etc.

The only upside to our local public library being closed this weekend was that it forced me to read something on my own bookshelf that I’ve been meaning to read for ages. And damn am I glad I chose this book.

There is a decent amount of linguistic wrangling in this book, but at the heart of it, Saul’s thesis is simple: the dominant ideology of modern civilization is “corporatism” which is an ideology based on the power of the group rather than the disinterested citizen, making our civilization only superficially based on the individual and democracy. It’s not a far stretch once we consider the power of interest and lobby groups whose pure self-interest can sway government policy away from the public good or common good, leaving the average citizen powerless to effect similar sway. Our civilization is “unconscious” because even though we are aware that corporatism has put our society in a stranglehold, knowledge and information have been insufficient in getting us to actually do something about it. To wit:

The virtue of uncertainty is not a comfortable idea, but then a citizen-based democracy is built upon participation, which is the very expression of permanent discomfort. The corporatist system depends upon the citizen’s desire for inner comfort. Equilibrium is dependent upon our recognition of reality, which is the acceptance of permanent psychic discomfort. And the acceptance of psychic discomfort is the acceptance of consciousness.

You know those books you can’t help but read aloud from because the author has managed to create such a prescient narrative about something you have only abstractly grasped in the past? This is one of those books.