John N. Gray

(...)
"Barbarism," Gray believes, "is a disease of civilisation." All our institutions – "families and churches, police forces" – are incriminated by "human nastiness". It's absurd to place faith in the evolution of our species or in the progressive amelioration of society: in the Belgian Congo or Stalinist Russia or in contemporary Iraq, Iran and Syria, ideologues who rave about the regeneration of the world rely on mass slaughter to establish their personal version of heaven on Earth. In Gray's reading of history, men are the playthings of a blind and amoral fate, which decrees that the same mistakes will be made over and over again. The fictions and myths we elaborate in order to feel at home in this inimical or indifferent universe are at best "a scattering of dust", easily dispersed by the chilly blasts of Gray's invective. (...)

http://www.theguardian.com/profile/johngray

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_N._Gray
http://cultura.elpais.com/cultura/2013/12/11/actualidad/1386778011_263294.html