The Unconscious Civilization

220 Pages·1997·22.069 MB·English

by  John Ralston Saul

@
THE
UNCONSCIOUS
CIVILIZATION
John Ralston Saul

The Massey Lectures Series
The Massey Lectures are co-sponsored by Massey College,
intheUniversityofToronto,andCBC Radio. Theserieswas
created inhonourofthe Right HonourableVincentMassey,
former governor general of Canada, and was inaugurated
in 1961 to enable distinguished authorities to communicate
the results of original study or research on subjects of con-
temporary interest.
Thisbookcomprises the 1995 Massey Lectures, ''TheUn-
consciousCivilization,''broadcastinNovember1995aspart
of CBC Radio's Ideas series. The producer of the series was
Philip Coulter; the executive producer was Bemie Lucht.
John Ralston Saul
John Ralston Saul is a distinguished Canadian writer and
thinker. Voltaire's Bastards, his bestselling study of "the dic-
tatorship of reason in the West," has been published innine
countries, including Canada, the United States, England,
France, Italy, Austria and Japan. Saul further developed his
ideas in The Doubter's Compa—nion: A Dictionary ofAggressive
Common Sense. His novels The Paradise Eater (winner of
the Italian Premio Litterario Intemazionale), The Next Best
—
Thing, Baraka and The Birds ofPrey have also been pub-
lished internationally. In 1994 he published a novel in
French, De Si Bons Americains. Saul earned his doctorate at
King's College,Universityof London, andhisB.A., inpolit-
ical science, history and economics, at McGill University.
Saul has been active in the Canadian Centre of Interna-
tional PEN, serving as president in 1990-1992.
@
Also byJohn Ralston Saul
Nonfiction
Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship ofReason in
West
A
The Doubters Companion: Dictionary of
Aggressive Common Sense
Fiction
The Birds ofPrey
Baraka, or The Lives, Fortunes and SacredHonor
ofAnthony Smith
TheNext Best Thing
TheParadise Eater
THE
UNCONSCIOUS
CIVILIZATION
John Ralston Saul
PENGUIN BOOKS
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FirstpublishedbyHouseofAnansiPressLimited (Canada) 1995
Thisedition publishedby PenguinBooksAustraliaLtd 1997
791086
Copyright©JohnRalstonSaul, 1997
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Printed andbound inAustraliabyAustralianPrintGroup,
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Cataloguing-in-Publicationdata
Saul,JohnRalston.
Theunconsciouscivilization.
ISBN 0 140264647.
1. Corporatestate. 2. Individualism. I. Title.
330.1
For
Digitized by the Internet Archive
2014
in
https://archive.org/details/unconsciouscivilOOjohn
Contents
I The Great Leap Backwards 1
II From Propaganda to Language 40
III From Corporatism to Democracy 76
IV From Managers and Speculators to Growth 117
V From Ideology Towards Equilibrium 158
Notes 197
Acknowledgements 207