me> John Ralston Saul's book, _The Unconscious Civilization_, was...
eva> so give us - or me - a summary.
Well, I'm not quite done re-reading it. Here's a very short first
approximation summary.
Ideologies provide each their own single, simple and inevitable answer
to questions that are intrinsically complex and characterized by
uncertainty. With ideological certainty available we -- the whole
civilization -- fall into a state of zombie-like (my word)
unconsciousness, a state in which the exercise of "common sense,
ethics, intuition, memory and, finally, reason" fail.
Dominant idologies for the last 120 years or so have been dominated by
corporatism. An ideology of, or derived from, corporatism has no
place for a conscious individual participant in the democratic process
and no venue for the "obligation to act as a citizen." It has
room only for putatively rational management and negotiation between
competing "interests".
Saul begins his own summary, near the end of chapter 5:
What I have described in these five chapters is a civilization --
our civilization -- locked in the grip of an ideology --
corporatism. An ideology that denies and undermines the
legitimacy of the individual as the citizen in a democracy. The
particular imbalance of this ideology leads to a worship of
self-interest and a denial of the public good. The quality that
corporatism claims as its own is rationality. The practical
effects on the individual are passivity and conformism in the
areas that matter and non-conformism in the areas that don't.
- Mike
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Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
URL: http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/mspencer/home.html
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