Book Reviews

The Madness of Crowds - Gender, Race and Identity

Author - Douglas Murray

Publisher - Bloomsbury Continuum

“Crowds cause damage to the mind and body, and the only cure for this is to go away from the crowds for a while.” Mehmet Murat Ildan, Turkish playwright.

If only it were so easy to go away for a while in this day. We live at a time in which we are permanently connected, and today the crowds are online. Yet I cannot disagree completely with Ildan. ‘The Madness of Crowds - Gender, Race and Identity’ gave me a lot of food for thought. 

The connectedness that the internet and social media have engendered is not always warm and fuzzy. If anything, social media is directly linked to the spread today of ideas that would not have travelled far and perhaps as swiftly in earlier, more disconnected times. Then ideas died a natural death sooner with shorter shelf lives. Today there is no such thing as a forgotten and buried idea, good or bad. It can always be resurrected and can come back into circulation, sometimes like a bad dream, with records of positions taken in more ignorant times and simply not allowed to die out.  

Douglas Murray focuses on three parameters among several that have been impacted in recent times - gender, race and identity. As a reader from India I could see parallels here although he speaks predominantly of the USA. 

All three - gender, race and identity - are ours by sheer chance. We have to play with the cards dealt to us by nature. Yet each, all through human history and more so now, has an incisive role in the opportunities we get to study and work, to live in society. They impact us all in myriad ways everyday.

Murray’s position is that more and more, in public and in private, people are behaving in ways that are irrational and herd-like. We are living with the consequences of this behaviour, but what are the causes for it? The first great pillar of western society to fall away was religion. Then went political ideologies which the secular folks swore by. And so began the post-Modern era. The problem is that the big questions that religion or political ideas answered - who are we, why are we here, what happens next - are now being asked in a vacuum with no replies forthcoming from traditional sources in these societies. Into this space have arrived ideas that were earlier known mostly to academics - social justice, identity group politics and intersectionalism. 

Just as one of the tenets of Marxism was to do away with wealth being concentrated in the hands of a few and to share it around, similarly the old power group of patriarchal white males was to be done away with and the power was to be shared amongst minority groups. Today, post-Marxists who see culture as a hegemonic force are on another mission - they seek to deconstruct this power. They want to unweave and pull apart everything, including biological certainties. The new theories of social justice and intersectionality replace the old.

The favourite weapons of racism, sexism (and majoritarianism, minoritarianism, casteism in India) are easy to wield and detract attention from any real social problem that needs to be resolved. The accusers get away with no challenge and the issue of any change is stalled until the next time the problem crops up. Academia has also not lived up to its stated purpose of discovery or dissemination of the truth. This leaves the field open to propaganda or one particular brand of politics, whipping up passions with negativity or blatant untruths. So far any attempts at countering this have not been very effective. 

New rules and modes of behaviour between the genders are needed as more and more women enter the workforce. Murray cites examples of both genders not drawing the line in their interactions under the spotlight. The MeToo movement which served as an eyeopener to the levels of female exploitation and male entitlement in the glamorous entertainment industry is only the tip of the iceberg. But it has not proved to be as powerful a deterrent as was expected. The debate about whether womens’ safety in workplaces has improved as a consequence is, however, not settled.

Racial and sexual identities are in the forefront like never before. Nothing wrong in that per se, these identities are important. However, people are more than their race and sexuality. Currently the spotlight is on these identities at the cost of people’s actions and the import of their words.

There are several other sections of society who need support - the minorities who don’t have the same access to resources as the others, refugees that are arriving in ever-increasing numbers at foreign shores, to name a few. The importance of intersectionality is apparent when the various social and political identities - religion, gender, caste, sexuality - mesh to create levels of privilege and discrimination which has huge implications for society at large.

The politics of identity and the resultant feeling of inferiority or superiority is one factor for our unsettled times. Having a chip on one’s shoulder due to an accident of birth does not result in an important aspect of life - happiness.

As Murray so eloquently puts it, “To assume sex, sexuality and skin colour mean nothing would be ridiculous. But to assume they mean everything would be fatal.”