Rating: 
Summary: A roundhouse shot at corporatist, group-think American life
Review: "Are we truly living in a corporatist society that uses democracy as little more than a pressure release valve?"Not satisfied with hurtling the literary hand-grenade of the 1990's, "Voltaire's Bastards", into the midst of our oblivious Western society, John Ralston Saul has now equipped his metaphorical sniper rifle, and in his crosshairs is the 'deviant class' which has destabilized our American dream. In "The Unconscious Civilization", Saul targets 'corporatist' groups, the special interests (both economic and social) which have lulled citizens into replacing their own thoughts with those of factions who magically (and absurdly) claim to represent their beliefs and dreams. "One of the difficulties faced by citizens today is making sense of what is presented as material for public debate, but is actually no more than the formalized propaganda of interest groups. It is very rare now in public debate to hear from someone who is not the official voice of an organization." Characteristic of Saul's previous work, "The Unconscious Civilization" is a firm, wind-knocking shot to the gut. But luckily for you, your opponent is also teaching you how to fight. Hear him shout: 'Stand up, slothful citizen. Your constitution is failing.' "The statistics of our crisis are clear and unforgiving. Yet they pass us by--in newspapers, on television, in conversations--as if they were not reality. Or rather, as if we were unable to convert knowledge into action." Do you feel protected by the Internet, by the millions of voices which you feel will conglomerate to represent you? So how's it working for you so far? Sure we have information, but what the hell good is it doing for the spirit of our nation? "Knowledge is more effectively used today to justify wrong being done than to prevent it. This raises an important question about the role of freedom of speech. We have a great deal of it. But if it has little practical effect on reality, then it is not really freedom of speech. Without utility, speech is just decorative." In this work, Saul scopes out the corporatist mindset, the coalescence of many minds into one body with only one voice (corpus from Latin, meaning body), which has invaded business, politics, and civil society alike. The result is chilling, for when we rise to speak, we find our individual words have different meanings to each of these bodies. As a consequence, we are learning to speak less. "In a corporatist society there is no serious need for traditional censorship or burning, although there are regular cases. It is as if our language itself is responsible for our inability to identify and act upon reality." We may be blind to the corporatist processes, but we should be able to fairly see their results. In politics: 38% voter turnout rates, lowest political convention viewership, the quashing of third-party voices; in business: the plastering of disclaimers, sloganeering, and that opaque wall of business-speak between every salesman and their customer; in civil society: the inability to progress in conversation without soundbites, and the number of people who flat-out don't want to talk to you. This partition of words has not obstructed John Ralston Saul, though. An advocate of "aggressive common sense", Saul portrays himself correctly as a classic liberal, defender and klaxon for the citizen, neither champion nor foe of the marketplace. "The market does not lead, balance, or encourage democracy. However, properly regulated it is the most effective way to conduct business." "Every important characteristic of both individualism and democracy has preceded the key economic events of our millennium. What's more, it was these characteristics that made most of the economic events possible, not vice-versa." John Ralston Saul's work consists of five chapters loosely based off a series of 1995 lectures at the University of Toronto. Like "Voltaire's Bastards", Saul here is discursive and entertaining; each chapter is a new dive into an invigorating Arctic lake of realization. Chapter One, "The Great Leap Backwards" launches the assault. The remaining chapters focus on reconstruction... their titles: "From Propaganda to Language", "From Corporatism to Democracy", "From Managers and Speculators to Growth", "From Ideology Towards Equilibrium". Moderately mistitled (resulting in a one-point demerit in the overall review score), a more appropriate title for this book would have been "The Corporatist Civilization". A true attack on the 'unconscious' among us would have been welcome, though Saul does meander briefly into this realm,with a few sections that fit cozily into the overall thesis: "Perhaps the difficulty with the psychoanalytic movement is that from the beginning it has sent out a contradictory message: Learn to know yourself--your unconscious, the greater unconscious. This will help you to deal with reality. On the other hand, you are in the grip of great primeval forces--unknown and unseen--and even if you do know and see them, it is they who must dominate." One-quarter the size of "Voltaire's Bastards", Saul this time out initiates a concise attack: on utopias, ideology, technocracy, demagoguery, and group mentality... all of which direct the individual to replace their view of the world with that of an 'official spokesman', eerily reversing the vector of our society towards a fascist state. An insightful read; terse, but somewhat condensed and abstract at places. The trade-offs are more than acceptable, though. Steel yourself for a barrage of Truth.
Rating: 
Summary: SAUL'S PATHWAY
Review: ...Saul intimates that the worship of our comtemporary god may not be a road to Utopia but merely another potential Brave New Worldesque,totalitarian dead-end.When half of your society is on some kind of drug or stimulant;when 25% of your society has an STD;when half of all marriages end in divorce;when the public school system is the laughingstock of the industrialized world;when you have the highest incarceration rate in the world;when a more callous,Darwinian view of life begins to assert itself(the basis of almost all tyrannies of the 20th century);when bread and circuses(Survivor and WWF anyone?)and degenerancy is the norm because it is profitable, then how long can a society sustain itself on such madness?We have collectively lost our minds and our society flails in the void.We have set up and now worship this idol.Saul doesn't seem to think we'll abandon the Green calf anytime soon....
Rating:
Summary: Essential reading.....
Review: For any left-wing individual who requires another brick in their psychological wall separating them from reality. Another piece of advice for y'all: Avoid reading "The Anti-Capitalist Mentality" by Ludwig Von Mises. You wont be able to sleep at night afterwards.
Rating: 
Summary: Pretentious Sequel to "Voltaire's Bastards"
Review: Generally expands upon a segment of "Voltaire's Bastards" (itself an expandsion of magazine article) that I found least convincing - the desire of modern society to invent, build-up and then revile/destroy "elites". Not as well developed as previous book nor as well written. I do not recommend it.
Rating: 
Summary: Lacks The Big Picture
Review: John Ralston Saul is considered one of the great humanist essayists of this time. That is true but he is also very much a man of our times, with both the advantages and disadvantages of the current Weltanschauung. I bought this book after having read some rather rave reviews and had high expectations. I can't say that I have got anything from this book that I didn't already have or suspect. He's reinforced some of my opinions without adding to my empherical knowledge to back them. The concept of the individual, individualism if you will, is dominant today, representing a narrow and superficial deformation of the Western idea. Market Capitalism does not guarantee democracy; you can have poor democracies and prosperous dictatorships. Today we are in an unconscious process of masochistic suicide destroying the very substance of our public institutions, institutions which were the products of decades of thought and democratic debate, all in the pursuit of making things more `effective', more `business-like'. . . So according to Saul, and on target IMHO, but what does this all mean? What can we draw from these intermediate conclusions? He then goes on to describe the crisis that grips the West, which he dates from 1973. Bureaucratic thinking and rationalization continue to manipulate our perceptions, dominate and drive our existence, controlled by what he describes as `Corporatism'. He states, "the corporatist movement was born in the nineteenth century as an alternative to democracy. It proposed the legitimacy of groups over that of the individual citizen." Pp16-17 Napoleon, Hegel and Bismarck helped the process along by emphasizing rule by elites and adherence to the state. This was all only a lead up to the great "new all-powerful clockmaker god - the marketplace - and his archangel, technology. Trade is the marketplace's miraculous cure for all that ails us. . . I would suggest that Marxism, fascism and the marketplace strongly resemble each other. They are all corporatist, managerial and hooked on technology as their own particular golden calf." Pp19-20 Amazing how simple it all is. He then goes on to blame Max Weber for having given "corporatism a sophisticated intellectual shape". . . In what way? Weber warned of the dangers of bureaucracy, of how capitalism mated with ever increasing rationalization and technological innovation would become a very difficult beast to control. He also warned against the subversion of democratic institutions by powerful non-democratic groups with oligarchic tendencies. Saul's view on the triumph of rationalism is also, by the way, influenced by Weber. So instead of damning Weber he should be thanking him. Here we see the tendency so common among US (and Canadian) intellectuals today of putting the blame for their perceived crisis on foreign thinkers (usually German or French) who have some how lead the well-intentioned, but all too trusting North Americans astray. Alan Bloom, on the right, was guilty of the same thing in his The Closing of the American Mind. In all, this tendency represents a mixing up of cause and effect. If you want to look for a foreign culpret, how about the English Utilitarians who put morally accepted self-interest and quest for profit in the service of individual gain above anything else? An attitude that has since then been enthusisatically and uncritically accepted by the mass of American intellectuals. What is Saul's solution? Persistent public commitment by the citizenry can turn the tables on corporatism. But how, given the power that Saul says the elites have to manipulate and control all the spheres of our existence? What of their ability to define "freedom" in wholly consumerist terms, making it a mere matter of material choice? As long as the US Constitution allows for majority rule the public will have the last say, but how to mobilize the public, how to educate them as to defending their best interests when the reigns of mass communication are in the hands of the corporatists? How do we make the interests of society take priority over the interests of profit? The moral dilemma in all this is ignored by Saul who distrusts anyone who even mentions it. Unable to follow Nietzsche's lead he stumbles. Nietzsche, alas a foreigner, was also primarily a moralist. Morals are important since they shape the way that we adjust to the struggle for our very existence in an ever more competitive world. While a sense of the spiritual is necessary, the vast bulk of our actions, the reality we must deal with in our every day lives, is economic due to the pervasive market system which is the very air we breathe. It is therefore very much man-made, synthetic, something that has been grafted onto society, not a component of it. Morals are as necessary now as when we lived in small farming communities, since it is by working together, by accepting each others' strengths and weaknesses, by learning to control our own impulses and irrational drives and by accepting the inate worth of each person that we insure not only our own but the survival of our species in the coming hard winter. A, "myth-building" exercise you say, but is it any more a myth than that of "the Market corrects itself and all we need do is trust in it"? Since the end of the 18th Century we in the West have lost almost every remnant of our pre-Capitalist past. We have forgotten our entire community or social or human-to-human history, we are unable to recall when an action did not infer some sort of self-benefit. We fail to see that the so-called Third World is as we were two hundred years ago. It is not a question of scientific or technological or commercial progress, in the most human sense, but of the maturing and decay of an idealogical-based social system. Saul's main drawback is that he lacks the indepth knowledge of the numerous diciplines necessary for this very complex subject. That and `distance' since he approaches the problem with far too many preconceptions. A much better book in a related subject is Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation. His history of the market economy provides much of the background necessary to illuminate our current situation. Few if any thinkers today have the breadth of knowledge to provide the big picture of our current post-modern situation. Men like Max Weber, who had a encyclopeadic knowledge of several wide fields of study no longer walk the earth. Still a much more refined, yet wide view which would include a fuller understanding of social economics, history, political science, sociology, theology and philosophy is necessary in order to get a grip on the tendencies which are slowly eating away our society and threaten to turn us all into what Max Weber described as "a culture of specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart".
Rating:
Summary: Lacks The Big Picture
Review: John Ralston Saul is considered one of the great humanist essayists of this time. That is true but he is also very much a man of our times, with both the advantages and disadvantages of the current Weltanschauung. I bought this book after having read some rather rave reviews and had high expectations. I can't say that I have got anything from this book that I didn't already have or suspect. He's reinforced some of my opinions without adding to my empherical knowledge to back them. The concept of the individual, individualism if you will, is dominant today, representing a narrow and superficial deformation of the Western idea. Market Capitalism does not guarantee democracy; you can have poor democracies and prosperous dictatorships. Today we are in an unconscious process of masochistic suicide destroying the very substance of our public institutions, institutions which were the products of decades of thought and democratic debate, all in the pursuit of making things more 'effective', more 'business-like'. . . So according to Saul, and on target IMHO, but what does this all mean? What can we draw from these intermediate conclusions? He then goes on to describe the crisis that grips the West, which he dates from 1973. Bureaucratic thinking and rationalization continue to manipulate our perceptions, dominate and drive our existence, controlled by what he describes as 'Corporatism'. He states, "the corporatist movement was born in the nineteenth century as an alternative to democracy. It proposed the legitimacy of groups over that of the individual citizen." Pp16-17 Napoleon, Hegel and Bismarck helped the process along by emphasizing rule by elites and adherence to the state. This was all only a lead up to the great "new all-powerful clockmaker god - the marketplace - and his archangel, technology. Trade is the marketplace's miraculous cure for all that ails us. . . I would suggest that Marxism, fascism and the marketplace strongly resemble each other. They are all corporatist, managerial and hooked on technology as their own particular golden calf." Pp19-20 Amazing how simple it all is. He then goes on to blame Max Weber for having given "corporatism a sophisticated intellectual shape". . . In what way? Weber warned of the dangers of bureaucracy, of how capitalism mated with ever increasing rationalization and technological innovation would become a very difficult beast to control. He also warned against the subversion of democratic institutions by powerful non-democratic groups with oligarchic tendencies. Saul's view on the triumph of rationalism is also, by the way, influenced by Weber. So instead of damning Weber he should be thanking him. Here we see the tendency so common among US (and Canadian) intellectuals today of putting the blame for their perceived crisis on foreign thinkers (usually German or French) who have some how lead the well-intentioned, but all too trusting North Americans astray. Alan Bloom, on the right, was guilty of the same thing in his The Closing of the American Mind. In all, this tendency represents a mixing up of cause and effect. If you want to look for a foreign culpret, how about the English Utilitarians who put morally accepted self-interest and quest for profit in the service of individual gain above anything else? An attitude that has since then been enthusisatically and uncritically accepted by the mass of American intellectuals. What is Saul's solution? Persistent public commitment by the citizenry can turn the tables on corporatism. But how, given the power that Saul says the elites have to manipulate and control all the spheres of our existence? What of their ability to define "freedom" in wholly consumerist terms, making it a mere matter of material choice? As long as the US Constitution allows for majority rule the public will have the last say, but how to mobilize the public, how to educate them as to defending their best interests when the reigns of mass communication are in the hands of the corporatists? How do we make the interests of society take priority over the interests of profit? The moral dilemma in all this is ignored by Saul who distrusts anyone who even mentions it. Unable to follow Nietzsche's lead he stumbles. Nietzsche, alas a foreigner, was also primarily a moralist. Morals are important since they shape the way that we adjust to the struggle for our very existence in an ever more competitive world. While a sense of the spiritual is necessary, the vast bulk of our actions, the reality we must deal with in our every day lives, is economic due to the pervasive market system which is the very air we breathe. It is therefore very much man-made, synthetic, something that has been grafted onto society, not a component of it. Morals are as necessary now as when we lived in small farming communities, since it is by working together, by accepting each others' strengths and weaknesses, by learning to control our own impulses and irrational drives and by accepting the inate worth of each person that we insure not only our own but the survival of our species in the coming hard winter. A, "myth-building" exercise you say, but is it any more a myth than that of "the Market corrects itself and all we need do is trust in it"? Since the end of the 18th Century we in the West have lost almost every remnant of our pre-Capitalist past. We have forgotten our entire community or social or human-to-human history, we are unable to recall when an action did not infer some sort of self-benefit. We fail to see that the so-called Third World is as we were two hundred years ago. It is not a question of scientific or technological or commercial progress, in the most human sense, but of the maturing and decay of an idealogical-based social system. Saul's main drawback is that he lacks the indepth knowledge of the numerous diciplines necessary for this very complex subject. That and 'distance' since he approaches the problem with far too many preconceptions. A much better book in a related subject is Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation. His history of the market economy provides much of the background necessary to illuminate our current situation. Few if any thinkers today have the breadth of knowledge to provide the big picture of our current post-modern situation. Men like Max Weber, who had a encyclopeadic knowledge of several wide fields of study no longer walk the earth. Still a much more refined, yet wide view which would include a fuller understanding of social economics, history, political science, sociology, theology and philosophy is necessary in order to get a grip on the tendencies which are slowly eating away our society and threaten to turn us all into what Max Weber described as "a culture of specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart".
Rating:
Summary: rage against the machine
Review: One might say this book is a cut down version of Ralston-Saul's other main book : "Voltaire's Bastards" which being far more in depth and somewhat more complex is maybe not as accessible/readable as this smaller one. I saw his Massey Lectures which were broadcast on TV here in Australia and it does show Saul's rather brilliant mind, brilliant mind you, not genius. Saul is exceptionally well versed in his field and the phrase "rage against the machine" comes to mind in describing his polemic against the corporatisation of the world today. I disagree with another reviewer who noted that this had always been so, well not so long ago (20-30 years) it was not unknown for even the employees of a large corporation to enjoy their job in other words believe in it and in the rights of the customer this has sadly changed over the intervening years when somehow the philosophy of rationalisation, corporatisation, greed call it what you will has consumed much of the world's population. This is driven wholeheartedly by corporate interests who as Saul correctly points out could never hope to run a country given the very selfish aims to make a profit. So the vague ambitions of some to let business run a country are hopeless if they wish to put the best interests of people first. A corporation can never do this. Similarly Saul points out that its not business that leads to social wealth but rather a social system which acts in dis-interest as opposed to the interest of corporations. Maybe it is books such as these or lectures and a combination of other factors which quashed the complete globalisation of the Third World in Seattle recently. As such it is a good thing, the people must always come first when government acts. Yes of course business interests are all well and good in their own sphere but they should never interfere with the social health of a country, or in this case the world's, people. Saul extracts some good advice regarding the problems of today such as the taxes paid by major corporations which 30 years ago made up 48% of the entire tax income of western governments, this is now down to 5% ,a woeful state of affairs and the reason why education and health care are no longer a right of every person but rather are becoming more and more accessible to the ones who can pay. Saul recommends that all corporations should pay a basic tax rate of 30% as is being attempted in the European union, this requires international agreements and as such these are a good thing in bringing prosperity (hopefully) to many. Saul at first seems to advise the use of purely economic solutions to economic problems when in fact, deep down and not often noticed, the problem is one of the state of mind of the average person who himself IS society rather than being controlled/reacting or just living in it. He then looks at this issue to some degree as well, recommending participation in local affairs to get the citizen once more the controller of his own life as it once must have been, to some degree, in Athens when democracy was first implemented. An excellent book which can truly make some changes if it is taken seriously and courageously.
Rating:
Summary: Don't mention the Emperor's outfit!
Review: Saul's magnum opus is not a breezy read, but the information within it is so concentrated thet you need to stop for breath at the end of every page. But, having said that, there is not a wasted word and the sheer scope of the work, which encompasses fields from art critisism to dry economics, means this concentration is a necessity. Saul's main strengths are his passion, which keeps the text engaging, but requires some sympathy for his position to get the most from the book, and his unconventional approach, which refuses to play within the boundaries to which we are accustomed. This approach sees Saul challenge some of the more glaring anomalies in the capitalist/corporatist argument, such as the link between marketplace freedom and political freedom, or the tendency of modern capitalism to ignore its own philosophical bases most of the time, such as when 'competition' is seconded to oligarcical interests which actually control all important industries, and are swamping the internet as we watch. The sad thing is how little this kind of thinking seems to affect policy in Western countries, and Saul offers no solutions. Read, absorb, then look for the links of 'interest' between the controllers of your society... you'll find they're everywhere, and that, to me, is the proof of Saul's observations.
Rating:
Summary: SAUL'S PATHWAY
Review: THIS BOOK IS A STIRRING READ. WE ARE ALL BURIED UNDER CORPORATE PSEUDO REASON WHERE REASON IS ONLY APPLIED WHERE POWER BENEFITS. SAUL GIVES VOICE TO THE MADNESS OF THIS REASON AND ENCOURAGES US TO REACH INTO THE HEART AND FIND COURAGE TO GO WITH OUR LOGICAL FACILITIES TO EXAMINE THE NOTION OF THE "PUBLIC GOOD" I.E. THE DESIGN OF A GOOD SOCIETY. HE APPEARS TO SEE THAT THE LEGITIMACY OF THE PUBLIC GOOD AS A SOCIAL CONTRACT, IF ADOPTED, WOULD SERVE AS AN IMPETUS TO DEBATE THE QUESTIONS LEFT OFF OF THE POWER AGENDA. I SENSE THAT HE IS LOOKING FOR A CURRENCY OTHER THAN MONEY TO CREATE AN ENERGY THAT THE POLITICIAN MUST RESPOND TO. IN THEORY ONE MAN ONE VOTE CAN BEAT ONE DOLLAR ONE VOTE. BUT MUCH OF THE SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE SUCH AS PUBLIC SCHOOLS, AN FOCUS ON THE HUMANITIES AND AN EDUCATION DESIGNED TO CREATE CITIZENS AND MORE APPRECIATION FOR PUBLIC SERVICES WILL BE RESISTED BY THE COURTIERS OF POWER. THIS IS A VERY GOOD LAYOUT OF WHERE THE TENSIONS ARE IN MODERN CAPITALIST-democracy. WE NEED AN EXTRAORDINARY AND SUSTAINED ACT OF IMAGINATION AND WILL BY THE POPULATION OF THE UNITED STATES, PERHAPS FUELED BY CONTRADICTION BETWEEN OUR FOUNDING PRINCIPLES AND CURRENT PRACTICE TO MAKE HEADWAY. (WONDER IF THERE ARE ANY WEALTHY BENEFACTORS WHO WOULD DONATE COPIES OF "ADBUSTERS" MAGAZINE TO A MILLION HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS? ) COMEDY SHOWS LIKE CHAPELLE, SIMPSONS, AND ESPECIALLY SOUTH PARK ARE TELLING US THAT THE FEELINGS AND ENERGY ARE OUT THERE. THIS IS A GREAT BOOK. IT IS ALSO PAINFUL AS IT UNDERSCORES WHERE WE ARE AMISS. THE AUTHOR IS CANADIAN. ANYONE WHO WATCHED BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE AND THE SCENES ABOUT CANADA WOULD SENSE THAT A SOPHISTICATED AUTHOR FROM THAT LAND WOULD SEE WHERE THINGS ARE SO EXAGGERATED IN THIS COUNTRY. THOUGH CANADA IS HARDLY FREE FROM CORPORATIST INFLUENCE. I LOOK FORWARD TO HIS NEXT WORK. ON EQUILIBRIUM. THOUGH IT IS HARD TO BELIEVE IN EQUILIBRIUM/ AS IN A RESTING PLACE. POLITICS WILL BE A DYNAMIC BATTLE FOR EVER. AND THE FORCES OF COMPASSION WILL BE PITCHED AGAINST THE MATRIX OF FEARS AND THE IDEALOGY THAT FEAR SPAWNS.
Rating:
Summary: Compulsory reading
Review: This book stands alone in its astute critique of European civilizaton. Eloquently written, provocatively observed, The Unconscious Civilization should be compulsory reading in every high-school curriculum. It is easy to see why publishing companies don't want to keep this work in circulation!
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