Download And Enjoy The Unconscious Civilization Illustrated By John Ralston Saul Shared As Audiobook

the fact that this book was written overyears ago, it provides a detailed explanation of how the election of President Trump was simply a natural outcome of the "corporatist" agenda that is eroding our society.
John Ralston Saul is excellent author and this book is truly exceptional! While being eminently readable this short volume draws upon history, political theory and philosophy to provide a thorough analysis of the decline of any consideration for the "public good" in modern society.
This work has somehow become more important in theyears since it was written, Saul so clearly saw the flaws in society at the turn of the millennium and if anything the problems he identified have merely been exacerbated over the last two decades.



The central premise of this book and the series of lectures it is based on is that our democracies have become disconnected with the public good and the responsibilities of a citizen.
Individualism instead of being about the freedom of individuals over state control has been twisted to be about selfinterest, We have also lost track of the fact that power comes from the people in a democracy, not the small set of elites who create and perpetrate a corporatist myth about how society should work.
I can provide a simple test of how you know whether Saul's claims are right or not,


When people talk about their role in society both to you personally and in public discourse, how often to you hear them talking about their responsibilities and the duty they have to society.
I'd hazard a guess, almost never, On the other hand how often do you hear people talking about or rather affirming their rights, That's against my rights, I have a right to, it's my right, me, me, me, People have lost track of what the purpose rights are,


“Rights are a protection from society, But only by fulfilling their obligations to society can the individual give meaning to that protection, "


That is to say rights are a backup that shouldn't be needed,


How have we ended up like this Saul says, .


"We suffer from an addictive weakness for larger illusions, A weakness for ideology. Power in our civilization is repeatedly tied to the pursuit of allinclusive truths and utopias, As always with ideologies, the Day of Judgment is imminent and terrifying, I would suggest that Marxism, fascism and the marketplace strongly resemble each other, They are all corporatist, managerial and hooked on technology as their own particular golden calf, "


We've replaced our own thinking with ideologies, slogans and parties we can easily fall in behind.



This book made me identify a modern symptom of the corporatist mindset I'd never though of before.
When the literature on Nudges how to create mass behavioural changes with subtle changes came out I remember thinking it was both awesome and seemed a bit dodgy.
Ultimately its scientific validity is not the dodgy part, The dodgy part is that this sort of behavioural science is actually an output of the corporatist mindset that Saul outlines in this book.
Rather than addressing the problems front on and trying to improve society, the people in power instead choose to keep the masses unconscious of their errors and manipulate them to do what they want/think is best for them.
It's actually really bleak when you think about it because it's another little lie we tell ourselves is doing us good but is actually doing us harm.



So what does Saul think we should be doing And how should we be living Well he thinks the opposite of selfinterest is not altruism as some believe but rather disinterest.
So what, we twiddle our thumbs No what he means is that we should be living for the public good, that is making decisions on things without selfinterest as the driving force.
Saul is a serious historian, in many ways his philosophy is just his historical interests playing themselves out, Of special fixations in this book are Socrates and Adam Smith, Socrates Saul tells us had it right,


"The unexamined life is not worth living, "


He thinks that Socrates was all over it like a rash and Plato was actually the first corporatist and his later work twists Socrates' teaching into his own ideas about essentially controlling the great unwashed masses.
It's a little hard to get as fired up about, knowing that Plato is pretty much the only reason we know about Socrates sorry Xenophon.
But basically Saul believes we should be thinking everything through just like Socrates and doing it in a disinterested fashion so as not to conflate our own selfinterest with the public good.



Smith, Saul reminds us, wrote another piece along with his Wealth of Nations, a philosophical treatise that told us how we're supposed to live, this seems to have been cast aside by lupine economists who much prefer the all powerful market as an ideology.
The Theory of Moral Sentiments is where we should be taking directive from on the structure of society, If only.


As for Saul's values, We should spend our lives trying to keep in equilibrium the essential human qualities of: Common sense, Creativity or Imagination, Ethics not morality, intuition or instinct, memory, and reason.



Through Saul's argument we digress to address various symptoms of this unconscious state we're in, Here are some of them,


On criticism and why it has no place in the corporatist society,
“Criticism is perhaps the citizen's primary weapon in the exercise of her legitimacy, That is why, in the corporatist society, conformism, loyalty and silence are so admired and rewarded why criticism is so punished or marginalized.
Who has not experienced this conflict”


Fashion as the lowest form of ideology, ideology being what distracts from the important processes of democracy.

“Fashion is merely the lowest form of ideology, To wear or not to wear blue jeans, to holiday or not to holiday in a particular place can contribute to social acceptance or bring upon us the full opprobrium of the group.
Then, a few months or years later, we look back and our obsession, our fears of ridicule, seem a bit silly.
By then, we are undoubtedly caught up in new fashions,


From the very beginning democracy was founded on sacrifice not gain,
“In general, democracy and individualism have advanced in spite of and often against specific economic interest, Both democracy and individualism have been based upon financial sacrifice, not gain, Even in Athens, a large part of the,citizens who participated regularly in assemblies were farmers who had to give up several days' work to go into town to talk and listen.
”


On why narrow technical training is not great AKA a defence of a liberal arts degree.

“Basic technical training is, of course, useful, But to treat it as anything more than that is to lock students into technology that will be obsolete by the time they graduate.
The time wasted will also deprive them of the basic training in knowledge and thinking that might help them adjust to the constant changes outside.
”


On how much money is in the system and how little of it is in the people's hands.

There has never been so much disposable money, yet there is no money for the public good.
In a democracy this would not be the case, because the society would be centered, by general agreement, on disinterest.
In a corporatist system there is never any money for the public good because the society is reduced to the sum of the interests.
It is therefore limited to measurable selfinterest,


On how knowledge becomes twisted for financial gain
Knowledge is owned and controlled, bought and sold, in a corporatist society knowledge which matters, that is.
The people who have it, do have power as we understand power today, given our mangerial, technocratic elite, Knowledge is one of the currencies of systems men, just as it was for the courtiers in the halls of Versailles.
They require a position in the structure that provides them with some ability to deny access to others and gain access for themselves.
Then they require currency or chips to play the system's game, That is, they need information,


Raulston Saul is a brilliant philosopher and this is an absolute mustread, Unfortunately, he still suffers from the illness he diagnoses the rest of these jargon filled niche professions with much of his prose is too dense for the lay person.
You could listen to thehours of the lecture series this book is a transcript of but I'm not sure that will make the interpretation of his work any easier.
Instead I think his work is summed up quite adequately by the Rastafarian concept of Babylon, Babylon and Saul's loathed Corporatism are very similar, The Rastafarians probably see a deeper and more malevolent history to Babylon but the overall gist is the same, I think you could get a similar feeling from this lecture series/book as you could from listening to Mattafix's Big City Life sitelink youtube. com/watchvObHN .

Big City Life, me try fi get by
Pressure nah ease up, no matter how hard me try
Big City Life, here my heart have no base
And right now Babylon de 'pon me case Sort of a followup to Voltaire's Bastards which simply asked a lot of questions.
This book begins to offer something in the

way of an answer out of the predicament of modern civilization, "The apple of knowledge is the game"

Saul effectively delivers a proactive political message in a clear style, that doesn't require a lot of background knowledge.
Although, this was presented to a university level one audience, the keen reader can tackle the topic and still gain a lot from a close reading.


He gives readers the history of the rise in corporatism, gradual weakening of individualism and democracy, how this relationship functions today, and what can be done about it.
Saul does this in a way that clearly links the present with the past in many, brief yet approachable examples.


A Basic Overview of Saul's Message

Through government/corporatist takeover of the agenda of human interest and boxing them into specialized interest groups, this divide and conquer framework has worked well for both government and corporations.


Interest groups that benefit corporation or government have been encouraged to develop invisible boundaries through specialized language use.
Those that do not benefit corporate or government agendas are controlled through the language used in policies and remain outside the loop of insider knowledge, access and power.


This creates a very real control mechanism for the spreading of and controlling knowledge, The average person, who does not understand specialized language use of a particular sector of society, then invests their faith in specialist experts.


In this way, the average citizen buys into the artificial idea of safety and security, They buy into this illusion where language is cut off from reality, The citizen unaware of both a societies history and application of specialized language use leaves them unconscious of their own civilization.

“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.
”
John Ralston Saul, The Unconscious Civilization

Saul proposes a reconnecting of language to reality where clarification of the terms of corporatism shifts from an emphasis on policy, towards an emphasis on dynamics.
This shift will allow language to be the tool that invokes reality and moves us as a society forwards to that everelusive goal of equilibrium.


At the conclusion, Saul outlines very practical, yet dynamic solutions to reinvigorating society with human interests and not corporate economic aims.
They are:

a Shift the emphasis on life stage from an extended retirement to a lengthened educational process whereby there will be time enough to include the humanities in the curriculum.


b Eliminate private sector funding of politics, This would result in a minimalist approach to language and internal debate,

c Money markets should enter into agreements with governments and this would effectively shut down the most harmful of speculations.


d To fight globalization there needs to be increased regionally based social policies,

e In the arena of technology, more oversight is needed to have “in the public interest” laws to protect their citizens.


Saul uses a light touch to uncover serious issues, Somewhat dated as a few of his solutions are now being implemented at entry level

Unfortunately, Saul never quite reaches his own goal, "I've said it before that one of the signs of a healthy civilization is the existence of a relatively clear language in which everyone can participate in their own way.
"

This book is not for everyone, It is for those who already have an understanding of politics and are looking for the linking of ideas behind these, and for this reason I give it a.
It is also a challenge read for those who are interested in aspiring to a better understanding of politics,
The denial of the public good in favor of private interests is a theme which gives this book as much relevance now as when it first came out.
In this critique of modern society the author, J, R. Saul, raises the humanist banner of Socrates against the ideological standard of Plato,

Since about, he tells us, Western individualism has given way to “corporatism,” the idea that power involves only group interests.
The corporatist world view denies that individuals can be a source of social legitimacy in light of the manifest differences among them.
Humans, so the theory goes, are incapable of objective thinking their needs, even their very speech, reduce simply to selfinterest.
The displacement of the individual by group interests has given rise to an “unconscious” civilization in which people specialize in one subject and suffer almost childlike ignorance of other branches of knowledge.


Why would corporatism, or group interest, necessarily undermine the public good The answer lies in the uniquely disinterested nature of the public good as opposed to the inherent selfinterest of groups.
A significant corollary of this definition is that the opposite of selfinterest isnt altruism at all, as is commonly supposed, but rather disinterest.


A society based in the power of group interest has disturbing deficiencies, Absent the disinterested authority of the public good, individuals are reduced to their immediate needs, Freedom becomes linked in peoples minds with a winnertakeall version of capitalism, The educational system actually impedes integrated thought as it changes to turn out a class of technicians and smallpicture experts serving some private group or other, usually business interests.


A society with a weak sense of the public good has no memory from which to act, By the same token it becomes directionless, with a decreasing capacity to plan for the future, Knowledge, in such a scheme, cannot be converted to meaningful action by individuals, Free speech has little practical effect on policies, Public discourse lacks any appeal to human decency, grinding down instead into discussions among professionals about technicalities,

Economically, a false capitalism emerges in which efficiency substitutes for effectiveness, and decisiveness crowds out thoughtful action, Low interest rates lead to inflation, not growth: Economic activity gets dissipated in property speculation, mergers and acquisitions, and privatization of public goods.
People, for their part, become functions, rewarded by their ability to integrate into groups in which loyalty trumps merit, Such a structure strands us with a sense of being entrapped in an imaginary dialectic yielding ineluctable conclusions, Neoliberalism and the end of history have arrived,

By contrasting the public good to private groups, the author exposes in libertarian thinking the fallacy of the excluded middle.
When libertarians limit the scope of the public good, Saul argues, power simply moves into the hands of private organizations, not private individuals.
Thats because any privatization scheme involves three players, not two, Individuals are little more than a third wheel to this power play between public and private, The dangerous end product of the elimination of the public good from decisions is power without responsibility,

How can we counteract that The author suggests vaguely that we insert the individual wherever we can into ongoing debates and discussions.
While individuals may not be able to change policies, they may be able to affect the dynamics of a society.
Above all, individuals should develop personal virtues antithetical to a corporatist social structure, virtues such as common sense, creativity, personal ethics, memory and reason.


By looking carefully at the concept of the public good, Saul orients readers dramatically away from useless thinking about current social trends.
The book is engaging, if at times rhetorical, Fifteen years in print, it is more relevant today than it was when it first appeared, The concise, innovative thinking the author brings to these pages makes the book a mustread for any reflective citizen anywhere in the developed world.
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