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A review by latviadugan
Age of Anger: A History of the Present by Pankaj Mishra
3.0
Pankaj Mishra has something very important to say, and I hope that someone figures out how to say it. Reading “Age of Anger” felt like reading footnotes. This is my attempt to make some sense of it.
Mishra describes our current historical moment as one of seething frustration at the failures of modernity to make good on its promises. Promises of progress, security, economic growth, and personal advancement, along with the breakdown of family, community, religion, and the state’s welfare cushions, have left people exposed to accelerated competition and an uneven playing field. As a result, everyone is at war (14). People feel as if the system is rigged against them, and they’re looking for scapegoats. It’s these angry people who are bringing to power the political despots who offer simplistic explanations and solutions, but backed by promises to crush the "enemies within" and restore a mythological past.
Simultaneously, globalization has turned us all into neighbors. What happens anywhere can be felt everywhere, and the news media has discovered it’s profitable make us feel afraid of and angry at one another. The globalization of fear, the globalization of desire (we all want the same things), resentment, and a shift from the religious to the secular; economic growth as the marker of progress, the purpose of politics, and the gateway to happiness; and a culture of self-seeking individuals “herded” into “grossly unequal distributions of wealth and power” create “humiliating new hierarchies (13).” The result is that “we have succumbed to the fantasies of consumerism without being able to fulfill them (75).”
This environment of resentment, envy, frustration, and scapegoating is fueled by the shift to a secular society that believes a better society can be engineered by those who know how, and that the metrics for progress are economic growth. While the liberal elites' means of progress are now doubted by growing tribes of discontented and disenfranchised individuals, expressing itself in fundamentalism from white supremacy to ISIS to BLM (which at the time of writing was not yet a movement), the goals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness remain unquestioned.
The three primary threads that Mishra weaves with are modernity – how it has shaped our expectations and failed to deliver; secularism, which has convinced us to find our happiness by fulfilling material and economic desires; and individualism – my rights take precedence over my moral obligations to others. This has created a world of resentment and selfishness that can only lead to chaos.
“Future historians may well see [this] uncoordinated mayhem as commencing the third – and the longest and strangest – of all world wars: one that approximates, in its ubiquity, a global civil war (5).”
Mishra tries to provide some hopeful direction in his epilogue, though it feels like grasping at straws. It basically came across to me as simply saying, “We just need to change.”
There are important things to understand here. Unfortunately, Mishra’s message gets lost in endless philosophical quotes that aren’t easy to connect.
Mishra describes our current historical moment as one of seething frustration at the failures of modernity to make good on its promises. Promises of progress, security, economic growth, and personal advancement, along with the breakdown of family, community, religion, and the state’s welfare cushions, have left people exposed to accelerated competition and an uneven playing field. As a result, everyone is at war (14). People feel as if the system is rigged against them, and they’re looking for scapegoats. It’s these angry people who are bringing to power the political despots who offer simplistic explanations and solutions, but backed by promises to crush the "enemies within" and restore a mythological past.
Simultaneously, globalization has turned us all into neighbors. What happens anywhere can be felt everywhere, and the news media has discovered it’s profitable make us feel afraid of and angry at one another. The globalization of fear, the globalization of desire (we all want the same things), resentment, and a shift from the religious to the secular; economic growth as the marker of progress, the purpose of politics, and the gateway to happiness; and a culture of self-seeking individuals “herded” into “grossly unequal distributions of wealth and power” create “humiliating new hierarchies (13).” The result is that “we have succumbed to the fantasies of consumerism without being able to fulfill them (75).”
This environment of resentment, envy, frustration, and scapegoating is fueled by the shift to a secular society that believes a better society can be engineered by those who know how, and that the metrics for progress are economic growth. While the liberal elites' means of progress are now doubted by growing tribes of discontented and disenfranchised individuals, expressing itself in fundamentalism from white supremacy to ISIS to BLM (which at the time of writing was not yet a movement), the goals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness remain unquestioned.
The three primary threads that Mishra weaves with are modernity – how it has shaped our expectations and failed to deliver; secularism, which has convinced us to find our happiness by fulfilling material and economic desires; and individualism – my rights take precedence over my moral obligations to others. This has created a world of resentment and selfishness that can only lead to chaos.
“Future historians may well see [this] uncoordinated mayhem as commencing the third – and the longest and strangest – of all world wars: one that approximates, in its ubiquity, a global civil war (5).”
Mishra tries to provide some hopeful direction in his epilogue, though it feels like grasping at straws. It basically came across to me as simply saying, “We just need to change.”
There are important things to understand here. Unfortunately, Mishra’s message gets lost in endless philosophical quotes that aren’t easy to connect.