The Doubter's Companion

by John Ralston Saul

  As anyone who works in a sophisticated organization knows, to treat ethics as a practical reality is to invite punishment. To be ethical is to choose not to get ahead. A corporatist society cares about structures, corporate loyalty and systems of efficiency. All of this is bound together by contractual relationships, as is epitomized in the late twentieth century by the writings of John Rawls.3

  Our worship of secrecy as an attribute of power further rewards amorality. How can we treat ethics as an essential quality of the citizen if, for example, participation in public debate by those citizens with expert knowledge of the subject is effectively forbidden by employment contracts? (See: DIALECTS.)

  Our problem is thus not one of teaching or enforcing ethics. Nor is sanctimonious idealism of any particular use.

  Ethics being a matter of practicality, they need to be included in our systems so that citizens can treat them as they normally would—as a standard aspect of everyday life. See: HUMANISM.

  EXECUTIVE The corporate executive is not a capitalist but a technocrat in drag.

  The members of the massive class which manages our joint stock companies have fallen into the delusion that they are capitalists, not employees. Yet they own no shares or only a small quantity bought with money borrowed from the company at low or deferred interest rates. The delusion grows stronger every year. In 1960 the average pay after tax of the CEOs of the biggest corporations in the United States was twelve times the average wage of a worker. By 1990 it was seventy times. Executives also benefit from impressive benefit packages, paid for by the shareholder, which in politics would be termed corruption. And they hector the public and their workers in particular about the capitalist ethic. They seem to feel that these workers are too expensive, lazy and non-competitive. This must be true or the managers would not be paying themselves so much more than their poorer employees. See: MANAGER.

  EXISTENTIALISM When you strip away the details, existentialism simply means that we are judged by our actions. We are what we do, not what we intend. This is a humanist philosophy. A philosophy of ethics. Individual responsibility is assumed and therefore demanded. This is the exact opposite of the great rational ideologies in which the structure assumes responsibility and the individual is rewarded for passivity.

  What began as a relatively straightforward argument, when introduced in its modern form by Kierkegaard in the middle of the nineteenth century, became confused after World War II at its moment of greatest popularity and then sank into disrepute.

  There were several problems. Two of the worst were created by Jean-Paul Sartre, the theory’s best-known spokesman. First he tried to mix the idea of personal ethical responsibility with Marxist determinism, which included obligatory political violence. It made no sense at all. Then, in an amusing but lunatic extension of this contradiction, he pushed forward the writer and convicted criminal, Jean Genet, as an example of extreme existentialism. This created the impression that in existentialism the intensity of an act was in itself a value—murder, for example. Intentionally or unintentionally Sartre had confused ethical responsibility with NIHILISM. Worse still, he had slipped into a view of existentialism as pure action. It was the sort of approach guaranteed to attract adolescent boys contemplating suicide and other false friends.

  What was lost in all of this excitement and drama was that existentialism by any other name was a continuation of the Christian argument in favour of salvation by good works as against salvation by divine grace. In Buddhism and Islam this is even more clearly put. Everyone in a Buddhist society except monks is judged by the universe (not by others) on the basis of the merit they have earned in doing good works.

  Existentialism is not therefore Kierkegaard’s invention. And that is the real reason for its difficulties in Western society. We, after all, have organized ourselves so that individuals are judged not by their acts but by their access to information and control over structures. Our place in the system determines what we are. If we undertake actions which can be attributed directly to us, our power is likely to suffer. This has nothing to do with whether we are right or successful. In a world of technocrats and courtiers, actions which are visibly successful in their own terms have about them an egotistical ring for which the individual will eventually be made to pay.

  Also lost was Sartre’s real argument. His genius was poorly served by his tangents. And yet he was a genius and for those who wanted to see, he was demonstrating that existentialism is an argument—that language is argument and argument is action. That is why freedom of speech is central to democracy. Speech is a more concrete action than any specific governmental policy. In fact all of the basic guarantees necessary for democratic government—freedom of thought, speech, assembly, personal security whether it be tied to dignity, safety or well-being—are existential values.

  F

  FACTORIES Children love factories.

  They don’t have to go to school. They sometimes earn as much as two or three dollars every day and are often allowed to work as much as seven days a week. What wonderful pocket-money to buy toys or empty cardboard cartons, which make ideal roofs for the family home. In most factories there are also games of risk to play—not falling into machinery, not getting your fingers squashed. What with the doors locked shut and the solid, windowless walls, it’s snug and warm inside, particularly in the hot season.

  A lot of paternalistic well-to-do adults, usually foreigners, would like to stop children working in factories. That’s because these lazy grown-ups can’t compete. They’re afraid of the global economy. They keep their own children locked up in schools. It’s far more fun to be allowed to play in a factory. See: LAGOS.

  FACTSTools of authority.

  Facts are supposed to make truth out of a proposition. They are the proof. The trouble is that there are enough facts around to prove most things. They have become the comfort and prop of conventional wisdom; the music of the rational technocracy; the justification for any sort of policy, particularly as advanced by special-interest groups, expert guilds and other modern corporations. Confused armies of contradictory facts struggle in growing darkness. Support ideological fantasies. Stuff bureaucratic briefing books.

  It was GIAMBATTISTA VICO who first identified this problem. He argued that any obsession with proof would misfire unless it was examined in a far larger context which took into account experience and the surrounding circumstances. Diderot was just as careful when he wrote the entry on facts for the Encyclopédie:

  You can divide facts into three types: the divine, the natural and man-made. The first belongs to theology; the second to philosophy and the third to history. All are equally open to question.1

  There is little room for such care in a corporatist society. Facts are the currency of power for each specialized group. But how can so much be expected from these innocent fragments of knowledge? They are not able to think and so cannot be used to replace thought. They have no memory. No imagination. No judgement. They’re really not much more than interesting landmarks which may illuminate our way as we attempt to think. If properly respected they are never proof, always illustration. See: JURY.

  FAITH The opposite of dogmatism. Individual responsibility and persistent inquiry have been founded upon faith since SOCRATES:

  If I say that it would be disobedience to God to “mind my own business,” you will not believe that I am serious. If on the other hand I tell you to let no day pass without discussing goodness and all the other subjects about which you hear me talking, and that examining both myself and others is really the very best thing that a man can do, and that life without this sort of examination is not worth living, you will be even less inclined to believe me. Nevertheless, that is how it is.2

  Socrates’ defence before the jurors trying him for his life is thus that the maintenance of faith in any system requires an enormous and constant individual effort. It can’t help but be conscious, EXISTENTIAL and subject to anguishing DOUBT. Modern scientific inquiry is equally dependent
on the marriage of uncertainty with faith in the value of knowledge.

  Dogmatism replaces faith with the power of structure. We are spared the effort of consciousness and the strain of living with doubt. We can relax into the certainty of a church structure, a corporate interest or an ideological package, each with its fixed dogma.

  The defenders of dogmatism, in an approach which has not varied over the centuries—from the Jesuits through to the technocrats—have made great use of scepticism and cynicism. They attempt to assimilate this with Socrates’ examined life, but its purpose is the exact opposite. While Socrates sought to provoke each individual into believing that it was worth questioning everything, the sceptics seek to silence the individual by denigrating her faith in inquiry.

  FALSE HERO The only thing worse than a HERO.

  False Heroes are now endemic to public life. They are the public-relations version of CARLYLE’s Hero, before whom we were to abase ourselves in orgasmic adoration. Whatever relationship there was between heroism and the hero is replaced by a marriage between politics and popular entertainment. Even serious public figures feel obliged to disguise themselves in this way.

  The most accomplished False Hero yet produced has been Ronald Reagan. He did not “Win one for the Gipper,” he acted out the role. He did not fight for freedom as a World War II bomber pilot, he made training films for pilots. He didn’t ride out onto the prairies to struggle against the elements for individualism. He put on make-up and waited on his studio nag for cameras to turn. He fought alongside no troops. His life did not include acts of personal courage intended to benefit others. There may have been acts of private courage. We cannot know this.

  Many decent unheroic leaders have been obliged to send others into risk or to their deaths. If they are honest with themselves they use this power with care and take care that their language remains moderate. President Reagan spoke from film scripts. Sometimes they had actually been used in films, sometimes they came from the cinema of his imagination. He spoke of war and courage as if he had done what he asked his soldiers to do. It seemed that if necessary he would personally lead them into battle.

  The False Hero is dependent on an impenetrable wall separating illusion from reality. That separation is part technology, part advanced propaganda-cum-public relations. Thus Ronald Reagan was able to base his presidency upon fiscal responsibility, while he was one of the most profligate chief executives the United States has ever had. He preached law and order while his policies produced ever-higher levels of civil violence. He claimed to rule for individualism while his laws, above all, served small sections of the community.

  He was, however, what many people consider to be a man of great charm. The question is what value should be given to whether a leader is polite, happily married or good-looking? Charm, conventional wisdom says, will take you a long way. How far and at what cost?

  FASHION

  1. A self-destructing paradox. In order to be fashionable you must avoid everything in fashion.

  2. A relatively harmless use of the herd instinct.

  3. Always right. Female models have continued into the 1990s swallowing cotton balls soaked in olive oil to reduce their hunger, although in the late eighties their lives were complicated by the return of breasts to fashion. Many of the girls felt obliged to have implant operations. The result has been a striking contrast between melonlike protuberances which stick out unnaturally from whippetlike ribcages.

  Ever sensitive to the larger meaning of conflicting social trends, designers have, in effect, invented motherly anorexia. Camera images are kinder to geometry than they are to the natural line and so this fashion has been a great success. (See: TASTE.)

  4. As demonstrated by the young boy who called out in the street when the emperor passed, FREE SPEECH is anathema to fashion of any kind.

  FAST FOOD, PHILOSOPHY OF See: MCDONALD, RONALD.

  FEAR In light of our upcoming disappearance from the world, this is an endemic human condition. The exacerbation and manipulation of fear is used by dishonest people to gain or hold onto power. HOBBES made the dishonest respectable by arguing that it was inevitable. See: PANIC.

  FIRST CLASS Should a plane crash, those seated at the front are almost guaranteed a clean death. Their passage to the next world is eased by a decent last meal, unlimited alcohol and enough leg room to meet their end with dignity.

  The middle classes sitting behind in full economy with their knees pressed neatly up against their throats know that they will have to wait longer to die. They may even be condemned to survive in some horribly maimed condition. As for the lumpenproletariat in the cheap seats at the back, they stand a reasonable chance of walking away from the wreckage in good health, thus being denied release from their vale of tears on earth.

  The most galling aspect of this system is that by dying first in First Class, people whose only qualification is wealth find themselves at the head of the line for entrance to heaven or hell. And that at a moment when, given the size of contemporary airplanes, there is bound to be a crowd. See: DEATH.

  FLORIDA Former American state. Latin Americans are now locked in a long-term struggle with Canadians for control. The Latin Americans are driven by their need for financial and political stability, the Canadians by theirs for warmth and a place to die. The ultimate weapons of the Latin Americans are politically based para-military groups and organized crime financed by drug money. The Canadians have set up a professional hockey team.

  FOREIGNER 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. See: SUPERIORITY.

  FREE The most over-used term in modern politics. Evoked by everyone to mean anything. Samuel Johnson once spoke of patriotism as the last refuge of scoundrels. Evocations of what is free and of freedom have now overtaken patriotism.

  This has led to a limitless series of oxymorons which have somehow become respectable: free air miles; FREE TRADE; the twinning of free men and free markets when history demonstrates clearly that free markets do best under sophisticated dictatorships and chafe under the limitations imposed by democracy (see: CAPITALISM); free love; free glasses at gas stations; free offers and in general a free ride.

  The problem with this word “free” is that it has two contradictory meanings. One refers to political freedom or liberty and has an ethical value. The other refers to an imaginary state of being in which there is no effort and no cost. Freedom is thus confused with the gambler’s idea that you can get something for nothing. That is why Johnson’s scoundrels are attracted to it. See: DICTATORSHIP OF VOCABULARY.

  FREE SPEECH Not a pleasant or an easy thing, but perhaps the single most important element in any democracy, free speech is afflicted by two widely held, contradictory opinions. The first is that we have it; the second that it is a luxury.

  How can you have something which exists only as an EXISTENTIAL act? You can declare its inviolability in constitutions and protect it with laws. You can invoke it until you are blue in the face. But freedom of speech is only maintained at sufficiently high levels through constant use.

  The exhausting effort which this requires involves a willingness to listen combined with a desire to be heard. Listening means taking into account, not simply hearing what people say. And being heard means being exposed to criticism, even ridicule. That is one of the reasons our élites, who have little desire to be heard as individuals, refer to it as a luxury.

  The perfectly natural reflex of those who have power is to try to limit freedom of speech. They do this in an ongoing almost unconscious manner, whatever their particular political opinions. The more structured the society, the more this happens through social convention by euphemism and POLITENESS and indirectly through laws and contractual arrangements which make no reference to the thing that they are limiting.

  For example, employment contracts almost automatically make the employe
e’s expertise and opinions the property of the corporation. There are also libel laws, which apply a strict interpretation of “the facts” to those areas of public debate in which the people most likely to sue are precisely those who hold back the facts. The court process puts them under no obligation to explain, but focuses on those who seek information and try to use free speech. There are vast and complex laws of secrecy which remove whole areas of public interest from the public domain. And of course there is raison d’état which removes the citizens’ right to discussion in their own best interests.

  A new method of limitation involves arguing that free speech, having been won in the absolute, can now be treated as a luxury. What people need above all, the argument runs, is prosperity. With the physical well-being and stability that brings, people have the time and energy to engage in free speech. It follows, sotto voce, that the more unsuccessful those in responsible positions are at running the economy of a country, the less the citizenry should use their free speech.

  The “property first” argument is based on a common interpretation of Western history in which the growth of trade and industry created a middle class that began to demand rights. It is a convenient point of view in a corporate society. It reduces the contribution of the citizenry and of HUMANISM to a secondary passive role. Instead it is technology and the market which created the edifice. Only then were the citizenry permitted to decorate the rooms.

  This is a complete inversion of Western history. Solon was produced by an ethic of public service. And it was economic failure—not success—which provoked him and the citizenry to assume greater power. Socrates and the entire Athenian democratic debating system were the product of a stable, agrarian society. It was undermined and destroyed by the trading pretentions of the empire. Our contemporary concepts of equality, which implicitly include the right to speak out, come from early Christianity and the local assemblies of Northern European tribes. The Magna Carta was not an industrial product. Nor were the linguistic popularizers from Shakespeare to Dante. Nor was ERASMUS, who did so much to demonstrate that clear language could be used as a form of public power. Most of our ideas about democracy were firmly put in the public place a century before the industrial revolution got seriously underway. Although the American revolution included elements of taxation and trade, the urban trading classes tended to stay neutral during the war while those on the land, rich and poor, carried the military and political burden.