Just Finished Reading: Age of Anger – A History of the Present by Pankaj Mishra (FP: 2017) [346pp] 

I’m definitely not alone in wondering just WTF is going on with the world. I know I’m probably looking back on my youth with rose tinted glasses but even the 1970’s and, yes, even the 1980’s seemed much simpler and most definitely calmed times than today. So, what changed? Essentially, no so much according to this thought provoking and often fascinating thesis. 

Yet again I was surprised where this book went and what it focused on (that seems to be a habit with me these days) as I fully expected it to dissect the ‘present situation’ seen from the year or so before publication date. But that’s where things got really interesting and gave me LOTS of food for thought which I’m still (slowly) digesting after finishing this around 3 weeks ago. Where the author points his well-read finger is back to The Enlightenment and especially to the French philosophers of that turbulent time. The problem, as he intriguingly points out, is that these men (not surprisingly exclusively male for the time & place), sitting around in their salons putting the world ‘to rights’ were generally rich, well connected – to each other – and had almost zero idea of what it was like in the real world. What was worse, for the worlds they gave birth to, was that they never intended for their ideas of liberty or ‘personal growth’ to be applied to everyone. Indeed, they would have probably been horrified at the idea, once they stopped laughing, that the servant bringing their wine could have, use or even want, the same privileges, rights or liberties that they demanded for themselves contra the wishes and powers of monarchy or aristocracy. Despite often being anti-monarchy and anti-church they were most definitely not, as a rule, pro-democracy. The very idea to them was simply absurd and that’s where it became a problem. Each of the philosophers, in their own way and (largely) for their own benefit and that of their class of intellectuals, produced tracts, pamphlets and books which, rather inevitably, fell into the hands of those they were never intended to – the moderately educated and relatively poor lower classes (probably what we would call the proto-middle class and then further ‘down’ to the increasingly educated proto-proletariat). Ideas of liberty, individualism, democracy and much else naturally spread like wildfire and, once out of the bottle (or the book) could no longer be reclaimed. We forget, again pointed out by the author, that the post-Enlightenment, post-Industrial Revolution world was one of revolution, unrest, assassination and upheaval. As their ideas spread across the globe, translated, copied, understood and misunderstood, chaos followed just as it had in its European home during its painful and bloody birthing. Should we be surprised, therefore, that a similar round of revolution, unrest, assassination and upheaval has followed in their wake? 

Once I got my head around it (as the author delves DEEPLY into the ideas of the 18th century Europe and their immediate consequences), I found the authors central idea both interesting and compelling. Proposing the idea that the Enlightenment philosophers were dangerously divorced from common human experience and that their subsequently flawed ideas were never actually intended for universal application has significant explanatory power. Our forgetful ignorance of the consequences of their ideas being adopted by those they were never intended for and too often applied in ways that would not have worked – even in the ideal world of those who created the ideas – explains why we are surprised by the chaos we see around us today and why we shouldn’t be. Of course, it also means that this age of upheaval isn’t going away anytime soon and will, in fact, probably get worse as global problems multiply and increasing numbers of people become increasingly frustrated at the failure of ‘the system’ to satisfy their needs, ‘rights’ and expectations that, again all too often, is and always has been beyond its capability. This is a densely argued and sober read. It is definitely something you cannot simply skim through to pick up the gist to bring up in casual conversation. With MANY historical references throughout, it would help if you knew your Dreyfus from your Durkheim, your Rousseau from your Romanov and your Spencer from your Stirner. Luckily, with my reading over the years and my later University studies I had at least heard of many (if not all) of the intellects mentioned between these covers. Overall, this is not an easy read but, I think, it is very much worth the effort to do so. Like all good books of this type this will provide you with a framework, a viewpoint, to see the world and events within it in a new light. A very impressive line of argument and definitely a recommended book.