John Ralston Saul

Voltaire's Bastards : The Dictatorship of Reason in the West (1992)

[T]he ideal of the rugged individual opening up the American West is still applied as an essential truth to ten million citizens living in the small area of New York City, as if ten million bulls should and could be squeezed into a china shop.

— John Ralston Saul truth

Just as the unleashing of ideas and myths in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries cleared the way for endless changes in state and social structures, so the subsequent pinning down and splitting up of language into feudal states has now made it impossible for the citizen to participate seriously in society. The inviting humanist irony of the early days has given way to the off-putting rational cynicism and sloganeering of our time.

— John Ralston Saul time

Elites quite naturally define as the most important and admired qualities for a citizen those on which they themselves have concentrated.

— John Ralston Saul zen

We talk endlessly of the individual and of individualism, for example, when any sensible glance at major issues indicates that we live in an era of great conformism. Our societies turn upon democratic principles, yet the quasi totality of our leading citizens refuse to take part in that process and, instead, leave the exercise of political power to those for whom they have contempt. Our business leaders hector us in the name of capitalism, when most of them are no more than corporate employees, isolated from personal risk.

— John Ralston Saul art

Thus the Age of Reason has turned out to be the Age of Structure; a time when, in the absence of purpose, the drive for power as a value in itself has become the principal indicator of social approval. And the winning of power has become the measure of social merit.

— John Ralston Saul time

Neither Capitalism nor Socialism can pretend to be an ideology. They are merely methods for dividing ownership and income. What is most peculiar for such theoretically practical , which are also theoretically opposed to each other, is that neither of them has ever existed, except in a highly tentative form. And even then they are invariably mixed together. Their mutually exclusive vocabularies have more to do with basic similarities than with differences.

— John Ralston Saul wit

[S]hould we attempt to use sensible words to deal with these problems, they will be caught up immediately in the structures of the official arguments which accompany the official modern ideologies — arguments as sterile as the ideologies are irrelevant. Our society contains no method of serious self-criticism for the simple reason that it is now a self-justifying system which generates its own logic.

— John Ralston Saul words

A man who uses power to do evil is in theory judged to have been conscious of his acts and to be as fit for punishment as a perpetrator of premeditated murder. But the technocrat is not trained on that level. He understands events within the logic of the system. The greatest good is the greatest logic or the greatest appearance of efficiency or responsibility for the greatest possible part of the structure.

— John Ralston Saul art

This breakdown of social order — rules of dress, sexual controls, speech patterns, family structures — has been seen as a great victory for the individual. On the other hand, it may simply be a reflection of the individual's frustration at being locked up inside a specialization. These acts of personal freedom are irrelevant to the exercise of power. So in lieu of taking a real part in the evolution of society, the individual struggles to appear as if no one has power over his personal evolution. Thus victories won for these individual liberties may actually be an acceptance of defeat by the individual.

— John Ralston Saul freedom

Today, more than ever, women are occupying positions of influence. However, in the past they have been the exceptions to the rule and were usually obliged to hold on to their power by deforming themselves into honorary men or into magnified archetypes of the female who manipulated men. It still is not clear that women can successfully become part of the established structures without accepting these deformations.

— John Ralston Saul success

The pinning on of stars reaches its full cynical significance when sanctified valour and bereaved families are used to lend dignity to wars stupidly fought. The courageous and their families are drawn into a circular trap. The sacrificed soldier was valorous under the orders of a commander who has rewarded his effort. The battle was therefore worth fighting. Courage made it worthwhile. The basic rule of war — that it is fought to be won — has been forgotten.

— John Ralston Saul war

The rational elites, obsessed by structure, have become increasingly authoritarian in a modern, administrative way. The citizens feel insulted and isolated. They look for someone to throw stones on their behalf. Any old stone will do. The cruder the better to crush the self-assurance of the obscure men and their obscure methods. The New Right, with its parody of democratic values, has been a crude but devastating stone with which to punish the modern elites. The New Left, which will eventually succeed it, could easily turn out to be equally crude.

— John Ralston Saul men

Societies grow into systems. The systems require management and are therefore increasingly wielded, like a tool or a weapon, by those who have power. The rest of the population is still needed to do specific things. But the citizens are not needed to contribute to the form or direction of the society. The more "advanced" the civilization, the more irrelevant the citizen becomes.

— John Ralston Saul power

[T]he free market may be a good, bad or insufficient idea, but, in any case, it is just a crude commercial code. Now it is regularly equated with or given credit for or even precedence over the freedom of man. But the freedom of man is a moral statement on the human condition, both in the practical and in the humanist sense. To equate it with a school of business is to betray a certain confusion. An unconscious unease.

— John Ralston Saul freedom

[Modern capitalism] is masterful at producing services people don't need and in large part probably don't want. It is brilliant at convincing people that they do need and want them. But it has difficulty turning itself to the production of those services which people really do need. Not only that, it often spends an enormous amount of time and effort convincing people that those services are either unrealistic, marginal or counterproductive.

— John Ralston Saul time

The individual has been allowed out of his socially constructed cage. That, at least, is the contemporary myth. What is not clear, however, is what that liberation has to do with the fulfullment of individualism. The lessons of history seem relatively clear. Societies on the rise are simple, unadorned and relatively uncompromising. Those on the decline are given to open-mindedness, self-indulgence and the baroque.

— John Ralston Saul history

Superficial nonconformism... leaves our rational structures indifferent. Questions of moral action and of physical appearance are increasingly irrelevant; they are categorized either as justified self-expression or conversely as suitable subjects for agitated public debate. In either case they are harmless vents.

— John Ralston Saul action

Ifwere functioning today, he would have been hard put to avoid saying that imaginary sex is the opiate of the people.

— John Ralston Saul people

The idea underlying such endless discussion and dreaming about the physical act is that sexual expertise confersand is therefore part of becoming an affirmed individual. This is a curious suggestion... Sex is many things — a need, a desire, an emotion, a release — but it has nothing to do with worldly sophistication, character building or even existential action. Sex, in general, is more of an obstacle than anything else for those who wish to free themselves and act as individuals... [W]e aren't dealing with a successful affirmation of responsible individualism in the real world. We are creating private dreams which compensate for the fracturing of the individual and the castration of his or her power in public life.

— John Ralston Saul life

There is little to envy in the woman's position either. For perhaps the first time in history, she has a general sense of herself as an individual apart from men. This self-confidence gives her drive and makes her want to succeed. As a result she is eager to join the system. She does not have a clear idea of what it will do to her. Her focus is on her own past and on what men did to women — not on the male structure and what it does to men.

— John Ralston Saul women

Societies either roll on blindly to disaster or they find the inner strength to stop themselves long enough to find ways for reform from within.

— John Ralston Saul strength

The Doubter's Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense (1994)

— John Ralston Saul doubt

The conclusion drawn by ... most of our

— John Ralston Saul

In helping the arms industry to work with the Pentagon to work with the security agencies to work with the oil industry to work with the environmental agencies and so on, he encourages nationwide stability. If successful he will have indirectly eliminated interference from that rival system — citizen-based democracy — which technically maintains legal control over the constitutional structures of the Republic.

— John Ralston Saul success

Capitalism was reasonably content under Hitler, happy under Mussolini, very happy under Franco and delirious under General Pinochet.

— John Ralston Saul reason

We are the raison d'

— John Ralston Saul

Faith: The opposite of dogmatism.

— John Ralston Saul faith

Freedom: An occupied space which must be reoccupied every day.

— John Ralston Saul space

Freud, Sigmund: A man so dissatisfied with his own mother and father that he devoted his life to convincing everyone who would listen — or better still, talk — that their parents were just as bad.

— John Ralston Saul life

Happy family: The existence and maintenance of [this] is thought to make a politician fit for public office. According to this theory, the public are less concerned by whether or not they are effectively represented than by the need to be assured that the penises and vaginas of public officials are only used in legally sanctioned circumstances.

— John Ralston Saul family

It is undoubtedly easier to believe in absolutes, follow blindly, mouth received wisdom. But that is self-betrayal.

— John Ralston Saul wisdom

Which is ideology? Which not? You shall know them by their assertion of truth, their contempt for considered reflection, and their fear of debate.

— John Ralston Saul truth

An important newspaper baron...explains that the cause of poverty throughout the world is indolence. Ten per cent of Americans would not be on food stamps if they simply worked harder.... If only they had followed his father's advice, they'd have "stuck it to the bastards" and become really rich. This image of hundreds and hundreds of millions of millionaires sticking it to each other, there no longer being any other category of citizen to stick it to, is so all-inclusive that there is no need for others to concern themselves with this word.

— John Ralston Saul work

[W]e have more than two options... a critique of reason does not have to be a call for the return of superstition and arbitrary power.... [O]ur problems do not lie with reason itself but with our obsessive treatment of reason as an absolute value. Certainly it is one of our qualities, but it functions positively only when balanced and limited by the others.

— John Ralston Saul power

In the humanist ideal, the mainstream is where interesting debate, the generating of new ideas and creativity take place. In rational society this mainstream is considered uncontrollable and is therefore made marginal. The centre ground is occupied instead by structures and courtiers.

— John Ralston Saul society

Left to its own devices the market is capable of the most miraculous of inventions and the silliest of self-delusions. It is an extreme romantic. It also has a real purpose — the same one it has always had. That is to organize the supply and exchange of goods or to finance the production of goods — thus facilitating and financing the economy. But the market cannot achieve in a regular and lasting manner its own purpose because it is only an unconscious and abstract mechanism. The factor which must be added in order to create the restraint, balance, and consciousness necessary for long-term prosperity is human leadership. That leadership takes the form of effective regulation.

— John Ralston Saul change

In all earlier civilizations, it should be remembered, commerce was treated as a narrow activity and by no means the senior sector in society.

— John Ralston Saul society

Moral crusade: Public activity undertaken by middle-aged men who are cheating on their wives or diddling little boys. Moral crusades are particularly popular among those seeking power for their own personal pleasure, politicians who can't think of anything useful to do with their mandates, and religious professionals suffering from a personal inability to communicate with their god.

— John Ralston Saul god

Myrmecophaga jubata: The anteater. The existence of this predator demonstrates that thinking 71 percent of the time, as ants do, won't prevent you from being eaten. Thinking less than that, as humans do, will almost guarantee it.

— John Ralston Saul time

Panic: A highly underrated capacity thanks to which individuals are able to indicate clearly that something is wrong.... Given their head, most humans panic with great dignity and imagination. This can be called democratic expression or practical common sense.

— John Ralston Saul imagination

Pessimism: A valuable protection against quackery.

— John Ralston Saul protection

It is the considered opinion of most members of our rational

— John Ralston Saul opinion

"The recession is over." This phrase has been used twice a year since 1973 by government leaders throughout the West. Its meaning is unclear. See: Depression.

— John Ralston Saul men

The transnational corporations and the money markets have declared the era of human-designed regulations over. Now the market must reign. Because few people in the business community are paid to think about phrases such as "Western civilization," they don't seem to realize that they are proposing the arbitrary denial of 2,500 years of human experience.

— John Ralston Saul people

[C]ontent [is] an obstacle to the exercise of power.

— John Ralston Saul power

United States: .... A nation given either to unjustified over-enthusiasms or infantile furies.

— John Ralston Saul

Venereal: From Venus, the goddess of love, this word refers to the reality of desire. With the rise of Protestantism and science, the word "disease" was tacked on in a revealing combination of categorization and moralizing. "Which disease?" "The disease of love."

— John Ralston Saul love

On June 22nd, [1633,] in the morning, in the great hall of the Convent of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, Galileo was found guilty of holding a false doctrine. He went down on his knees and both abjured and condemned his own errors. He swore never to argue such doctrines again. It was thus definitely confirmed that the sun did rotate around the earth...Santa Maria Sopra Minerva. Saint Mary Over Minerva. Power over wisdom.

— John Ralston Saul wisdom

There is something silly about grown men and women striving to reduce their vision of themselves and of civilization to bean counting.

— John Ralston Saul women

[G]iven our inability over the past two decades to deal with an unbreakable chain of unemployment, debt, inflation and no real growth, we have drifted farther and farther out into a cold, unfriendly, confusing sea. The new certitude of those in positions of authority — those out of the water — is that the certain answer is to cut away the life preservers.

— John Ralston Saul life

Each [ideology], in the oppressive air of conformity which ideologies create, will force public figures to conform or be ruined on the scaffold of ridicule. In a society of ideological believers, nothing is more ridiculous than the individual who doubts and does not conform.

— John Ralston Saul society

[O]ur

— John Ralston Saul

Because the managerial

— John Ralston Saul man

I would remind you...that Socrates was executed not for saying what things were or should be, but for seeking practical indications of where some reasonable approximation of truth might be. He was executed not for his megalomania or grandiose propositions or certitudes, but for stubbornly doubting the absolute truths of others.

— John Ralston Saul truth

[T]hree of [Newt Gingrich's] "Five Principles of American Civilization" deal with business, technology, and organization — all characteristics of work. There is no mention of liberty or equality or, for that matter, of democracy.

— John Ralston Saul work

But now, in this century of ideologies, the Gods and Destiny have been given new life. "Miracles in the world are many,"wrote in the fifth century BC. "There is no greater miracle than man." Suddenly, at the end of the twentieth century, we discover that no, after all, it isn't true. Historical inevitability is a greater miracle than man. As is the dialectic. As is the superiority of various groups according to blood type. As is the genius of an abstract mechanism called the market. As is the leadership of inanimate objects — called technology — which worker bees create and then, inevitably, are led by. These inevitabilities are great leaps backward into the arms of the Gods and Destiny.

— John Ralston Saul life

Reflections of a Siamese Twin: Canada at the End of the Twentieth Century (1997)

— John Ralston Saul win

Realism isn't pessimism. And though the anti-reform interests have won an unconscionable number of battles over the last decade, the war is by no means over.

— John Ralston Saul war

Canada was built from its very beginnings on the belief that public leadership in the economy and on social issues would be as effective and cheap as anything done by the private sector.

— John Ralston Saul leadership

Indeed you can usually tell when the concepts of democracy and citizenship are weakening. There is an increase in the role of charity and in the worship of volunteerism. These represent the

— John Ralston Saul democracy

The rise of democracy was driven by the citizens' desire to escape from the paternalistic and arbitrary charity of those with money. They accomplished this by replacing charity with a fair, balanced, arm's-length system of public obligation. The principle tool of that obligation was taxation.

— John Ralston Saul money

There is absolutely no reason why we have to deal with the mid-life crisis of our social policies by putting a bullet through their heads.

— John Ralston Saul life

The state-initiated referendum has always been a part of this [anti-democratic] logic. Stop the talk, we're going to decide, yes or no. At this point the citizen's role is to wave one flag or the other and cheer for one side of the simple question or the other. In other words, we're reduced to children.

— John Ralston Saul art

A referendum is little more than a "rumour of choice." The idea behind the mechanism, ever since its first modern manifestations two centuries ago under Napoleon, has been to replace democracy with the sensation of democracy. That is: to replace the slow, complex, eternally unclear continuity of democracy, and all the awkwardness of citizen participation, with something clear and fast which allows those in power to impose their agenda. Through an apparently simple question with a one-syllable answer, those who ask can get a blank cheque from the citizenry; that is, if they choose their moment well and come up with a winning question.

— John Ralston Saul war

This is a citizenry which is annoyed, confused, insulted, and uncertain of how to protect the structures of the public good they struggled so long to put in place. Abruptly the national

— John Ralston Saul good

The strength of representative democracy is its ability to slow down those in power who wish to govern by blank cheque, but also those not in power who wish to yank the state about on the sole basis of their self-interest.

— John Ralston Saul power

There are two fairly standard approaches to political power used by those who seek it. Some seek power with the assumption that the citizenry are the source of legitimacy and are to be treated with respect. Others concentrate on identifying whatever insecurities there are within the citizenry and on exploiting them.'

— John Ralston Saul power

I am struck by the curious reflection that if everything is inevitable, as our

— John Ralston Saul reflection

The citizenry insist and insist and insist that they are proud of the Medicare system and that they want it to work. They continually send instructions to this effect to their governments. They do so in every imaginable way. And yet, day by day, the governments and the bureaucracies chip away at the system as if in the hope that, by opening holes in it and creating a new ineffectiveness, the citizenry will drop their commitment to it.

— John Ralston Saul hope

All the lessons of psychiatry, psychology, social work, indeed culture, have taught us over the last hundred years that it is the acceptance of differences, not the search for similarities which enables people to relate to each other in their personal or family lives.

— John Ralston Saul people

The dominant system of power in the west has been Platonist — a system which functions on highly developed levels of structure and law. This is the school of pure rationality and fear of the undefined — fear of doubt. The minority system has been Socratic or humanist. It is interested in doubt and not overwhelmed by the Platonist-Hobbesian desperate need to tie things down.

— John Ralston Saul fear

We seem to be unable to allow ourselves the dignity of engaging in this sort of straightforward reconsideration of our acts. After all, questioning is the great strength of democracy; the ability to doubt without losing face. Instead we charge on, chanting 'Free Trade — Prosperity', the way in 1212 on the Children's Crusade they must have chanted 'Jesus and Jerusalem!' Most were snatched up before they could reach the coast and sold into slavery or sent across the Mediterranean, again to be slaves.

— John Ralston Saul war

After all, in both languages we were dealing in large measure not with English and French, but with Scots and Irish, Bretons and Normans....There could be no more eloquent illustration of the colonial mind-set than a bunch of Celts and Vikings in a distant northern territory insulting each other as les anglais and the French as if they were the descendants of the people who had subjected and ruined them.

— John Ralston Saul people

Canada is either an idea or it does not exist. It is either an intellectual undertaking or it is little more than a resource-rich vacuum lying in the buffer zone just north of a great empire.

— John Ralston Saul rich

The old clich

— John Ralston Saul

Ever since the democratic systems permitted their various courts to give corporations the status of persons, the individual as citizen has been on the defensive. How could it be otherwise? If you are a person before the law and Exxon or Ford is also a person, it is clear that the concept of democratic legitimacy lying with the individual has been mortally wounded.

— John Ralston Saul sin

What I am describing is not only a society dominated by corporatist structures, but by the received wisdom of a corporatist atmosphere: one in which the

— John Ralston Saul wisdom

As you would expect when individualism is based only on opportunity, no one asks what happens to those who have neither the financial nor the political clout to exercise their tiny portion of that opportunity.

— John Ralston Saul opportunity

Ten per cent of our neighbours survive on charity. 10 per cent of Canadians eat through charity. 10 per cent. Surely if you were prime minister or minister of trade or of industry, you would wake up each day thinking that, for reasons that escape you, the central policy chosen to drive the economy is not working. It is not working because it is not meeting the needs of a democracy in which legitimacy lies with the citizenry.

— John Ralston Saul work

A Fair Country: Telling Truths About Canada (2008)

— John Ralston Saul truth

...a clever Toronto lawyer was deep into a technical argument before the Supreme Court. His position was dependent upon a close reading of the legal text and turned on the letter of the law. Suddenly the chief justice, Beverley McLachlin, leaned forward and asked the counsel if his argument also worked in French. After all, the law is the law in both languages and a loophole in one tends to evaporate in the other. Only an argument of substance stands up. The lawyer had no idea what to reply.

— John Ralston Saul war

The citizens job is to be rude - to pierce the comfort of professional intercourse by boorish expressions of doubt.

— John Ralston Saul doubt

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