stakes are not only the cells that are chosen but the positions in society that go with them. the result is to make self-definition a battle for power in which words are the weapons of choice. 111-2
Yet American racism is not a paradigm for racism everywhere, nor is American multiculturalism a model any other society as reason to emulate. carving up Society into ethnic group identities perpetuates and intensifies racial divisions. woke discourse and race is a symptom of the disease it pretends to cure. 117
All four of the defining ideas of liberal thought are continuations of Christian monotheism. the Primacy of the individual is a secular translation of the belief that each human being is created by the deity, which has authority over them which transcends any worldly power. the egalitarian belief that human beings have the same moral status reproduces the idea that all human beings are equal in the sight of god. liberal universalism – the belief that generically human attributes are more important than particular cultural identities – reflects the idea that humankind is created in God’s image. the belief that human institutions are indefinitely improvable replicates the theistic faith that history is a moral Narrative of sin followed by redemption. 118
Schopenhauer wrote that sexual desire
… is really the invisible central point of all action and conduct, and peeps up everywhere, in spite of all the veils drawn over it. it is the cause of war in the aim and object of peace, the basis of the serious and the aim of the joke, the inexhaustible source of wit, the key to all hints and illusions, and the meaning of all secret signs and suggestions, all unexpressed proposals, and all stolen glances; it is the daily thought and desire of the young and often of the old as well, the hourly thought of the unchased, and the constantly recurring reverie of the chase even against their will, the ever-ready material for a joke, only because the profoundest seriousness lies at its root. 142
Awareness of their mortality impaled them to seek immortality and ideas. killing for the sake of words gives meaning to their lives. in this state exercise the privilege of absurdity, which cannot be renounced. 160
The New Leviathans by
John Gray, 2023
Featured Quote
Liberalism was a creation of Western monotheism and liberal
freedoms part of the civilization that monotheism and gendered. 21st century
liberals reject the civilization, while continuing to assert the authority of a
hollowed-out version of its values. and this hyperliberal vision, all societies
are destined to undergo the deconstruction that is underway in the West. 111
Date completed: November 2023
Amazon Link
Gray believes that liberalism is coming to an end. It is not going to spread across the world
and make peace and progress universal.
What is liberalism?
Gray says there are four beliefs: Individual rights are more important
than group priorities. People are equal in moral worth. People are equal everywhere, regardless of
other factors like location, time, culture.
People/society can be improved indefinitely.
These beliefs arose from Christianity, and shaped beliefs
and institution in the West. Following
the end of the Soviet Union, it seemed those were the dominant values, and that
they would spread.
That was an illusion.
It only seemed that way when the US was the most powerful nation by a
wide margin. That margin is
shrinking.
The US couldn’t spread liberalism by the sword in Iraq,
Afghanistan, or Libya. At home, hyperliberals
decry the failures of the west, while projecting those values onto identity
groups that don’t hold them, and believing that some western values should be spread
(which, noted above, failed).
The endpoint of liberalism is to choose everything about one’s
identities, without constraint. But this
is a problem:
“if their identity is to be more than a private fantasy,
they must somehow induce others to accept it. hyperliberals aim to achieve this
by capturing institutions that divide people into distinct categories, which
then become competing groups. the stakes are not only the cells that are chosen
but the positions in society that go with them. the result is to make
self-definition a battle for power in which words are the weapons of choice.”
As with all of Gray’s books that I’ve read, I’m not sure I’m
actually summarizing his message or his beliefs adequately above. He knows a lot of history and political philosophy
and there’s a lot of density in this short book.
It’s pessimistic, which matches his style, and highly
readable. After writing this review, I feel
motivated to read it again.
Idea Density – High
Related Books – How the World Really Works, Rise and Triumph
of the Modern Self, The Dictator’s Handbook, other Gray books
Recommend to others: yes, if interested in topic
Reread personally: probably
Quotes
Even as they promise
safety, the new leviathans Foster insecurity. by deploying food and energy
supplies as weapons of war, Russia has projected famine and poverty across the
globe. China has established a surveillance regime which through exports of Technology
threatens freedom in the west. within Western societies, rival groups seek to
capture the power of the state and a new war of all against all between
self-defined Collective identities. there is an unrelenting struggle for the
control of thought and language. enclaves of freedom persist, but a liberal
civilization based on the practice of Tolerance has passed into history.
5
Paraphrase: what is liberalism? individualist in that
it asserts the moral Primacy of the individual against claims of any social
collectivity
egalitarian confers on all men the same moral status
and denies the relevance to legal or political order of differences in moral
worth among human beings
Universalist the moral unity of the human species
Meliorist Humans can make progress and be improved
Old fashioned tyrannies are like clouded leopards, a
Vanishing breed that kills only to feed itself. the Soviet union, Nazi Germany
and maoist China killed in order to perfect humanity, or the part of it they
judged fit to survive. Neo totalitarian States today aim to deliver their
subjects from the burdens of freedom . 19
The faith of liberals that their values were spreading
irreversibly proved to be self refuting. believing they could speed this
process through regime change, Western governments plunged into Evangelical
Wars of choice. with the American LED Invasion and 2003, Isis was released from
the grip of Saddam secular dictatorship and the power of Iran’s theocracy
increased. toppling Muammar Gaddafi and Libya in 2011 left a stateless Zone
fought over by rival jihadist militias. a conclusive demonstration of Western Folly
came when, after 20 years of aimless occupation, American LED forces made a
spectacularly squalid departure from Afghanistan in August 2021. to describe
these debacles as unsuccessful exercises in democracy promotion is too
charitable. none of them had any definitive objectives of the kind that are
required for failure. 20
During the short post Cold War era of globalization, it
rules-based Global liberal Order seems to be in place, which some
believed would endure indefinitely. this supposed liberal order is now history.
if there was ever such a system, it exists no longer. it’s passing his exposed
the realities that concealed. 49
Fossil fuels account for around 80% of the world’s current
energy mix. phasing them out completely would ruin states that rely on them for
revenues. bankrupted by Falling prices, Saudi arabia, Iran and Russia would
implode. the upshot would be anarchy, with contending ethnic and sectarian
groups contending for whatever resources remained of marketable value. 50
The Earth treats human regimes with impartial indifference.
it does not care whether they are capitalist or socialist, authoritarian or
liberal. only their material impact matters. societies that treat climate
change is a morality tale in which they are the villains will disappear, or be
absorbed by others that are more pragmatic and resilient. those that survival
understand that climate change is a shift that humans have caused but are
unable to arrest. the only practical response is to adjust to it. conceivably,
global warming may occur at a rate that makes adaptation impossible. 55
The current generation of liberals never tires of denouncing
the West is the most destructive force in history – racist, imperialist and
sexist. education must be decolonized in order to expose the West’s unique
crimes. Western Civilization has been a curse for humankind.
yet these same liberals insist that Western values –
Human rights, personal autonomy and the like– must be projected to the last
corners of the earth. the allowed goal is to liberate human beings from
identities they have accidentally acquired. stripped of these contingencies,
they can be whatever they wish. 71
Any Utopia must be dystopian, for a life of rational Harmony
is the death of the soul. 103
Liberalism was a creation of Western monotheism and liberal
freedoms part of the civilization that monotheism and gendered. 21st century
liberals reject the civilization, while continuing to assert the authority of a
hollowed-out version of its values. and this hyperliberal vision, all societies
are destined to undergo the deconstruction that is underway in the West
within Western societies, the hyperliberal goal is to
enable human beings to Define their own identities. from one point of view this
is The Logical endpoint of individualism: each human being is Sovereign
and deciding who or what they want to be. from another, it is the project of
forging new collectives, and the Prelude to a state of chronic Warfare among
the identities they embody.
human beings can never be holy self-defined. if their
identity is to be more than a private fantasy, they must somehow induce others
to accept it. hyperliberals aim to achieve this by capturing institutions that
divide people into distinct categories, which then become competing groups. the
stakes are not only the cells that are chosen but the positions in society that
go with them. the result is to make self-definition a battle for power in which
words are the weapons of choice. 111-2
Yet American racism is not a paradigm for racism everywhere,
nor is American multiculturalism a model any other society as reason to
emulate. carving up Society into ethnic group identities perpetuates and
intensifies racial divisions. woke discourse and race is a symptom of the
disease it pretends to cure. 117
All four of the defining ideas of liberal thought are
continuations of Christian monotheism. the Primacy of the individual is a
secular translation of the belief that each human being is created by the
deity, which has authority over them which transcends any worldly power. the
egalitarian belief that human beings have the same moral status reproduces the
idea that all human beings are equal in the sight of god. liberal universalism
– the belief that generically human attributes are more important than particular
cultural identities – reflects the idea that humankind is created in God’s
image. the belief that human institutions are indefinitely improvable
replicates the theistic faith that history is a moral Narrative of sin followed
by redemption. 118
Schopenhauer wrote that sexual desire
… is really the invisible central point of all action and
conduct, and peeps up everywhere, in spite of all the veils drawn over it. it
is the cause of war in the aim and object of peace, the basis of the serious
and the aim of the joke, the inexhaustible source of wit, the key to all hints
and illusions, and the meaning of all secret signs and suggestions, all
unexpressed proposals, and all stolen glances; it is the daily thought
and desire of the young and often of the old as well, the hourly thought of the
unchased, and the constantly recurring reverie of the chase even against their
will, the ever-ready material for a joke, only because the profoundest
seriousness lies at its root. 142
Awareness of their mortality impaled them to seek
immortality and ideas. killing for the sake of words gives meaning to their
lives. in this state exercise the privilege of absurdity, which cannot be
renounced. 160
The Digital Sauna 