Interpretation of hard times

Age of Anger — a history of the present, Pankaj Mishra, Juggernaut books; Rs.699, Pages 373 In his third book in five years after the path-breaking From the Ruins of Empire (2012) and A Great Clamour (2014) — both reviewed on these pages — under-appreciated London-based Indian émigré writer Pankaj Mishra takes on the task of explaining why a tsunami of irrational rage is sweeping the contemporary world.  The landslide victory of the BJP and Narendra Modi in General Election 2014, election of Donald Trump as president of the US, the Brexit vote in the UK, emergence of xenophobic political parties in Europe, the rise of ISIS and global jihad, anarchy and turmoil in the Middle East, unending conflict in Africa, the reckless nuclear belligerence of North Korea, and election of the thuggish Rodrigo Dueterte as president of the Philippines. All signal an unleashing of mutiny and rage, a universal sentiment of suicidal desperation that has entered the hearts and minds of large swathes of people around the world. At a time of unprecedented global prosperity when more people than ever before have food, shelter and clothing, cell phones and access to knowledge, information and instant connectivity through the Internet, what’s the explanation behind the tidal wave of anger and fury which could well precipitate a nuclear Armageddon and extinction of the human race?  Through extensive investigation of philosophical and socio-economic currents driving the waves of anger and tumult across the world, Mishra attempts to answer this question in this outstanding work of scholarship with grand global sweep. The author draws deep from the histories of several nations to demonstrate that anarchic anger and insurrections against the established order are not an exceptional 21st-century phenomenon. Improbable adventurers with no great ideology or agendas have seized the imagination of gullible masses since time immemorial. The book begins by recounting the theatrical posturing of an Italian poet-anarchist Gabriele D’Annunzio, who with a force of 2,000 mutineers captured the city of Fiume on the Adriatic Sea in 1919 with the dream of “rejuvenating Italian manhood through violence”.  According to Mishra this anarchist driven by “sexual appetite and megalomania” became the inspiration of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, egomaniacs who allied to unleash the most destructive global war in world history.  Mishra traces the origins of the forces of rebellion and rage in the 20th century to the 18th century European age of Enlightenment. Philosophers and economists such as Voltaire, Montesquieu and Adam Smith, among others, proclaimed the philosophy of enlightened self-interest. In a historic departure from the puritan ethic of Christianity, they boldly affirmed that pursuit of the good life is a worthy and socially beneficial goal.  Consequently, the grandees and elites who graced the fashionable salons of Paris emerged as the world’s first proponents of global trade who believed it was incumbent upon them to export French culture and their ideology of enlightened self-interest across Europe. But as the author brilliantly explains, this philosophy was self-serving inasmuch as its benefits were restricted…