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
Born in elevators and supermarkets, Muzak has spread to restaurants, hotels, airplanes, telephone hold services, and waiting rooms. The public-relations experts believe that human beings fear silence - that is, the absence of constantly imposed direction. It is further believed that if we can be relieved of our fears, we will gain enough self-confidence to buy, eat, vote, fly, or simply go on living.
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.
We all need a bit of self-delusion. It gets us over the difficult spots.
It is undoubtedly easier to believe in absolutes, follow blindly, mouth received wisdom. But that is self-betrayal.
Our civilization is locked in the grip of an ideology - corporatism. An ideology that denies and undermines the legitimacy of individuals 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 practical effects on the individual are passivity and conformism in the areas that matter, and non-conformism in the areas that don't
The acceptance of corporatism causes us to deny and undermine the legitimacy of the individual as citizen in a democracy. The result of such a denial is a growing imbalance which leads to our adoration of self-interest and our denial of the public good.
Either God is alive, in which case he'll deal with us as he sees fit. Or he is dead, in which case he was never alive, it being unlikely that he died of old age.
You can always tell you're in deep trouble when people start thinking money's real.
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.
There is something silly about grown men and women striving to reduce their vision of themselves and of civilization to bean counting.
United States:. A nation given either to unjustified over-enthusiasms or infantile furies.
Educating the masses was intended only to improve the relationship between the top and the bottom of society. Not for changing the nature of the relationship.
We must discover how to ask simple questions of ourselves.
Obviously we don't have 300 million people. We haven't got a big army. We don't have Hollywood. We're a medium small-sized country. We have to do what medium small-sized countries do, which-even though we're not smarter than other people-is to make ourselves seem to be smarter. We have to work harder and know more than other people.