The Unconscious Civilization

<p><strong style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(33 37 41 1)>Governor General's Award Winner</strong></p><p><strong style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(33 37 41 1)>Tenth Anniverary Edition with a new preface</strong></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(33 37 41 1)>Our society John Ralston Saul argues in his 1995 CBC Massey Lectures is only superficially based on the individual and democracy. Increasingly it is conformist and corporatist a society in which legitimacy lies with specialist or interest groups and decisions are made through constant negotiations between these groups.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(33 37 41 1)>The paradox of our situation is that knowledge has not made us conscious. Instead we have sought refuge in a world of illusion where language is cut off from reality. Reconnecting language to reality clarifying what we mean by individualism and democracy making these realities central to the citizen's life identifying ideologies in order to control them these are among the first elements of equilibrium which Saul proposes in these lectures.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(33 37 41 1)>John Ralston Saul argues that our society is only superficially based on democracy and that increasingly it is conformist and corporatist.</span></p>