John Ralston Saul
John Ralston Saul
John Ralston Saul, CC OOntis a Canadian award-winning philosopher, novelist and essayist. He is a long-term champion of freedom of expression and was the International President of PEN International, until October 2015. Saul is the co-founder and co-chair of the non-profit Institute for Canadian Citizenship, a national charity promoting the inclusion of new citizens. His life bridges Canada's arts community and its military and government institution...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth19 June 1947
CountryCanada
If allowed to run free of the social system, capitalism will attempt to corrupt and undermine democracy, which is after all not a natural state.
The void in our society has been produced by the absence of values... we have no widespread belief in the value of participation. The rational system has made us fear standing out in any serious way.
An individual who stands out, or disagrees or takes risks is a danger to such systems and is effortlessly and, unconsciously sidelined.
A commercial civilization is money-oriented, profit-oriented. Commercial values always tend to wrench a society free of tradition.Economics from education to public service is being reorganized on the self-destructive basis of self-interest.
The Unconscious Civilisation There is a certain terrifying dignity to the big ideologies. With the stroke of an intellectual argument the planet is put in its place. Only the bravest or the most foolish of individuals would not become passive before such awe inspiring destinies.
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.
I have a theory of statistics: if you can double them or halve them and they still work, they are really good statistics.
Simplicity is no longer presented as a virtue. The value of complex and difficult language has been preached with such insistence that the public has begun to believe the lack of clarity must be a sign of artistic talent.
Dictionary: Opinion presented as truth in alphabetical order.
They (the novelists) became the voice of the citizen against the ubiquitous raison d'état, which reappeared endlessly to justify everything from unjust laws and the use of child labour to incompetent generalship and inhuman conditions on warships. The themes they popularized have gradually turned into the laws which, for all their flaws, have improved the state of man.
In a society of ideological believers, nothing is more ridiculous than the individual who doubts and does not conform.
Elites quite naturally define as the most important and admired qualities for a citizen those on which they themselves have concentrated.
In all earlier civilizations, it should be remembered, commerce was treated as a narrow activity and by no means the senior sector in society.
People cannot do what they cannot think, and they cannot think what they cannot say.