With a new Introduction by the author, this erudite and brilliantly readable book ( The Observer , London) expertly dissects the political, economic, and social origins of Western civilization to reveal a culture cripplingly enslaved to crude notions of rationality and expertise.
In this wide-ranging anatomy of modern society and its origins--whose pages explode with insight, style and intellectual rigor (Camille Paglia, The Washington Post)--Saul presents a shattering critique of the political, economic and cultural estab-lishments of the West..
The result, Saul maintains, is a civilization of immense technological power whose ordinary citizens are increasingly excluded from the decision-making process.
Whether in politics, art, business, the military, entertain-ment, science, finance, academia or journalism, these experts share the same outlook and methods.
Over the past 400 years, our rational elites have turned the modern West into a vast, incomprehensible, directionless machine, run by process-minded experts--Voltaire\'s bastards--whose cult of scientific management is empty of both sense and morality.
All these problems, John Ralston Saul argues, are largely the result of our blind faith in the value of reason.
We complain about invasive government, yet our legal, educational, financial, social, cultural and legislative systems are deteriorating.
We call our governments democracies, yet few of us participate in politics.
Our business leaders describe themselves as capitalists, yet most are corporate employees and financial speculators.
We talk endlessly of individual freedom, yet we\'ve never been under more pressure to conform.
The Western world is full of paradoxes.
With a new introduction by the author, this erudite and brilliantly readable book (The Observer, London) astutely dissects the political, economic and social origins of Western civilization to reveal a culture cripplingly enslaved to crude notions of rationality and expertise.
With a new Introduction by the author, this erudite and brilliantly readable book ( The Observer , London) expertly dissects the political, economic, and social origins of Western civilization to reveal a culture cripplingly enslaved to crude notions of rationality and expertise
