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Of Course, Corporations And Governments Have A Right To Something For Their Money. They Pay The Wages. But They Don't Have The Ethical Right To Literally Purchase The Copyright Of A Citizen's Potential Contribution To Society. In A Democracy They Should Not Have The Legal Right To Silence The Quasi-totality Of The Functioning élite In Order To Satisfy A Managerial Taste For Control And Secrecy.

-John Ralston Saul

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Of Course, Corporations And

John Ralston Saul

...

Of Course, Corporations And Governments Have A Right To Something For Their Money. They Pay The Wages. But They Don't Have The Ethical Right To Literally Purchase The Copyright Of A Citizen's Potential Contribution To Society. In A Democracy They Should Not Have The Legal Right To Silence The Quasi-totality Of The Functioning élite In Order To Satisfy A Managerial Taste For Control And Secrecy.

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If Individuals Do Not Occupy Their Legitimate Position, Then It Will Be Occupied By A God Or A King Or A Coalition Of Interest Groups. If Citizens Do Not Exercise The Powers Confered By Their Legitimacy, Others Will Do So. (i - The Great Leap Backwards)

Mcdonald's Is The Ultimate Symbol Of Passive Conformity.

If Economists Were Doctors, They Would Today Be Mired In Malpractice Suits.

All The Lessons Of Psychiatry, Psychology, Social Work, Indeed Culture, Have Taught Us Over The Last Hundred Years That It Is The Acceptance Of Differences, Not The Search For Similarities Which Enables People To Relate To Each Other In Their Personal Or Family Lives.

Happy Family: The Existence And Maintenance Of [this] Is Thought To Make A Politician Fit For Public Office. According To This Theory, The Public Are Less Concerned By Whether Or Not They Are Effectively Represented Than By The Need To Be Assured That The Penises And Vaginas Of Public Officials Are Only Used In Legally Sanctioned Circumstances.

The Recession Is Over." This Phrase Has Been Used Twice A Year Since 1973 By Government Leaders Throughout The West. Its Meaning Is Unclear. See: Depression.

Armaments; Extremely Useful For Fighting Wars, A Deadweight In Any Civil Economy.

Our Belief In Salvation Through The Market Is Very Much In The Utopian Tradition. The Economists And Managers Are The Servants Of God. Like The Medieval Scholastics, Their Only Job Is To Uncover The Divine Plan. They Could Never Create Or Stop It. At Most They Might Aspire To Small Alterations.

Freud, Sigmund: A Man So Dissatisfied With His Own Mother And Father That He Devoted His Life To Convincing Everyone Who Would Listen — Or Better Still, Talk — That Their Parents Were Just As Bad.

Whenever Governments Adopt A Moral Tone - As Opposed To An Ethical One - You Know Something Is Wrong.

We Must Discover How To Ask Simple Questions Of Ourselves.

Pessimism: A Valuable Protection Against Quackery.

After All, In Both Languages We Were Dealing In Large Measure Not With English And French, But With Scots And Irish, Bretons And Normans ... There Could Be No More Eloquent Illustration Of The Colonial Mind-set Than A Bunch Of Celts And Vikings In A Distant Northern Territory Insulting Each Other As Les Anglais And The French As If They Were The Descendants Of The People Who Had Subjected And Ruined Them.

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.

A Foreigner Is An Individual Who Is Considered Either Comic Or Sinister. When The Victim Of A Disaster - Preferably Natural But Sometimes Political -the Foreigner May Also Be Pitied From A Distance For A Short Period Of Time.

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.

A Big Mac - The Communion Wafer Of Consumption.

It Is Undoubtedly Easier To Believe In Absolutes, Follow Blindly, Mouth Received Wisdom. But That Is Self-betrayal.

We All Need A Bit Of Self-delusion. It Gets Us Over The Difficult Spots.

Bankers - Pillars Of Society Who Are Going To Hell If There Is A God And He Has Been Accurately Quoted.

If There Is A God

Management Cannot Solve Problems. Nor Can It Stir Creativity Of Any Sort. It Can Only Manage What It Is Given. If Asked To Do More, It Will Deform Whatever Is Put Into Its Hands.

The Faithful Witness, Like...socrates, Voltaire, And Swift And Christ Himself, Is At His Best When He Is Questioning And Clarifying And Avoiding The Specialists Obsession With Solution. He Betrays Society When He Is Silent...he Is True To Himself And To People When His Clarity Causes Disquiet.

An Individual Who Stands Out, Or Disagrees Or Takes Risks Is A Danger To Such Systems And Is Effortlessly And, Unconsciously Sidelined.

We Are The Raison D'être Of The Entire System. We Are Also The Employers Of Those In Public Office And In The Public Service. Why Should We Accept From Them A Discourse Which Suggests Contempt For Us And For The Democratic System?

We Have More Than Two Options. A Critique Of Reason Does Not Have To Be A Call For The Return Of Superstition And Arbitrary Power. Our Problems Do Not Lie With Reason Itself But With Our Obsessive Treatment Of Reason As An Absolute Value. Certainly It Is One Of Our Qualities, But It Functions Positively Only When Balanced And Limited By The Others.

Dictionary: Opinion Presented As Truth In Alphabetical Order.

Humanism: An Exaltation Of Freedom, But One Limited By Our Need To Exercise It As An Integral Part Of Nature And Society.

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.

Like All Religions, Reason Presents Itself As The Solution To The Problems It Has Created

Canada Is Either An Idea Or It Does Not Exist. It Is Either An Intellectual Undertaking Or It Is Little More Than A Resource-rich Vacuum Lying In The Buffer Zone Just North Of A Great Empire.

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.

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.

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.

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The Transnational Corporations And The Money Markets Have Declared The Era Of Human-designed Regulations Over. Now The Market Must Reign. Because Few People In The Business Community Are Paid To Think About Phrases Such As "western Civilization," They Don't Seem To Realize That They Are Proposing The Arbitrary Denial Of 2,500 Years Of Human Experience.

The Most Powerful Force Possessed By The Individual Citizen Is Her Own Government. ... Government Is The Only Organized Mechanism That Makes Possible That Level Of Shared Disinterest Known As The Public Good.

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Wordsmiths Who Serve Established Power...castrate The Public Imagination By Subjecting Language To A Complexity Which Renders It Private. Elitism Is Always Their Aim.

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Self Confidence

Freedom - An Occupied Space Which Must Be Reoccupied Every Day.

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The Neo-conservatives, Who Are Closely Linked To The Neo-corporatists, Are Rather Different. They Claim To Be Conservatives, When Everything They Stand For Is A Rejection Of Conservatism. They Claim To Present An Alternate Social Model, When They Are Little More Than The Courtiers Of The Corporatist Movement. Their Agitation Is Filled With The Bitterness And Cynicism Typical Of Courtiers Who Scramble For Crumbs At The Banquet Tables Of Real Power, But Are Always Denied A Proper Chair.

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 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.

Marx Was Fortunate To Have Been Born Eighty Years Before Walt Disney. Disney Also Promised A Child's Paradise And Unlike Marx, Delivered On His Promise.

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.

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.

After A Period In Which Technocrats Attempted To Become Stars And Stars To Become Politicians, The Political Void Has Been Occupied By The Force Of Mediocrity, Which Can Easily Master Enough Of The Star Techniques To Produce Inoffensive Personalities And Enough Of The Rational Vocabulary To Create The Sounds Of Competence.

It Is The Considered Opinion Of Most Members Of Our Rational élites That, In Any Given Difference Of Opinion With Reality, Reality Is Wrong.

Money Is Not Real. It Is A Conscious Agreement On Measuring Value.

Not Only Is The Napoleonic Dream Stronger Today In Our Imaginations Than It Has Ever Been, But One Can Already Feel The Slow Falling Away Of Moral Opprobrium From Our Memory Of Hitler. In Another Fifty Years We May Well Find Ourselves Weighed Down By A Second Monstrous Dream Of Pure Grandeur To Match That Of The Emperor. Two Men Who Dared. Two Men Who Were Adored. Two Men Who Led With Brilliance. Two Men Who Administered Fairly And Efficiently. Two Men Who Were Modest In Their Own Needs But Surrounded By Lesser Beings Who Profited From Their Situation And Came Between The Hero And The People.

Nothing Is Absolute, With The Debatable Exceptions Of This Statement And Death.

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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.

As An Inclusive Quality, Imagination Is Thus Our Primary Force For Progress, Whatever Progress Is.

The Best Defence [for A Democracy, For The Public Good] Is Aggressiveness, The Aggressiveness Of The Involved Citizen. We Need To Reassert That Slow, Time-consuming, Inefficient, Boring Process That Requires Our Involvement; It Is Called 'being A Citizen.' The Public Good Is Not Something That You Can See. It Is Not Static. It Is A Process. It Is The Process By Which Democratic Civilizations Build Themselves.

The Citizen's Job Is To Be Rude - To Pierce The Comfort Of Professional Intercourse By Boorish Expressions Of Doubt.

Faith: The Opposite Of Dogmatism.

Elites Quite Naturally Define As The Most Important And Admired Qualities For A Citizen Those On Which They Themselves Have Concentrated.

People Cannot Do What They Cannot Think, And They Cannot Think What They Cannot Say.

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 7,000 Citizens Who Participated Regularly In Assemblies Were Farmers Who Had To Give Up Several Days' Work To Go Into Town To Talk And Listen.

Happy Hour: A Depressing Comment On The Rest Of The Day And A Victory For The Most Limited Dionysian View Of Human Nature.

Content Is An Obstacle To The Exercise Of Power.

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