The Doubter's Companion

by John Ralston Saul

  White bread is the sophisticated product of a civilization taken to its logical conclusion: essential goods originally limited by their use in daily life have been continually refined until all utility has been removed. Utility is vulgar. In this particular case, nutrition and fibre were the principal enemies of progress. With the disappearance of utility what remains is form, the highest quality of high civilizations.

  And whenever form presides, it replaces ordinary content with logic and artifice. The North American loaf may be tasteless but remains eternally fresh thanks to the efficient use of chemicals. The French baguette turns into solidified sawdust within two hours of being baked, which creates the social excitement of having to eat it the moment it comes out of the oven. The Italians have introduced an intriguing mixture of tastes—hand towels on the inside and cardboard in the crust. The Spanish manage to give the impression of having replaced natural fibre with baked sand. There are dozens of other variations. The Greek. The Dutch. Even the world of international hotels has developed its own white roll.

  In each case, to refine flour beyond utility is to become refined. This phenomenon is by no means limited to bread or even to food. Our society is filled with success stories of high culture, from men’s ties to women’s shoes.

  WHITE HOUSE STAFF Like all praetorian guards it separates the leader from the legally constituted parts of a government. In the process, it also separates the leader from the populace. Whether this protection is accomplished with physical or political weapons is irrelevant.

  Those who serve in a praetorian guard have no legal status in the structure of government. They serve at the pleasure of the leader. This means that, whether armed like the Romans or in courtly dress or on leave from Harvard, they are courtiers.

  One of President Clinton’s first acts on taking office in 1993 was to reduce the White House staff from 1,394 to 1,044. It is always good to save a few million dollars. But what was the president doing with 1,394 personal advisers? The constitution provides him with an official set of counsellors—his Cabinet officers—who are approved and regulated by the legislative body. Each of these has responsibility over a large and competent bureaucracy whose job it is to advise and serve the president through their Cabinet Secretary.

  The only purpose a president can have in surrounding himself with a fat doughnut of extra-constitutional courtiers is to protect himself from the institutions which were created by the constitution in order to give a responsible shape to democratic government. Of course, presidents have always had personal advisers. Woodrow Wilson had five. This is one of those cases when a gradual increase in size over a long period of time eventually constitutes a qualitative change. Those who serve in the White House may not feel this historic slide.

  But from Richard Nixon on, every elected president has eventually been victimized by the White House staff. It could even be argued that their presidencies were seriously damaged and in some cases virtually destroyed by the courtiers surrounding them.

  After all, praetorian guards do eventually destroy the leaders they serve. That’s one of their characteristics. It is the natural result of leaving responsibility in the hands of people, whatever their intentions, who exercise public power outside the legal structures of the state. They exist only as reflections of the leader, yet they can act as if they were themselves real. They resemble the living dead in a horror story. See: COURTIERS.

  WIND Caused by:

  1. Mountain ranges pierced by passes through which air rushes, such as the Chinook (hot) through the Rockies and the Mistral (cold) down the Rhone. Common effects: depression, headaches, suicide.

  2. Dried beans soaked and cooked in the same water. See: POLITENESS.

  Common effects: embarrassment, unpleasant smells.

  3. Skyscrapers, which simulate the effect of a mountain range.

  Common effects: unpleasant, depressing streets.

  WISDOM The purpose of doubt.

  Wisdom, then, is life with uncertainty, the opposite of power or ideology. There is a simple story of two buildings which illustrates the difference.

  In the centre of imperial Rome, just behind the Pantheon, you would once have found the Temple of Minerva, goddess of wisdom. By the Middle Ages it was an abandoned ruin. The various Christian orders which usually built their churches on the solid foundations of old pagan temples had been curiously discreet around Minerva, placing themselves to one side or the other.

  But in 1280, the Dominicans decided to build their Roman headquarters on top of the old temple. They had run the Inquisition since its creation forty years earlier and had invented and developed its methods. Their job was to eliminate heresy by actively “inquiring into” it. They inquired in order to establish a priori truth. They had begun using torture in 1262.

  The Dominicans baptized their new Gothic basilica Santa Maria Sopra Minerva. Saint Mary Over Minerva. Power over wisdom. Power over doubt. But theirs was a highly intellectual power. The Inquisition was the first truly modern organization and it developed a method of formal rational inquiry in order to establish documented legal truth.

  It was also a profitable business. The basilica was enlarged in the fifteenth century by Cardinal Torquemada, uncle of the first Grand Inquisitor of Spain who had inquired into and burned approximately 2,000 individuals. A great deal of money went into decorating the chapels. In 1514 a large statue of the Redeemer was commissioned from Michelangelo and is still in its place.

  On June 22, 1633, Galileo Galilei was brought to Santa Maria Sopra Minerva for the third day of his trial by the Inquisitor. The controversy surrounding his ideas had actually been going on for twenty-two years. At first, sensible church leaders had accepted his explanation of the Copernican theory, which demonstrated that the earth moved around the sun and not the opposite. They had been fascinated and intrigued by such new understanding. But the leading academics of the day—the Aristotelian or scholastic experts—had built their careers on other truths which they also could demonstrate, and with great INTELLIGENCE moreover. So they denounced him to the Inquisition.

  On June 22nd, in the morning, in the great hall of the Convent of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, Galileo was found guilty of holding a false doctrine. He went down on his knees and both abjured and condemned his own errors. He swore never to argue such doctrines again. It was thus definitively confirmed that the sun did rotate around the earth.

  The lesson of this victory by a corporation of Aristotelian scholastics was not lost on succeeding generations of salaried experts. It had been shown, as Voltaire put it in his Dictionary, that people could be convinced to believe what they didn’t believe.2 In the last few decades alone, our own scholastics have been able to prove multitudes of unbelievable things and so have carried society off in their desired direction.(See: ARMAMENTS and DEPRESSION.)

  Is this wisdom? It’s better than wisdom. It’s a sure thing.

  WORLD CLASS A phrase used by provincial cities and second-rate entertainment and sports events, as well as a wide variety of insecure individuals, to assert that they are not provincial or second-rate, thereby confirming that they are.

  X

  XENOPHOBIA (PASSIVE) The English are fair, French bread is the best, Americans are individualists, Italian women are beautiful, Germans are real men because they are not circumcised, Canadians are nice, the Russians are courageous, the Welsh are poetic, Greece is the cradle of democracy, Argentinians are the essence of the male, Swedes are fair, the English are courageous, the Swiss are hardworking, Frenchmen are the best lovers, American culture is an expression of freedom, Australians are tough, the Chinese are smart, the Poles should have been superior to everybody, the Italians have style, language is the great love of the Irish, the English don’t queue-jump, Canadians are courageous, God speaks directly to Iranians, Que la France est belle, Germans are efficient, Scots are smart, the Spanish are tough, the Brazilians are not racists, Norwegians are good-looking, Czechs are efficient, the English are at their best in a crisi
s, the Germans are courageous, the French are individualists, Canadians are hardy, the Swiss are efficient, the British are masters of understatement, Israelis are the best soldiers, Italians are romantic, Americans are courageous, the Scots are diligent and other reassuring, repetitive and boring fetishes.

  XENOPHOBIA (ACTIVE) Passive xenophobia inverted so that the admirable qualities listed above become other people’s unacceptable flaws. If this is expressed with sufficiently pure logic, it may become acceptable to control, exploit, even punish and if necessary kill those who belong to another blood line. See: BLOOD.

  Y

  YACHT One of the belongings from which a press BARON can fall and drown when the relationship between his INFERIORITY COMPLEX and his BANKER is no longer viable.

  YES An affirmation which results in sexual, commercial or political consumption. Deliberate confusion of the three is central to advertising and public relations.

  The underlying argument which accompanies this word is that we must not be afraid to say yes. “Say yes to life.” The suggestion is that it takes courage to take a risk. In reality, yes is the traditional response of the passive party to the lover or the salesman or the person with power. If courage is to be treated as a serious factor then it must take the form either of a no or of a negotiation for better terms. Modern politics at their most cynical sell the courage to say yes. See: REFERENDUM.

  YUGOSLAVIAN CIVIL WAR A common form of late-twentieth-century reality.

  This typical postwar conflict involves irregular, mobile combat which mixes armies and civilians, professionals and amateurs, low-cost equipment and public terror. From 1960 on, the concurrent number of these wars has steadily risen to more than fifty. At the same time, Western armies have concentrated on developing a post-modern, hi-tech, abstract idea of professional warfare, which involves large-scale formalized clashes of titans and, above all, of titanic equipment. The result is that the largest and most sophisticated armies in the history of the world are by training, equipment and attitude incapable of fighting real modern wars.

  Like the urbane French knights before Agincourt, they await a suitably superior enemy. Periodically, as with the Falklands or Iraq, they get a chance to strut their stuff with sandbox formality. Then they they go back to waiting for Armageddon.

  Meanwhile, the fifty or so real wars go on. About one thousand soldiers die each day. Five thousand-odd civilians. Cities crumble. Children starve. Nations are destroyed. All of this as if real war and the armies of the West exist on the same planet but on separate planes, invisible to each other.

  Periodically our titans manage to pierce this science-fictionlike separation and arrive on the scene with tanks and helicopters and parade about like magnificent knights in full armour on white stallions. Before and behind their progress the killing goes on.

  The inflexible, managerial mind-set fixed in place in the staff colleges and general staffs in the two decades before 1914 remains firmly in place. From the trenches to the Maginot Line to Korea, Vietnam, even to Somalia, the determination to impose an abstract form on reality remains undented.

  Z

  ZAP The action of changing television channels by continually pressing the thumb onto a cordless remote control held like a gun. This may indicate the level of aggressive frustration in a disaffected population. Or perhaps it signals the death of linear narrative—the death of the story as we have known it for thousands of years. Perhaps this is the inevitable truth of a post-modern society which has wedded itself to electronic communications in the hope of being unified only to find itself fracturing. Or it could just be that there isn’t much worth watching for more than ten seconds.

  ZEALOT Someone who has the answer to a problem.

  Originally a religious fanatic given to violence, the zealot is as likely today to be a CORPORATIST expert. They are, as Samuel Johnson defined them, “passionately ardent in any cause.”1 They are the bearers of truth.

  ZENO Father of the paradox. Philosopher of the fifth century BC. A source of Socrates’ technique and of humour as a weapon against power and pedantry. The other Zeno, also a philosopher and father of the Stoic movement, committed suicide.

  ZINNIA The ugliest flower in any garden.

  The paradoxical idea that words have real but relative meaning leaves room for misrepresentation by those who wish to capture language for their own use. From ideologues to deconstructionists, they take the piece of the paradox that suits them and deform it by ignoring the rest.

  Those who wish to resist this falsification of communication need only plant a zinnia and wait for it to bloom. With the meaning of the word “ugly” clearly established, the rest will fall easily into place. If that doesn’t work, try marigolds.

  NOTES

  The Grail of Balance

  1 Tom McArthur, Worlds of Reference (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 94.

  2 Quoted in Michel de Montaigne, Essais, Volume II, 1588, Chapter 17, “De la praesumption”: “Plus haut monte le singe, plus il montre son cul.”

  3 Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755; facsimile, London: Times Books Ltd., 1983). Quoted from the introduction. Johnson’s original edition had no page numbers.

  4 Denis Diderot, L’Encyclopédie, un dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, edited by Alain Pons (Paris: Flammarion, 1986).

  5 McArthur, Worlds of Reference, 105.

  6 The edition in eight volumes quoted throughout is: Voltaire, Dictionnaire Philosophique (Paris: Librairie de Fortic, 1826).

  7 Noah Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language (New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1970). This is a reprint of the original Webster’s Dictionary, published in 1828.

  8 Actually published posthumously in 1911.

  9 Originally published as The Cynic’s Word Book in 1906.

  A

  1 A BIG MAC—John F. Love, McDonald’s—Behind the Arches (New York: Bantam Press, 1986), 15.

  2 AIR-CONDITIONING—The New York Times, 21 October 1993, A10. Re: the tuberculosis incident, 7 June 1993, IHT, 1. Quote from Joseph Hopkins, a spokesman for United Airlines.

  3 ARMAMENTS—Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (New York: Harmony Books, 1980). Originally published in 1841.

  B

  1 BABY SEAL—George Orwell, Animal Farm (London: Penguin Books, 1987), 90. Originally published in 1945.

  2 BAD PEOPLE—Voltaire, Dictionnaire Philosophique,“Patrie,” vol. 7, 252. “Celui qui brûle de l’ambition d’être édile, tribun, préteur, consul, dictateur, crie qu’il aime sa patrie, et il n’aime que luimême.”

  3 BAD PEOPLE—Le Monde, 9 June 1993, 26. The third task was dealing with the inability of national governments to apply law in a world dominated by transnational economics. “des intolérances ethniques” and “la quête extraordinaire et effrénée de l’argent sous toutes ses formes… Les classes dominantes de la politique et de l’économie…l’argent n’a pas d’odeur…sale, douteux et illicite.”

  4 BANKERS—Samuel Johnson, Pocket Dictionary of the English Language (Chiswick: C. and C. Whittingham, 1826).

  5 BEES—Voltaire, Dictionnaire Philosophique, “Abeilles,” vol. 1, 41.

  6 BURKE—Conor Cruise O’Brien, The Great Melody—A Thematic Biography and Commented Anthology of Edmund Burke (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 115.

  7 BURKE—Ibid, 390.

  8 BUSINESS SCHOOLS—Alain Chanlat, “Lettre à Richard Déry: L’Occident, malade de ses dirigeants,” June 1993, unpublished essay.

  9 BUSINESS SCHOOLS—The New York Times, 14 November 1993, 26.

  C

  1 CARLYLE—Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-worship and the Heroic in History (Philadelphia: Henry Altemus), 5. Originally published in 1841.

  2 CARLYLE—Ibid, 114.

  3 CARLYLE—Ibid, 322.

  4 class="Noindent"—Ibid, 269.

  5 class="Noindent"—Ibid, 265.

  6 class="Noind
ent"—Salman Rushdie, speaking during an unannounced appearance at the Third Annual Benefit of the Canadian Centre of International PEN, Toronto, 7 December 1992.

  7 CONSULTANTS—Xenophen, Memorabilia, I, vi, 11–13, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), 73.

  8 CONSUMPTION—Eric Hoffer, quoted in James Hillman and Michael Ventura, We’ve Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and the World’s Getting Worse (San Francisco: Harper, 1992), 159.

  9 CORPORATISM—Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy (New York: Image Book, Doubleday, 1985), Book 3, vol. vii, 214.

  10 CORPORATISM—Information and quotations in this paragraph are drawn from James Hillman and Michael Ventura, We’ve Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and the World’s Getting Worse, 137.

  11 CURE—The Globe and Mail, 13 August 1993, 1.

  D

  1 DECONSTRUCTIONISM—This is an observation made by the author Eugene Benson.

  2 DEREGULATION—Le Monde, 8 January 1994, 23.

  3 DIALECTS—Vaclav Havel, “On Evasive Thinking,” a speech to the Union of Czechoslovak Writers’ conference, 9 June 1965. Translated by Paul Wilson.

  4 DICTIONARY—Sources for the three definitions of truth are: “consistent with,” The American Heritage Dictionary (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1976); “conformity to,” Noah Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language. “in accordance with,” The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (London: Book Club Associates, 1983).

  5 DUAL USE—Conversation with the author, 15 January 1994, Toronto.

  6 DUAL USE—Three quotes from Jacques S. Gansler, “Transforming the U.S. Defense Industrial Base,” in Survival, The IISS Quarterly, vol. 35, no. 4, Winter, 1993–4, 138, 141.

  7 DUAL USE—In addition to Mr. Gansler’s article see, in the same issue of Survival, Julian Cooper’s “Transforming Russia’s Defense Industrial Base,” 147; Le Figaro—Economique, 26 January 1994, xi, “Vers une ‘liberalisation’ des ventes d’armes”; Le Monde, 28–29 November 1993, 9, “La délégation générale pour l’armement veut être authorisée à exporter les matériels les plus modernes.”