Category: society

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Art & Suicide

As reported in the news over the weekend, spilling into the papers this week, American novelist/essayist David Foster Wallace took his life. He had hung himself in his home, only to be discovered later by his wife.

To be honest, I’ve only read one piece by Wallace – an essay in an issue of Harper’s almost ten years ago on the release of the revised Oxford English Dictionary – and yet it left an indelible impression on me. It made me laugh out loud with its quirky honesty and his style was unique and strong; in short, it made me take notice of writing and writers at a time when it simply was not on my radar (for various reasons). I always swore I would read one of his books, but the prospects of picking up the one he is best known for, Infinite Jest, all 1,000 pages of it, was intimidating. It still is, but that has more to do with the fact that I’m in the middle (or, factually, just past the middle) of War & Peace with Joyce’s Ulysses staring at me from the bookshelf longingly.

Wallace’s suicide is the second in the last few years by an artist who’s work I’d kept an eye on. The first was that of American humorist and performer, Spalding Gray, who – it is assumed – leapt from a ferry into the Hudson River and drowned. I saw him at Massey Hall (one of the most venerable venues in Toronto) many years ago. As with Wallace’s essay, I remember crying with laughter during Gray’s droll monologue.

Which brings us to the question of artists and suicide.

Someone on Bookninja had this to say in reaction to the story:

In my work (psychiatry) I’ve seen so many creative people who are so tortured inside. I’ve often wondered if, given the choice, they’d choose peace over creativity. Maybe suicide is exercising that choice.

I thought about this. I wanted to respond, because I had something to say, but in the end I decided it would only be a tangent and while tangents are allowable in most online situations, an obituary is not exactly the place for one.

The answer is that artists do not want peace, or at least an artificial peace. To do so would be to abandon the tension which is inherent in art (and science, for that matter). In their art, over the course of their lives, artists attempt to resolve this tension; to articulate what it is that is at the centre of a storm which motivates them to create. The tension is the artist. Them against an outside world which does not work. Art becomes a philosophical expression of an existential dilemma. With this as the case, how many artists would willingly barter peace for creativity if such a trade were even possible? Not many, I would wager. What is peace when art allows you to reach higher than ever before, to touch the cookie jar of euphoria with your fingertips?

Like Wallace and Gray, I too suffer from depression. Their passing gives me pause, to put it lightly. Last night over dinner, Ingrid and I had a long talk about this – Wallace, Gray, art, and suicide – and she used a quote from Wallace that she’d read in one of the obituaries, that suicide happens very slowly. He is right. It is not, as commonly portrayed, an impulsive decision, but rather something which gestates very gradually within the mind of the sufferer. The danger is that this internalized dialogue, over the course of years, may eventually lead to the rationalization or acceptance of suicide as a logical option or self-fulfilling prophecy.

Art, however, is not depression, and depression should not be construed as something which only afflicts those in the arts. When you are depressed, anything can inflame the situation. Both the fire and the water used to douse it. It is for this reason that I take a moment to bring this up. So that people may understand what is, for lack of a better term, a mental illness. Allow me to suggest a wonderful series in the Globe and Mail, perhaps the best collection of stories and first-person recollections on the subject to be found in any newspaper.

I tip my hat to Wallace, to Gray. I mourn for the grief experienced by their loved ones.

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God Is In The Details

A new documentary, if it can be called that, has been recently released through a limited selection of venues in the U.S. and Canada. I’m not interested in naming it, though a cursory glimpse of recent newspapers will make it clear which I’m referring to. It takes the Michael Moore approach (in other words, disingenuously removing anything which does not conform to a frustratingly partisan point of view) in an attempt to prove its thesis that there is a systemic (nay conspiratorial) effort to discredit scientists who believe in creationism (more specifically, the recently-minted term “intelligent design” or “ID” for short) by those in the scientific establishment who extol the findings of Darwin.

Reading the paper Friday morning, my wife commented on an interview with the film’s host and narrator, Ben Stein. She took note of his perspective on the debate and thought it was interesting. I was less than enthusiastic (if not hostile toward Stein), though to be honest his interview wasn’t that bad (unlike the film, which has been almost universally derided with contempt outside of evangelical circles). What upset me is that I actually think there is a debate to be had (if not owed) between secularists and Creationists.

I’m not a religious person. I was raised a quasi-Catholic, but found myself too interested in other streams of thought to figure that any one system of belief – secular humanism being one in a series of legitimate choices – had the copyright on truth. I’m very comfortable calling myself Agnostic, though these days wary of those who would have the public believe that Agnosticism is simply a less-assured branch of Atheism. I respect Atheists. I just wish more Atheists would respect Agnostics.

For me, Science, Art, and Religion are the same; they each aim to spelunk the chasm between knowing and not knowing. To investigate the disparity between the I and the not I in the universe. I’ve never been prepared to declare that there is or isn’t a higher intelligence/level of consciousness at play in the unfathomable orchestration we find ourselves surrounded by, whether it exists only for mankind to perceive or something more holistic and all-embracing.

I’m frustrated that, in this age of elaborate misinformation, the only time an interesting perspective is given publicity it’s usually loaded with so much subjectivity and partisan half-truth that it’s tainted with suspicion before it even comes to the table of debate. And this is my problem with this documentary. The dice of its argument are so loaded from the start that it negates intelligent discussion from the start.

One cannot talk about this without referring to previous unsuccessful efforts by the current United States government, endorsing “intelligent design” to be taught in science classrooms as a legitimate alternative, and that the theory of evolution be referred to as a “current theory”. The problem being, procedurally speaking, there’s nothing remotely scientific about “ID”, whereas Darwinism and the theory of evolution are demonstrable, regardless that there are many disagreements on the details. As a result of this meddling on behalf of the Bush administration, scientists across America took to the streets (or the web, at least) denouncing the idea, aided by the burgeoning Atheist movement, driven by the likes of Richard Dawkins.

In other words, the water in this wading pool is poisoned.

The question of Darwinism’s compatibility with the idea of a higher intelligence/consciousness, if such a thing exists, is not a zero sum game. One does not, theoretically, eliminate the other’s existence. I would love nothing more than an open discussion on the subject, if only to highlight the limits of understanding in both Science and Religion and perhaps find perspectives which intelligently respect opposite approaches. Unfortunately, given the current climate, this isn’t likely to happen outside of a university campus, and in the case of the documentary released last week, the prospects of we – the intelligent public, of which I include you, dear reader – being treated to such a thing without the deck being stacked by partisan ideologues of either side of the argument is slim.

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Dispatch – 02/15/08

An eclectic stew for you today, the reader.

Last night’s show at Mitzi’s Sister (see previous entry) went very well. The band was tight, though I found myself slightly disappointed overall in the experience. Part of it has to do with the fact that, when you step onto a stage to perform (whether it be reading, acting, or drumming), particularly when you don’t have the opportunity to very often, time passes like a buttered bullet. You find yourself walking off the stage, seemingly five minutes after you got up there when in fact it’s been more like forty. As the glare of the stage lights leave your eyes and you join the ranks of the audience, ending your turn as it were, you feel as if you could’ve done more – either in your performance or in your enjoyment of the experience.

The last time we played (same place, nearly the same date), the situation was reversed. I had a blast and thought we did a great job (also the crowd was bigger and they defied the typical “Toronto audience” behaviour, with one or two actually dancing), but when I talked to the band they were less than thrilled.

Methinks this disconnectedness is a drummer-thing. Or a writer-posing-as-drummer-thing. Someday I’ll know what I want to do when I grow up.

– – –

Yesterday there was school shooting in Illinois at a university. Five dead and fifteen wounded. While this left me numbed – what really can I or anyone else do about it after the fact? – what I found staggering was that this was the fourth shooting at a U.S. school in the last week.

In the (normally poisonous) comment section on the Globe & Mail, someone noted how this phenomena (of which we are certainly not immune in Canada) seems to be applicable only to wealthier Western societies. In other words, for no apparent logical reason, given the superficial socio-economic circumstances of the communities in which these acts occur.

Earlier this week, my wife and I finally got around to watching Gus Van Sant’s Elephant. I’d avoided seeing it because, although I was sure it was going to be well done, I didn’t want to see something that articulated such a heavy-hitting subject – the Columbine massacre of April 1999. The film surprised me, in that rather than meditating on the after-effects (ie. 2 video-hours of grief), it dealt with the event as it happened, mostly in real-time, from the perspective of several characters who are students in the high school, including the two killers. Neither glorifying the horror nor practising intellectual avoidance, I thought the film was very strong, though ironically I thought it could’ve been more meditative in the end – perhaps a more hands-on narrative was necessary. This is not to say that it was Peckinpah via Linklater.

Aside from the coincidental nature of seeing Elephant amidst a surge of related killings across the U.S., I cannot help but wonder what lies at the heart of this. I can tell you what doesn’t, as far as I’m concerned: guns, videogames, and violent films. Each, in their own way, are massively influential on youths, but I refuse to believe that they are in any way a cause.

It’s as if, more and more, there is a proportion of our society that acts as if it’s had a frontal lobotomy, thus removing a moral imperative that, for most, would stop us from taking enjoyment from the random killing of others around us. I find myself looking for answers: is this a bio-medical condition (say, exposure to heavy metals), a psychological illness, or strictly speaking is this something that can be explained sociologically? All of the above?

But another part of me often wonders: when we removed Christianity from public spaces like schools (and I don’t argue with the need to do so), did we replace it with anything substantial? I sometimes wonder if, in the removal of a code of behaviour (as corrupted, hypocritical, or out-of-touch as it may have been) are we thoughtful of what should be put in its place – something substantial and not generic, p0litically-correct lip service which ends up inspiring no one? Or, am I kidding myself, in that we are all really indiscriminate savages on the inside, holding on desperately to illusions of civilization?

– – –

I remember, as a kid and avid comic-reader at the time, reading a story called The Realists. A handsome high school hunk-type is lured by the “new girl”, a beauty, back to her house after school one day. She tempts him with a special drink. When he drinks it, it’s like he’s under the influence of a drug – everyone around him is ugly and fat, food is rotten, he stares at his reflection in the mirror and sees that he’s hideous. She tells him that what he drank is real water, and that what he and the rest of society consumes is laced with a drug which provides the illusion of a beautiful “normalcy”. He runs out of her house, screaming, and as the “drug” wears off, he decides to treat the experience like a bad dream and forget the fact that what he thinks is reality is actually an engineered apparition.

– – –

These are fleeting thoughts, sufficiently scattered. Enjoy your weekend.

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Language and Meaning

“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world“

– Ludwig Wittgenstein

I was reading the New York Times Sunday Magazine last weekend and caught this article, written by Michael Pollan, about the rise of agricultural diseases. In it, he begins with bemoaning the decreasing power of the word “sustainability”, seeing as it has been turned impotent; yet another zombiefied corporate catch-phrase designed to make what one does appear useful even when in practise the reality is much more ambiguous.

There is a biting summary of this phenomena in the second paragraph of Pollan’s article:

Confucius advised that if we hoped to repair what was wrong in the world, we had best start with the “rectification of the names.” The corruption of society begins with the failure to call things by their proper names, he maintained, and its renovation begins with the reattachment of words to real things and precise concepts. So what about this much-abused pair of names, sustainable and unsustainable?

I sat at the breakfast table, thinking about this paragraph. It stunned me, because my awareness of the philosophical questioning of language – its power to distort and clarify – didn’t extend as far as back in time as Confucius. To read it made me understand that this conflict – the fight to keep language from becoming a meaningless putty in the hands of technocrats – has been going on probably since the dawn of communication. It wasn’t until reading, of all people, Confucius – that old aphorism-spewing chestnut – speak about it that my understanding of the conflict was deepened.

The two writers who outlined this conflict most beautifully for me were Wittgenstein, quoted at the top (from his treatise, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus) and John Ralston Saul, who rallied against the rise of technocrats most effectively in his books Voltaire’s Bastards, and The Unconscious Civilization. Each fulfilled a means of illuminating the power of language in a way that was neither impractically academic nor precious. Saul warns about how the images and words we share can be/have been actively distorted by those with corrupting self-interest. Wittgenstein’s very philosophy is about the parsing of truth and falsity (or senselessness, as he would put it) in how we use language to construct a world view.

With the discovery of Confucius’ addition to this subject, I now have more to research and reflect upon. I suppose I’m fascinated with this subject, and for reasons I don’t think are trivial. We are beset by corrupted means of communication every day: images that lie as well as they seduce, thoughts withheld from publication/broadcast because of vested interests. And yet, most importantly, I believe it’s also language that can save us – the very tools used to fool us can be used to liberate.

I suppose one of the first questions I have is whether there are more than a handful of people out there who give a shit, or whether this is a pursuit (non-Quixotic, I insist) only a begrudging elite will ever have interest in following. Sometimes I’m haunted by the words of writer William Sturgeon, who – when asked if it was true that he thought 90% of science fiction was crap – answered that, actually, 90% of everything is crap. What haunts me is how this somewhat off-the-cuff pronouncement translates into the percentage of everyday people who truly care enough about things like this. It’s important to me that people understand that the corruption of language (visual, textual, audible) is not simply an academic concern, and that it’s possible to put up an effective, civil defense against it.

Update: For more on Confucius and the “rectification of names”, please see this link for some context.

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Article: Regarding A New Humanism

I came across an extremely well-written essay on the Edge site today. Written by Salvador Pániker, Regarding A New Humanism contains exactly the right sort of balance of passion and intellect that I find missing in so many essays concerning the path “we” (read: society) should take. It is neither heavy-handed nor exclusionary. I’d take the time to summarize it, but look, it’s a short essay. If you can’t spare the time to read it for yourself without a synopsis, even though the title is pretty darn self-explanatory, then…well, that’s just too bad. And it’s Friday.

An excerpt:

Indeed, those who pit science against sacred texts or science against art do so in error. Respective boundaries of autonomy aside, everything forms a part of the same prodigious struggle. The pursuit of the real which, in a sense, is the also the pursuit of the absolute. The absolute that is intuited, though it remains inaccessible. A fusion of fields as was seen in the Renaissance is certainly no longer possible; the mountain of specialization has grown too high. However, one might demand that the different fields of knowledge communicate with one another and without undermining each other.

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Anonymous Taunts and Random Fools

Pay no attention to what the critics say;
there has never been set up a statue in honor of a critic.

– Jean Sibelius

There is a class of person in our online world whose existence, it seems, is defined by stalking news forums and user-comment sections so that they can anonymously spew views which seem crafted to achieve nothing more than outrageous reaction. Within the vernacular of the internet, these people are trolls. I can only assume that, when the internet included more than five people, the term was coined shortly thereafter.

Microsoft vs. Linux, Liberals vs. Conservatives, Anglicans vs. each other, the list goes on. Essentially, wherever there is a potential conflict, a troll will shortly be there to stir the pot and create, as trolls do very well, more anger.

For example, on the Globe and Mail website, within seconds of an article being posted about either the minority governing party or their rivals, the trolls go to town, essentially blaming one side or the other for the fall of society (which, while we’re talking about it, I believe happened somewhere in-between John Lennon’s assassination and the advent of “grunge” music).

Of course, I’m no angel. Sometimes, I’ll go on the G&M comment section and, irregardless of what the article is about, post something wildly accusing “Liberal judges” as the source of the problem (even if the article is about, say, busing rural students). I do this to demonstrate the rash (and frighteningly predictable) mindset of the trolls. Now, whether people enjoy my little play-theatre is another question. Perhaps I’m being a jerk and making things worse…mind you, you could use that phrase for anything.

I suppose I wouldn’t have a problem (or a blog for that matter) if people simply conducted themselves semi-professionally in public. I’m not asking for a formal essay from people submitting comments on the G&M – just keep the generalizations to a minimum and leave the partisan politics to…um…the politicians.

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Article/Comment: Watch Your Language

(This post is currently in competition in the Philosophy Blog War. Feel free to cast your vote for it. If you like, you can vote directly by pressing this button.)

I read a very interesting essay on the BBC News website entitled “Chaotic world of climate truth”. It’s written by Mike Hulme, Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and in it he criticises the hyperbole which casts a pall on the discussion of global warming.

This is not a partisan piece, in the sense that Mr Hulme is not one of a seeming endless army of paid-for voices in the climate change debate. By virtue of his office and his profession, he makes his argument clear from the outset:

Climate change is a reality, and science confirms that human activities are heavily implicated in this change.

But over the last few years a new environmental phenomenon has been constructed in this country – the phenomenon of “catastrophic” climate change.

It seems that mere “climate change” was not going to be bad enough, and so now it must be “catastrophic” to be worthy of attention.

The increasing use of this pejorative term – and its bedfellow qualifiers “chaotic”, “irreversible”, “rapid” – has altered the public discourse around climate change.

This blog entry isn’t about climate change (notice there are no stock images of ensuing storm clouds and other nature metaphors for imminent disaster). I’m not apathetic to the topic but, reading his essay, Mr. Hulme’s description of how hyperbole cheapens legitimate debate rang very true and has implications outside of the context of this particular subject.

We’re living in an increasingly ideological age. I cannot remember a time (I’m 36, so I gather there are precedents beyond “my years”) when words such as intolerance, fundamentalist, and radical were used so extensively (the trope intolerant fundamentalist radical, for example, is no longer the sole jurisdiction of religious persecution but rather has extended itself to include such diverse groups as environmentalists and, my personal favourite, secular progressives). I’ve written here about the decline of discussion and true debate in N. American society; it’s as if we feel that no one will listen to us unless we raise our voices to the sky and colour our points with invective. Nothing is important anymore: it’s imperative. Nothing is troubling anymore: it’s a crisis.

In exaggerating the situation with alarmist language (which is often disingenuously intended to get attention rather than be realistic/logical) we fall into a trap. Like the boy who cried wolf, if our standard for discussion is hyperbole, then who will truly believe us when there truly is something to be alarmed about?

I see this behaviour not only in the usual suspects (blogs, user groups, forums), but also emanating from supposedly respectable institutions (governments, scientific research institutes, charities). It’s in the newspapers, it’s on television, it’s in our RSS feeds. I suppose it’s the scale of it, and the feeling (or fear) that this is the “new normal” of discourse which concerns me.

The language of catastrophe is not the language of science.

Those words start Mr. Hulme’s summary. In the context of how I feel I would say that “the language of catastrophe is not the language of an evolved society”, but rather one that is becoming more and more tribal and classist.

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Agnostic Affront

Back when I had free time (ha ha…sigh) I came across a neat little site/feature called StumbleUpon. Essentially, it allows users to add websites they like to the StumbleUpon aggregated index, which is sorted by topics. You can then “stumble” through the sites of any selected subject(s) of interest using a browser extension button that sits on your toolbar. Each time you press it, you move on to the next random website which matches the content that interests you. As a StumbleUpon user, you can rate websites on your own and add them to the aggregated content available to other users.

It’s a nice idea, however I was troubled by how the topics were gathered. Some of this, I admit, was for aesthetic or personal reasons – for example, I rather object to the separate topics “Liberal Politics” and “Conservative Politics” (under “Society”); I mean, really – are beliefs that easy to categorize? I know people who, for instance, claim to be left-of-centre but support NAFTA (if only because they work for companies that profit from the arrangement). My point being that political thought – like everything substantial – is inherently complex; if we choose to have supplied to us only the information we want to see (as opposed to a variety of differing viewpoints), our minds will turn to soggy cereal. Politics isn’t like music appreciation where one could be excused for only collecting mid-80’s Art Rock – our individual tastes in music won’t collectively affect society; however, when political information becomes individualised to the point of being cocooning, the result, I fear, is a mind which is incapable of seeing the larger picture, even if the whole picture may never be clear to us.

Anyhow… amongst other topics I selected, I chose the following, under Religion: Atheist/Agnostic.

First off, I thought it a bit odd that they would group these together, if only because there were no listed Religions that had been treated as such. Wicca was separated from Paganism for Christ’s sake. Anyhow, I squinted and pushed forward. What came about as I browsed disturbed me to no end…

But first, a fact: I’m agnostic 1.

…anyhow, what came about as I browsed disturbed me to no end: atheists were assholes. I do not mean Atheists (or atheists) in general, but – for the most part – the ones with websites proclaiming their atheism were overbearing assholes. Which I find hilarious.

The “proud atheist” sites (and I couldn’t come across any that didn’t fall into this category 2) almost uniformly included the following:

  1. Terribly disrespectful things to say about organized religion.
  2. Quotes from Einstein.

My first response was: leave Einstein out of this 3. My second response was: if these atheists were so enlightened, having supposedly thrown off the shackles of organized religion, why were they so evidently obsessed with religion as to put their refutations front and centre on a freaking website? It seemed so bizarre and irrational to see this in people who, supposedly more than any other person, espoused the rational above all else. Judging from this consistency, I can only conclude that the louder the atheist the more insecure they seemed to me. Further, as opposed to us agnostic types, atheists as a whole seemed unable to live comfortably without religion – as either a catalyst or muse.

This tangent takes me back to what I originally wanted to say: agnosticism is not atheism. Not by any stretch of the imagination. So why the hell would StumbleUpon group them together…yet find it necessary to separate Wicca from Paganism 4? I have no clue, and I’ve written to them to ask that they separate the two – or at the very least remove them as a subset of Religion.

Please fulfill my sense of irony by rating this article on StumbleUpon.


1. I’m not going to spend hours trying to define what agnosticism is or what it means to me. Let’s just say that I consider it the most sensible choice for me. If you would like a dictionary definition, try here.

2. This pertains solely to what StumbleUpon provided – this was not a self-directed attempt.

3. Why does everyone with a point to prove turn to Einstein?

4. Instead of making the former a subset of the latter.

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Article/Review: Digital Maoism, by Jaron Lanier

[from the I Wanted To Write About This Article a Month Ago Department]:

Jaron Lanier is a contributor and member of edge.org 1 (which I have listed in my sidebar links). Specifically, he offers his perspective on the evolution of technology and the internet and is credited as a “computer scientist and digital visionary”. In an essay posted May 30th, Digital Maoism: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism, he tackles the rise of aggregator/meta-centric portals such as Wikipedia (which I also have listed in my sidebar links), where individual contribution he argues (and to this extent, responsibility) is obscured by an emphasis on a hive mind approach.

Lanier starts, appropriately enough, by sharing the fact that his Wikipedia entry refers to him as a film director, which is truthful only to the extent that he made one film, a decade and a half earlier. “Every time my Wikipedia entry is corrected,” he begins, “within a day I’m turned into a film director again. I can think of no more suitable punishment than making these determined Wikipedia goblins actually watch my one small old movie.”

And with this he sets his target. It isn’t, he insists, Wikipedia itself:

“No, the problem is in the way the Wikipedia has come to be regarded and used; how it’s been elevated to such importance so quickly. And that is part of the larger pattern of the appeal of a new online collectivism that is nothing less than a resurgence of the idea that the collective is all-wise, that it is desirable to have influence concentrated in a bottleneck that can channel the collective with the most verity and force. This is different from representative democracy, or meritocracy. This idea has had dreadful consequences when thrust upon us from the extreme Right or the extreme Left in various historical periods. The fact that it’s now being re-introduced today by prominent technologists and futurists, people who in many cases I know and like, doesn’t make it any less dangerous.“

Lanier’s strongest point, as I see it, is his contention that the collectivist, hive-driven format of sites such as Wikipedia (and extended in his essay to meta-meta-meta aggregators such as Digg and Reddit) continue a troubling trend toward aggregated, impersonally edited content over… well, content curated and written by identifiable humans.

“The race began innocently enough with the notion of creating directories of online destinations, such as the early incarnations of Yahoo. Then came AltaVista, where one could search using an inverted database of the content of the whole Web. Then came Google, which added page rank algorithms. Then came the blogs, which varied greatly in terms of quality and importance. This lead to Meta-blogs such as Boing Boing, run by identified humans, which served to aggregate blogs. In all of these formulations, real people were still in charge. An individual or individuals were presenting a personality and taking responsibility.
[…]
“In the last year or two the trend has been to remove the scent of people, so as to come as close as possible to simulating the appearance of content emerging out of the Web as if it were speaking to us as a supernatural oracle. This is where the use of the Internet crosses the line into delusion.”

Lanier’s line of query unfolds to include the observation that the “meta” is now more popular and, in respect to Google News, more profitable than traditional media (newspapers in particular), yet no one standing next to the microphone is able to articulate the fact that popularity contests do not historically vet the best, but rather, what the collective believes is safest. And of course, nobody seems to want to say that the collective is just as culpable – in some ways more powerfully culpable – as individuals.

I highly suggest anyone interested in the social internet, its architecture and direction, give this essay a good read. Lanier’s observations move from the immediate suspects above to commentary on analogous movements, such as Linux 2, the “open” software movement, and the ever-ubiquitous MySpace. In many respects, it’s about time somebody spoke eloquently about the collapse of the human face behind these efficient portals.

However, I do have some issues. For one thing, the tangents never really weave into a comprehensive whole, making it feel much too cumbersome (and a page too long) to concisely support Lanier’s provocative thesis. There are many arguments using the financial marketplace as a comparison tool which, although in theory an applicable analogy, is probably the last example I would use if I were arguing for a more humanistic approach. In fact, for someone arguing for this approach, Lanier’s language sometimes bares the same technocratic opaqueness which I would argue obscures a better understanding of the debate.

For example, leading to his summary:

“Empowering the collective does not empower individuals — just the reverse is true. There can be useful feedback loops set up between individuals and the hive mind, but the hive mind is too chaotic to be fed back into itself.”

I realize the term “feedback loop” is an applicable simile when discussing communication, but it’s disconcerting when a term normally applied to specialty occupations – namely, software programming and audio engineering – should somehow become the standard upon which we seek to inspire a better world. Is this not, to some extent, asking a less-predictable society to be like a more-predictable tool?

Please read the essay for yourself and feel free to share your feedback in the comments section.

Please note: there is a discourse on the essay on the edge.org site here.

1. From their site: “Edge Foundation, Inc., was established in 1988 as an outgrowth of a group known as The Reality Club. Its informal membership includes of some of the most interesting minds in the world. The mandate of Edge Foundation is to promote inquiry into and discussion of intellectual, philosophical, artistic, and literary issues, as well as to work for the intellectual and social achievement of society.”

2. There is no official site for “Linux” (outside of linux.org, which looks exactly as it was when first uploaded many, many years ago…and no this is not a compliment). The link I provided goes to Ubuntu, which is the flavour of Linux I use at home. There are others.

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Book Review: The Unconscious Civilization, by John Ralston Saul

As mentioned previously, House of Anansi recently re-released their acclaimed CBC Massey Lectures series. This news is a significant boon to the reader who values provocative, intelligent discussion which often straddles the fine line between social anthropology and philosophy. Having been pleasantly surprised with Doris Lessing’s Prisons We Choose to Live Inside (reviewed previously here), I picked-up John Ralston Saul’s The Unconscious Civilization with hesitant interest – I say hesitant because I’m already well-acquainted with his work.

I was first introduced to Ralston Saul many years ago with his book Voltaire’s Bastards (ISBN 9780140153736). I was impressed with his bold and thoroughly-referenced perspective on what he contends is the growing paralysis of Western civilisation throughout history. However, in retrospect, this was probably the wrong book to start with; for one thing, it’s about 656 (trade paperback) pages which, considering his dense style and cogent analysis, makes for a bit of a brain slog. Nonetheless, I followed this with the successive releases of Confessions of a Siamese Twin (ISBN 9780140259889), his treatise on Canadian social/political identity, and On Equilibrium (ISBN 9780140288032), his elaboration on six foundational aspects of civilization.

I wish now that I had first read The Unconscious Civilization.

Clocking-in at a comparably svelte 205 pages, Unconscious Civilization finds Ralston Saul boiling down the magnum opus that was Voltaire’s Bastards into something much more approachable for the average reader without filing down its fangs. The thesis is partially revealed in the Preface, written for the 10th anniversary re-release:

 

 

When I wrote these Massey Lectures, I was convinced they would cause a shock. After all, I was describing the state of the West in a manner quite off the radar screen. I was saying there had been a persistent growth of corporatism in spite of the outcome of the last world war. And that this growth continued. Why would this be shocking? Because corporatism was part of the anti-democratic underpinnings of Fascist Italy in particular, but also of Nazi Germany. Beneath the uniforms and the military ambitions and the dictatorial leadership and the racism lay corporatism. It was the intellectual foundation of fascism. And it was supposed to have been destroyed along with both regimes in 1945.

 

 

So, it’s not exactly light reading. Throughout history though, concepts and arguments that heed us to re-evaluate our surroundings (whether or not we end up holding fast to them) are often dissonant to our day-to-day perspective on life – in other words, controversy often ensues difference. Ralston Saul is unafraid to call a spade a spade.

The Unconscious Civilization lays out in dense, history-shifting references, the problems and origins of corporatism and how it has become an increasingly acceptable means to run modern societies, in spite of its history of stifling democracy and rewarding conformism.

One of the key points made is how one can propose to adjudicate the underlying strength of any given society – that is, asking: where does its legitimacy lie? He proposes that this legitimacy lies in one of four areas: God, a king, groups, or civilian individuals working as a whole. While the history of Western society has largely been influenced by the former two, Ralston Saul feels that we are most certainly in the hands of groups: think-tanks, specialists, and managers.

The corporatist model, he argues, in the tradition of the Catholic Church, is obsessed with God and Destiny – albeit transposed onto contemporary concerns such as the trade markets and privatisation of public interests. Corporatist language is thus cloaked in a similar sense of inevitability and sycophantic awe that the Church used to instill fear and hold power over the populace.

Although the density of Ralston Saul’s arguments is impressive (in particular, his contention that Jung and Freud allowed the posterity of their work to fall victim to an inarticulated obsession with mythology) , I feel it’s this same quality that weighs down the over-arching themes of the book. At points, particularly with his repeated references to Athens in the days of Socrates, I longed for the simple first-person perspective that gave Doris Lessing’s Prisons We Choose To Live Inside its sprightliness and pactical immediacy. At times, Unconscious Civilization buckles under the considerable thickness of its content, which makes me wonder what the average reader will take away from it (without re-reading).

However, this doesn’t change the fact that this is powerful stuff. Not content to only point out what’s wrong with society, his last chapter is dedicated to thinking towards solutions. In particular, I found great interest in his contention that the public school system is out of step with the lifestyle changes over the last 20 years – as people are set to retire later and later, would it not make sense for children to enter into school later and then be required to receive a more complete education than the current system which is only concerned about cranking out specialists for the marketplace? Ralston Saul also delves into his equilibrium theory, to which he devoted a book in 2002, in which he postulates that individuals and society alike must work to remain balanced rather than hyper-focused on any one quality, in particular rationality, which has been used to justify abuses throughout history.

I would not hesitate to suggest this book to anyone interested in challenging views of society in general, and Ralston Saul’s ideas in particular. For the latter, The Unconscious Civilization is the ultimate primer. For the former, you will undoubtably find yourself spending a great deal of time wrestling with its well-researched and sometimes scathing message.

The Unconscious Civilization is available for sale at a fine independent bookstore near you and online at House of Anansi Press, as well as…Powell’s, Amazon, Chapters. Published by House of Anansi Press (ISBN: 0-88784-586X)

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