Book Review: Therafields, by Grant Goodbrand

It was with considerable surprise when, browsing the shelves of our favourite used bookstore, Balfour Books, I was handed a book by my wife. "Did you see this?" It was purporting to be about a massive psychoanalytic commune which had its roots in downtown Toronto during the 60s and 70s. I was surprised because I'd never heard of it before - the group was called Therafields. I was immediately struck by the communal angle, the era, the emphasis on psychological investigation - it was like being handed a screenplay by David Cronenberg. The fact that I am studying psychotherapy and its theoretical/historic development made it irresistible.

Subtitled The Rise And Fall of Lea Hindley-Smith's Psychoanalysis Commune, Grant Goodbrand's Therafields is just that. From the mid-60s till the early-80s, what was eventually coined Therafields, became one of the largest active communes in North America (significant considering both the era and that it happened with virtually no physical or cultural traces left in this city), owning as many as 35 houses within, and 400 acres of farmland just outside Toronto. At its apex it had over 900 members.

Starting out with a modest practice in the Annex, Welsh émigré Lea Hindley-Smith began by seeing people in her home. Her open embrace of students combined with an uncanny ability to get to the bottom of her clients' problems (not to mention her real estate acumen) conspired along with the socially progressive ideals of the 60s to develop a remarkable experiment in psychotherapy: a live/work environment which operated also as an ongoing group-process for its members, all under the auspices of Hindley-Smith who became their professor, CEO, and den mother. More houses were bought so that more living spaces could be added to accommodate new members, and new groups were developed. The story of Therafields is an account of how this creative hive eventually became an unmanageable empire. It is also an invaluable reflection of the changes happening at the time, guest-starring those stranded by the revoked promises of Vatican II, the back-to-the-farm movement, and the idea that psychotherapy could be about society rather than the individual.

I am a child of the 70s. Nothing could possibly be less meaningful than that statement. However, culturally speaking, I was surrounded by the 70s. The mid-70s to mid-80s were a formative time in Canadian television. In other words, we saw a lot of ourselves. And what we saw was produced and inflected by those who came of age in the 60s and early 70s (that's the way it always worked until recently, by the way - the older generation helped the younger generation identify with their own generation). In other words, I can imagine Therafields, while reading about it. Goodbrand has done a good job of contextualizing the era in which his book takes place. It also helps that Goodbrand was a key member of Therafields himself, and as such is gifted with a familiarity which an outside author would struggle to develop. The flip-side to that statement is that an outside author might have had a better chance of keeping the rhythm of the book's story consistent: there is a habit of temporal back-and-forth which does not make for smooth comprehension at times.

Considering Goodbrand's credentials, Therafields unfortunately suffers from a detached perspective. He is as qualified as anyone to write about Lea Hindley-Smith and those who were key to the group's skyward development - like esteemed poet bpNicol, for example - yet it seems only an accumulation of actions, the plotline of a biography, which gives us clues to the hearts beating behind the cast of characters. Goodbrand's book sometimes reads like an account rather than an experience.

And here we come to a marketing dilemma: I'm not sure who the intended audience is. I am thankfully, luckily, well-suited to read, understand, and enjoy Therafields. Yet... With its insistence on differentiating what Hindley-Smith practiced (Kleinian) from classical psychoanalysis, without necessarily providing a debriefer for the reader on what makes Kleinian psychoanalysis different from it, I cannot imagine the "average reader" walking away knowing what that all should mean. Perhaps that won't matter if they are keen on digging into a prime slice of Toronto history - complete with addresses, one could conceivably operate a motor-tour of where Therafields took place.

It is, nonetheless, an insightful read and an invaluable chronicle of a peculiar social/cultural phenomenon. Therafields, by Grant Goodbrand (ISBN: 978-1-55022-976-9), is available (evidently) from a used bookstore near you, and also online.

On Elitism

There is a lot of anger these days being directed towards a group known as "the elites". I'm not sure who they are. Sometimes I am part of them. Sometimes I'm not, but standing apart from a crowd, with their torches, storming toward the castle gates which protect "the elites".

The elites are the rich.

The elites are liberals.

The elites are the well-educated.

The elites are neo-conservatives.

The elites are the well-connected and entitled.

I keep hearing this term: the elites. And when I step back I think of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge movement, and how they ultimately targeted people who wore glasses. And when I say targeted, I mean murdered.

When I hear, in that angry, spittle-on-the-microphone voice - elites - I think of the ease with which we can take a non-specific swath of individuals from various classes, ethnicities, and educational backgrounds, and clump them together almost by magic. And they suddenly become something standing in the way of common sense, progress, Providence. Those fucking elitists.

I can take everything that makes your life hard - the year-to-year complexities of living in a society with others - and compel you to believe that if it wasn't for some small band of conniving intellectuals things would be better, simpler.

I can blame the elites.

Doris Lessing:

There is a certain social process that is known and very visible, but perhaps not acknowledged as much as it should be. It is that one where a new idea (or an old one in new form) is accepted by a minority, while the majority are shouting treason, rubbish, kook, Communist, capitalist, or whatever is the valued term of abuse in that society. The minority develop this idea, at first probably in secrecy, or semi-secrecy, and then more and more visibly, with more and more support until...guess what? This seditious, impossible, wrong-headed idea becomes what is known as "received opinion" and is loved and valued by the majority. Meanwhile, of course, a new idea, still seditious etc. and so forth, has been born somewhere else, and is being cultivated and worked out by a minority. Suppose we redefine the word elite, for our present purposes, to mean any group of people who for any reason are in the possession of ideas that put them ahead of the majority?

If holding certain beliefs or regarding some aspects of life as being too complex to reduce to unconditional conclusions sets me apart from the crowd, and if this standing apart-ness is sedition, and if this is what it means to be an elitist, then I am an unrepentant elitist.

I Don't Want To Know

As a writer, even though I am not part of any sort of literati, I am still plugged into the lit scene. You need to be if you want to understand the general to-and-fro of any industry you are interested in becoming a part of (same goes for TV, music, theatre, etc..). That said, I must make an admission. I am making this admission because I think there are a lot of people like me out there who feel the same but are reticent to admit it.

Here goes: I don't take any particular interest in the life of the artist outside of his or her art.

When I read a book, I don't care if an author comes from the East Coast and studied journalism, had a drug problem and now lives in a shed with a mastiff. It's not that I don't care about this author personally, it's that these facts shouldn't have anything to do with the book that I am about to read. I should be able to pick up the book, knowing nothing about said author, and be able to read it, enjoy it, be fully affected by it, without substantially missing something due to a lack of familiarity with the author's biography.

And yet, when you are culturally plugged-in (and by this I mean, you check out industry blogs, trade mags, etc.) there is so much white noise about the artists themselves that it seems divergent from what it is they are supposed to be doing: their work. We can talk about Picasso's passions, but 100 years from now there will probably only be discussion of his work - your work is the only thing left after you and everyone who knew you has died. And if people are still talking more about you than your work after this point, then I would think the quality of your work was overstated.

Would knowing that Stephen King battled drug addiction offer an insight into some of his writing? Yes. But, my point is that if that insight is necessary in order to fully appreciate a piece of work then there is a problem. The work doesn't work if you need a biographical cheat sheet to inject context into the material.

I think Bryan Ferry is an fantastic vocalist - and I don't want to know anything more than that. Nor the details outside a director's films, nor what inspired the playwright to write her play. I've got my own shit going on, thanks very much.

Ephemera is for journalists, fanzines, and those working on their Ph.D. The general public should not feel inadequate if they pick a DVD or book off a shelf, sit down in a theatre, or load a song without being prepared with supplemental information not contained within the medium which contains the work. The work inevitably has to stand up for itself. I write this for two reasons: first, with the likes of the AV Club and traditional print/TV media clamouring to add as much web-based context as possible to every article, there's a growing sense that - for the everyman - if you aren't savvy to the smallest details of each artist's passings and goings, you are nothing but a tourist. Secondly, embracing social media to a claustrophobic degree, we can now read endless commentating on authors reading their work for a live audience!...something no one really asked for outside the publishing companies themselves and perhaps the authors' parents. Let's face it: most authors can't read aloud to save their lives - it's not their specialty.

There are reasons for digging deeper, but that's up to the individual. It was interesting to learn more about HP Lovecraft when I reviewed Michel Houellebecq's quasi-biography of him and his work. What's funny, however - using that same example - is that when I proceeded to read the two works by Lovecraft contained in that same book, I don't recall thinking to myself "Ahh - this is where his uncomfortable relationship with women takes shape!". That's because the stories were two of his masterpieces, and when you witness a masterpiece, peripheral biographical information is going to gunk-up your enjoyment.

The medium may be the message, but the work contains the words. Outside of this we are left with cultural "bonus features". Nice to have, but not necessary.

All That Glitters Isn't Oranje

It should come as no surprise that my postings have been less frequent, in proportion to the success or lack thereof of the Dutch at the World Cup, which has just (mercifully) ended.

First: I'm happy we made it to the Final.

Second: I'm happy we lost (even though I wanted us to win at the time).

Allow me to explain: I will always support Oranje, but that doesn't mean I have to suspend my critical faculties while doing so. It also doesn't mean I am living in a nostalgic cloudbank in which Holland must either play soccer like the Kirov ballerinas dance or else they are "cynical" - a word bandied about by once-every-four-years-I-pay-attention-to-soccer pundits.

In case I haven't beaten this point enough, my Oranje is the team of 1998. It always will be. They were beautiful to watch (take a look at my Ryeberg essay if you haven't already) and most aficionados consider that squad the greatest team of the competition, regardless that they lost to Brazil in the semi-finals. The thing is, if you accept that, then you must also accept they were the very same team who flamed-out against Italy in Euro 2000 in the quarters, in perhaps one of the most humiliating games I've seen us play: same squad, folks. How's that for beauty?

The toughest question in the world if you are a Dutch international soccer player: What can you do when the public, the pundits, the former stars from the Golden Age all want to see you play ballet if playing ballet doesn't win anything? Don't get me wrong: I like the Oranje ballet - I am one of those people who can walk away from a loss, still chuffed that we played "as we should". I do side with author David Winner's thoughts about Dutch soccer philosophy, as laid out in his (brilliant) book, Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Soccer. But inevitably you want to win something, and the only silverware the Dutch have is the Euro title in 1988.

This brings us to the present. Sadly. Sadly, because for the most part Oranje did not live up to the philosophy we had come to World Cup 2010 expecting. Under the direction of Bert van Marwijk, they took a detour: individual beauty, sure, when necessary, but collectively less a ballet than an assembly line with a very narrow directive: win, above all else. And they did. They were rusty at first and their games, outside of pockets of that ol' Clockwork Oranje we hoped to see, were not pretty, but they won, and continued to win. Lord, I wanted them to win, too - I was a willing enabler.

When the final against Spain came, I was a nervous wreck. I can only imagine how it must have been in Holland, for those making their way to the Museum Square in Amsterdam where the games were shown for the public. They had come so far, had been through so much, for so many years: 1974, 1978, the glimmer of 1998, the disappointment of missing 2002. So much baggage that you wanted them to win just to shake off the voodoo of the past.

But as I got prepared that morning I visualized what it would be like if we won, if for the first time ever we won the Cup. Instead of tears of joy, I have to tell you, I saw that it would have felt as if we had cheated. As if in winning, we had not done so as ourselves but as a cunning machine, as if someone had invented a "Dutch Soccer Team" to take our place. I cannot describe how difficult it was to deal with that: to stare at a historic vindication within reach of your fingertips, knowing simultaneously there was something inherently inauthentic about it. In fact, had we won, I fear the "victory" would have irrevocably punctured the heart of Dutch soccer, as opposed to the bittersweet reality I live with now: we lost, Dutch soccer is merely dented. Coach van Marwijk's corporatist approach has been repudiated, that is for sure. What I don't know is who or what, philosophically speaking, has been vindicated, since we are bridesmaids once again.

Perhaps it is our souls? I can't speak for yours, but mine is in a better if not exactly comfortable place right now.

The Hammer (pt. 1)

When I rented a car and went to Brantford/Onondaga to do some reminiscing and photo-taking, I knew that Hamilton was also, ultimately, on my to-do list.

The aim of these trips is not preconceived. This makes it doubly hard to explain to others (friends, strangers, and loved ones) what exactly the hell I'm planning to do. "Taking pictures and stuff." I'll say - that's certainly no lie, but of course there's more to it. The thing about Zen is this: the second you begin to describe it, it disappears. And so - Art & Zen being the same - there's always a scaffolding I build around my explanation for these trips. It's the same scaffolding I use when I go out writing, or to take photos locally: a vague (yet not untrue) reason which allows me to unspoil the inspiration (which itself needs to be vague) while preventing others from thinking I've lost my mind. I'm not uncomplicated.

Hamilton, being a place of the past for me, exists in patches of haze - this isn't to say I did a lot of drinking or drugs when it was a destination, and yet it seems that way: murky. Of course, a good chunk of that time is best forgotten now. The downtown seems more hollowed-out than it did before, with the exception of Gore Park which to this day reminds me what a good idea it is to have spacious downtown promenades.

It was a precursory destination. First, with an ill-fated relationship which spawned a series of bad decisions which I owe to naivety. I am not alone in stating that I owe many mistakes in my 20s to naivety. It all culminated in a brief tenancy at an old apartment building north of St. Joseph's hospital. In so many ways, it was one of the more excruciating periods in my life - I think the haze I mentioned previously is partially there to protect me from looking too closely at things like this.

The second identity Hamilton had for me happened a few years later when, staying with relatives in Burlington while I studied at college, it became a "big city" to escape to. Toronto was bigger, of course, but it was too far to drive to just to have kicks. Hamilton was perfect and in the early 90s had a great nighttime scene in and around Hess Village. My hang-out was the Bauhaus Café, which sadly (though not surprisingly) no longer exists.

Walking around there now, it seems as if parts of it just gave up. People don't even want to advertise on billboards. To be fair, I shouldn't make any judgments without going there again, but on a Friday night - I'm afraid however that these judgments will only skew worse if I do.

Perhaps I have a better understanding of the haze now: it's there to protect my feelings, it's there to protect the city from the cold light of an unsympathetic audience.

Honesty, After Dark

A continuous problem I have throughout the social media spectrum, the main culprits being Facebook and Twitter, is that - once you get to the point where you have your sister's husband as your "friend", once the guy you barely talked to in high-school is "following" you - you are no longer able to be, well, honest anymore. You cannot post as a status update "Gary is an asshole" without, ultimately, answering to Gary (or his pot-smoking live-in partner, or your co-workers who are largely idiots). You can't even be vague: "Some guy I know is being an asshole.". People will know who you're talking about - context leaves clues people can find. Gary will get mad and want answers.

Oh, you can be honest, alright. You can lay it on the table all you want, but with the inevitable consequence of offending people and getting in trouble for it. In other words, there's nowhere to hide online. This is why I wish there were Bizarro social media sites like, say, Facebook After Dark and Undercover Twitter. Places where you can say the things you really want to say about the people you're "friends" with, the people you "follow", without fear of recrimination. I think we would all be happier as a result.

You reading this, Gary?

(P.S. There is no "Gary", in case anyone is wondering. I don't really have co-workers either) - ed

I'll Show You Stupid

Possibly the worst tactical mistake you can make, politically, is to make fun of an opponent's lack of intelligence. I say this because not only is there an influx of politically active people on the world stage who fall under the category of "lacking intelligence", but there is an absence of memory about how publicly scorning such people only empowers them (and, most importantly, voters).

It's hard. When someone says something completely false - and stupid - the well-educated person's knee-jerk instinct is to say "You're an idiot". Fair enough. But, it's the taunting that backfires. For example, look at Sarah Palin. I think she represents a necessary evil in American politics: a self-elected Voice of The People who campaigns on the rather wispy argument that the US is run by a bunch of elitists who don't understand "real Americans". It's all a bunch of crap (by elite, do you mean they have an education? don't you want the people running your country to have an education? to have seen something beyond the borders of your own country for sake of perspective? who the hell are 'real Americans'? does this imply 'false Americans'?), but it serves its purpose. And what do her critics - who, to be fair, constitute most of the people on the Earth - do? They make fun of her.

She's an idiot. A moron.

The problem is, she's a moron who appeals to a growing number of disenfranchised people who are looking for a proud, politically and morally uncomplicated banner to wave proudly over their heads. And yes, we can argue about why this is and who the supporters are, but - not to say that history is a 1:1 reflection of the future, because it's not - history has shown that history doesn't give a shit about those questions. Reflection happens in the future - that is, after we politely chortle to ourselves at all the nonsense of Palin, her "Tea Party", and her scads of uncivilized minions. That is, after they take the next election.

The elitist/commoner non-argument (it's a ploy, really) is as old as politics itself. We've had something very similar (and thankfully, tamer) happen in Canada. Our current government is a coalition of reformer factions who merged in the late 90s/early 00s to take over the Canadian Progressive Conservative Party (this would be the same as if the current "Tea Party" took over the Republican Party). They removed the word Progressive from the name and lead the country as a minority government. They too campaigned (and still do, whilst in power no less) as the party of the People, as an alternative to whomever stands against their policies (aka "the elites"). It's old hat.

Before they came into power, they - as the Alliance Party - tried very hard to unseat the ruling Liberal government (tangent: can you imagine if the US had a party called the Liberal Party?). Their leader was a man named Stockwell Day, who rode onto the scene (quite literally) on a Sea Doo. He was all charisma and commonality. But as time wore on, people found that his reformist ideas weren't very deep and a lot of the people in his party were either yahoos or - elitists? - began distancing themselves away from him. The chrome on his veneer began to chip away and the man became a running gag; the Prime Minister of the day, Jean Chretien, joked openly that he preferred having Day in opposition (as to suggest his chances were that much better to win elections against the Alliance). Long story short, all it took was a few years, a "unite the right" movement, and a new leader who could streamline (that is, squelch) internal strife and you had a winner. That is to say, the toppling of a government.

I suppose what I'm saying is this: making fun of people like Sarah Palin because she doesn't come across as polished, or sophisticated, or well-educated is ineffective. All you manage to do is inflame the passions of people - many of whom may have been too lethargic or apathetic to vote in the first place - so that they start creating local campaign offices. There is nothing like being intellectually offended to raise someone's ire - anyone's, no matter where or how they were raised. Raise the ire, that is, so as to make them active agents on behalf of those scorned by the "elites". Agents of "change".

George W. Bush was publicly derided by intellectuals and non-intellectuals alike in almost every conceivable medium and venue, yet he served two four-year terms as President of the US. If you want to take down the likes of Palin, take her down as you would take down Reagan or Thatcher - that is, as an opponent worthy of debate, worthy of your concern. To do less would be to knot your own noose.

Our Home and Masochistic Land

Historically, Canada has never even been close to placing first in the medal-count of the Winter Olympics. We are, after all, an exceptionally large country with an inversely proportionate population: I'd be stretching the truth if I said we had 35 million people here.

So, when I read last week that the Canadian Olympic Committee had boasted that (no this time) we were going to take first place in Vancouver a small part of me projectile-vomited across the room. It was upsetting because this ridiculous aim (summed up by the mantra Own The Podium) is something only bureaucrats can cook-up.

News to the COC: it's not like our athletes haven't tried their damnedest in the past. It's not like they didn't "get" the whole gold thing until now. They've never wanted to do anything but put in their best, but the problem - population aside - is typically Canadian: a miserable lack of funding, organization, and foresight. Only in Canada could we create an organization like the COC, with their shallow-sounding boardroom boasts which read more like something from a corporate motivational lecture ("What Colour Is Our Olympic Athlete's Parachute? GOLD!").

It adds insult to injury because there simply is no chance in hell that we are going to top the medal count, this Olympics or any to come. I'm saying it aloud: there is no...well, you get the idea. Heck, I'd be happy if we top Russia. The facts don't lie: despite our northernness, our wintry and sporting dispositions, we simply don't have the population to consistently support a proportionately competitive Olympic powerhouse, especially when up against the U.S. which has 10 more people to every one of ours! In retrospect, we should all be getting mad-drunk with delight! We're currently fifth in the freaking world, in spite of our pathetic sports infrastructure, despite our catch-us-while-you-can stagnant population growth, in spite of corporatist "iceholes" (if I may quoth Colbert) in the COC putting a bragging chip on our shoulder that we didn't need in the first place.

There should be a banner flying at the top of Whistler, just underneath the Canadian flag, with the phrase: "We're Actually Doing Pretty Damn Good".

Seriously.

The Sky is Falling (Very Slowly), or, Will The Real Science Please Stand Up

The problem with having a belief in something which happens to be provocative (and by provocative, I mean something which is not embraced by the whole and which may be a bit thorny for some) is that, like in most aspects of life, all it takes is a few zealots to make you look like a fool by ideological proximity.

As I pointed out many moons ago (December of 2006!) when it comes to climate change (as opposed to the slightly misleading term global warming), outside of blind ignorance our greatest liability are people who jab an accusatory finger at every natural disaster and scream "You see! It's global warming! Climate change caused this! If we don't do something NOW we are doomed as a species!". For me, it started with Hurricane Katrina, when people (a fantastic percentage of whom had no scientific accreditation) began to suggest that it simply wasn't an old-school "act of nature", but rather something to be blamed upon worldwide environmental collapse (as if New Orleans didn't have enough problems to contend with). It fed into a grand conspiracy theory which gave certain people a quixotic reason to exist: that mankind was the chief culprit all along, and that it was only a question of years to fix it. Cue epilogue of Planet Of The Apes.

On the other (self-evident to the point where I wonder whether it's worth mentioning) end of the spectrum are the usual assortment of deep-pocketed corporate "carbon monoxide is good for you" state polluters, and knee-jerk libertarian radio hosts who feel that idling their cars is akin to patriotism (and, as an aside, the whole libertarian-patriot thing seems like an oxymoron, doesn't it?).

The thing is this, panic aside: I do believe in climate change. All that shit turning to water north of us (that would be the Arctic ice) is a sign. Much less lachrymose is all that science, provided by all those scientists, which pretty much confirms that, yes, climate change is real, and that, yes, human industry is a variable in its occurrence. The issue of how the future is looking as a result of climate change is less clear. The problem is this: remember those largely non-scientific people blaming Hurricane Katrina on climate change? The ones telling us that if we don't do something NOW then the world's a goner? They got a lot of attention; the cameras kept rolling. This was probably just a knee-jerk reaction of mass media which was (and is) delighted to scare the public any chance they get (it keeps ratings up). Well guess what: some scientists found that if they used the same sort of seismic analogies and kept the ticking clock of doom just a few minutes away, not only would they get attention, but they could get funding.

Inevitably, it had to end - the speculative bubble that is. You can only say that we have five more years to change the world for five years until people start asking why societies haven't collapsed like the finale of an Irwin Allen movie. And then someone or some group hacked into the records of some climate scientists and found that some of them were acting like jerks, that some of them didn't want to play nice with their facts (unlike all those journalists and columnists we read). To me, this was heart-breaking, because it allowed both honest sceptics and partisan political hacks alike to pull a j'accuse and call it Climategate (seriously, I look forward to a world without the silly and dated gate suffix) and call the science itself into question, as opposed to the questionable actions of a few. Some have hinted that the bad publicity fall-out could set climate science back by a decade if increased public persecution gets worse. However, I feel this is as likely as, well, the world ending in five years.

The good news is that the world hasn't ended; neither our world, nor the world of science. If anything, reading today's op-ed by Margaret Wente in the G&M, even people who previously took every opportunity to deny the existence of climate change are now looking at things plainly: no pro trumped-up worries about imminent global catastrophe, and no con lefty/green/hippy bullshit stereotypes. If anything, perhaps bringing those few scientists into the spotlight has, post whatever-gate, calmed everyone down a notch. Perhaps enough so that we will be able to parse our language into something which does not use fear as a means of persuasion. Perhaps so that we won't dilute the meaning of words like green and sustainable to homeopathic degrees.

I believe (or at least I hope) we can find an entry-point where we can use science and research rather than propaganda and fear to motivate ourselves to improve our prospects (that is, both human prospects and business prospects, two things which have not always shared mutually fulfilling goals). It is heartening to see that there may be an X-Prize for fuel/energy production, similar to what was done for sub-orbital exploration. I'd also like it if we could reboot the message of environmentalism with a good 'ol back-to-basics mantra of: use less (as in packaging, unnecessary products, natural resources). I will be happy, even if it is all a hopelessly lost cause, that we go down working on something together as opposed to a Purgatory of scoring political points against ourselves.

For *'s Sake

It's been one of those battle-cries of mine the last while. Everything in the world, culturally-speaking (and I don't necessarily mean high culture) seems to be evaporating into mindless bullshit.

The AV Club - a site I admittedly have a love/hate relationship with already - just posted an interview with actor Paul Giamatti. In the opening summary, the interviewer describes the plot of his latest film, which reads like a counterscript of 1999's Being John Malkovich and yet there is no mention of this parallel anywhere in the article, something even Entertainment Tonight would do. The interviewer talks about this upcoming film with Giamatti as if it and his role - the John Malkovich role, if it were Being John Malkovich - were just soulless objects to be discussed out of necessity. In other words, it's just like any other media-junket interview, like something you would read in InStyle or Chatelaine. Not that those examples are b-a-d, but when you pride yourself as better, especially savvy, tongue-in-cheek better, you shouldn't even be in the same postal code as InStyle or Chatelaine if you want to retain your reputation.

The Motley Fool - again, a site previously known for being savvy, even though they deal with the stock market - now reads like Ain't It Cool News, complete with arguments which, under rational analysis, seem completely idiotic and antithetical to what one would assume is their mission statement (ie. being different than the rest of those brain-dead-and-short-sighted Money sites).

Oh, and CNN. Not that they've ever been more relevant than a Reuters news ticker, but they've gone from mediocre to stupid by allowing one of their show hosts, Lou Dobbs, to continuously question the origin of Barack Obama's citizenship, a paranoid suspicion virulent in the libertarian/right-wing fringe of the U.S. that has been repeatedly disproved (read: he doesn't want Johnny Foreigner running and ruining the most-possibly-greatest-country-ever-in-the-world).

Now, one of the arguments I can imagine hearing is: well, Matt, in a 24-hour newsday (whether on TV or the Internet) when people expect constant information there inevitably has to be weaker material. To which I say: I understand, but I'd settle for less information over less hours (if need be), if it means the information will be consistent and better. After all, you are what you eat, and in this day and age we feed on media in an astonishingly unconscious and voracious manner.

We All Scream For Lies Green

If you've picked up a newspaper or magazine in the last three or four days, you will have inevitably noticed (if not on the front page then prominently featured inside) the word "green" in the title of the edition/main article/theme of entire issue. As I sit typing this, there is a magazine on the table in front of me (one of those supplemental magazines that the Globe and Mail throws in for free every week or so...you know, the type of magazine - either fashion-oriented, vacation-oriented, guys-who-like-cars-oriented - that you'd be hard pressed to have ever remembered seeing in a retail store, even one which boasts a million magazines). It's called Green Living and the front page trumpets "CANADA'S GREENEST CITIES OF TOMORROW" (with an asterisk at the bottom " * Is yours on the list?"). The Sunday New York Times Magazine was dedicated to this colour also. As were the entrails of most newspapers.

You see, this Wednesday (April 22, 2009) is Earth Day. Get it? Earth Day? Green? Ohhhhh!, I'm sure you're exclaiming, perhaps even tapping your noggin for foolishly neglecting to remember. Not that it's a holiday or anything. No, Earth Day is not a holiday. Not even the banks get it off (though I would've expected them to sneakily insert an Earth Day Eve into their schedules). It is, however, that time of year - like Poetry Month - when, for 5 minutes, we try to give a shit about something we do a much better job of conceptualizing when it's not being shoved down our throats by people who hold diplomas in Event Management.

Expect between now (Monday) and then (Wednesday) to be inundated with the environment, Mother Earth, drowning polar bears and the like. This is not to say that I'm one of those Ayn Rand-ian right-wing troglodytes who thinks climate change is a socialist scheme. That is not my point (and I'm happy it's not my point today because it's extremely convoluted and I did poorly in math). My point is that, in the same breath that these newspapers and magazines (and websites!) roll-out the green, there are hundreds of articles about how to "buy" green. Getting back to Green Living, the sad little magazine in front of me, some other articles listed on the front are "WHERE TO PUT YOUR ECO DOLLARS" and "20 Budget Smart Enviro-Tips" [sic?!]. Even in the otherwise lefty (rather Jeckyll/Hyde lefty, if you ask me) Toronto weekly, NOW Magazine, the emphasis is almost as enthusiastically consumerist as it is on scaring the shit out of the reader about our imminent ecopocalypse^tm.

In other words, legitimate environmental concerns aside, with every Earth Day I feel as if we are facing a new Y2K (i.e. a semi-manufactured crisis that wasn't entirely invented to make money, yet, hey, why should we stop ourselves from making a buck, hell, wouldn't you, let's see how long this lasts). Of course, there are substantial differences between Y2K and Earth Day: the latter is borne from a need to undo and/or mitigate the effects of society's footprint on the earth, the former was borne from a need to undo and/or mitigate the effects of a bit of coding corner-cutting. There are (and were) legitimate concerns in either scenario. There were (and are) also people who would do anything to cash-in on a fear-based trend which increasingly loses its reason due to the insatiable North American need - even in our present economic situation - to commodify e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g. Basically: isn't getting people to buy a lot of stuff, green or not, counter-intuitive to the philosophy of reduce, re-use, and recycle? Furthermore - and this is me - I worry when a word (outside of religion) gets so stretched, mistook, mythologized, and appropriated that its meaning eventually loses all efficacy (see: sustainability).

I do not argue with the want or wish to use the word green, or to associate it with legitimate environmental concerns (because they are legion). I just wish it - and by virtue, Earth Day - did not seem like a St. Patrick's Day Parade where everyone - Irish or not - wraps themselves in the colour without really caring to know why, so long as there is the remote promise of an unrelated happiness (this goes for Valentine's as well, sad to say). The thing is - and I hope my father isn't reading this - we as a society can afford to misinterpret (or forget) what St. Patrick's Day means, but allowing our concerns over the environment to be cynically co-opted by purely commercial interests - whose concern for the environment is more or less a marketing strategy - is more disconcerting to this writer.

I'll take the Earth. You keep the green.

[P.S. Just as I was about to upload this, I received an email from a local limo company who fancies I am interested in their services. The subject: "Join Us at the Green Living Show". A limo company!]

Happy New Year (he says)

I tried making a list of notable things about 2008, but it just felt like a Grade 8 writing assignment (you know, the sort that teachers give out so that they can finish their homework while the students are placated). In short, it's not me nor is it my style to dwell (publicly at least) on events which transpired over an arbitrary period of time. When you do this, you sort of miss the greater (dare I use the word "holistic") scheme of things.

Beauty and Tragedy happen on their own schedule; they do not pay attention to calenders. A handful of countries are currently pummelling the shit out of each other - fa la-la-la-laaa, la la la laaa - without regard for newspaper editors' deadlines for concise and snappy end-of-the-year roundups. It continues into 2009, as do you and I.

Uncertainty is a necessary cloud upon us; we choose to see it, but often - as we get caught up in living our lives - we are oblivious to it. We try to contain our lives and achievements in temporal measuring cups because...well, time matters to us. Days matter, as do months. And so, being the end of another year, we feel we have earned a spot of detached reflection.

"So there!" we say to life during this artificial pause.

Life does not respond, and we are reminded that, when we reflect we reflect alone. Given more reflection (and ideally some solace, perhaps with a jazz radio station playing in the background and some dark roasted coffee), we realize the awesome power of reflection.

Use it well. And may the new year (and all of the ones to come) be enlightening and fulfilling for you and those dear to you.

Book Review: Unended Quest, by Karl Popper

"Pfuel was one of those theorists who so love their theory that they forget the purpose of the theory - its application in practice; in his love for theory, he hated everything practical and did not want to know about it. He was even glad of failure, because failure, proceeding from departures from theory in practice, only proved to him the correctness of his theory."

- Leo Tolstoy, War & Peace, Vol. III, Pt. 1, Chpt. X

My self-guided study in philosophy brought me to Karl Popper this past summer. Yes, another 20th century Austrian (seeing as the last philosopher's book I reviewed was Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico Philosophicus). Another logician as well, but what's compelling about Popper is that he did not limit himself to one particular field of study (in his case, science). He was just as passionate and knowledgeable about social dynamics, art, and politics.

Popper approached the long-held observational scientific method with distrust; rather than prove a theory to be correct with empirical evidence, he took inspiration from Einstein's openness to critique (when he released his theories on relativity) and insisted that falsification was a better method (ie. allowing one's theory to be refuted by opening it up to the community-at-large for inspection from more angles). This, he argued, protected the world from the success of pseudoscientific "pet theories". His inspiration for this came from his disenchantment with social and academic institutions of the day which rigidly held the works of Marx and Freud in high esteem.

Allow me to stop here and say the following: there is no way in hell I can sufficiently (to my own or anyone else's satisfaction) and clearly lay-out the man's theories, justifications, and *how* he came about his all in what I always hope and aim to be a succinct blog entry. It has taken me a day to revise the above paragraph and I'm still not particularly happy with it.

That said, I found Unended Quest to be a fascinating portrait of a great mind who refuses to stop questioning. His way of thinking about the underpinnings of logic and about systemic, ingrained assumptions in society is nothing short of radical. Under Popper's means of demarcation such seemingly scientific pursuits as economics, climatology, and even dietetics are left looking like...well, not quackery, but certainly not anything approaching science.

So, yes, feet get stomped on, lines get drawn...and this brings me to what makes a great philosophical treatise: it forces you, whether you like it or not, to recalibrate your assumptions about society. Even if you have fundamental disagreements, you are forced to work hard to justify them. In other words, it's the perfect way to give your brain a shake (perhaps even your foundations of understanding).

Unended Quest is full of ideas and strong opinions, with the socio-political history of the 20th century as its backdrop. This is a man who lived through two World Wars, whose early experiences as a social worker with neglected children made him fundamentally question the learning process, and who ended up being on a first-name basis with some of the greatest minds of the then-burdgeoning realm of quantum physics (Einstein, Schrödinger, Bohr).

That's it. That's all I can write without this becoming a term paper. All I can add to this is that I aim to re-read this book on a yearly basis, which is perhaps the best complement I can pay to an author.

Unended Quest (ISBN: 978-0-415-28590-2), by Karl Popper is available at an independent bookstore near you, or online at any number of vendors.

Art & Suicide

As reported in the news over the weekend, spilling into the papers this week, American novelist/essayist David Foster Wallace took his life. He had hung himself in his home, only to be discovered later by his wife.

To be honest, I've only read one piece by Wallace - an essay in an issue of Harper's almost ten years ago on the release of the revised Oxford English Dictionary - and yet it left an indelible impression on me. It made me laugh out loud with its quirky honesty and his style was unique and strong; in short, it made me take notice of writing and writers at a time when it simply was not on my radar (for various reasons). I always swore I would read one of his books, but the prospects of picking up the one he is best known for, Infinite Jest, all 1,000 pages of it, was intimidating. It still is, but that has more to do with the fact that I'm in the middle (or, factually, just past the middle) of War & Peace with Joyce's Ulysses staring at me from the bookshelf longingly.

Wallace's suicide is the second in the last few years by an artist who's work I'd kept an eye on. The first was that of American humorist and performer, Spalding Gray, who - it is assumed - leapt from a ferry into the Hudson River and drowned. I saw him at Massey Hall (one of the most venerable venues in Toronto) many years ago. As with Wallace's essay, I remember crying with laughter during Gray's droll monologue.

Which brings us to the question of artists and suicide.

Someone on Bookninja had this to say in reaction to the story:

In my work (psychiatry) I’ve seen so many creative people who are so tortured inside. I’ve often wondered if, given the choice, they’d choose peace over creativity. Maybe suicide is exercising that choice.

I thought about this. I wanted to respond, because I had something to say, but in the end I decided it would only be a tangent and while tangents are allowable in most online situations, an obituary is not exactly the place for one.

The answer is that artists do not want peace, or at least an artificial peace. To do so would be to abandon the tension which is inherent in art (and science, for that matter). In their art, over the course of their lives, artists attempt to resolve this tension; to articulate what it is that is at the centre of a storm which motivates them to create. The tension is the artist. Them against an outside world which does not work. Art becomes a philosophical expression of an existential dilemma. With this as the case, how many artists would willingly barter peace for creativity if such a trade were even possible? Not many, I would wager. What is peace when art allows you to reach higher than ever before, to touch the cookie jar of euphoria with your fingertips?

Like Wallace and Gray, I too suffer from depression. Their passing gives me pause, to put it lightly. Last night over dinner, Ingrid and I had a long talk about this - Wallace, Gray, art, and suicide - and she used a quote from Wallace that she'd read in one of the obituaries, that suicide happens very slowly. He is right. It is not, as commonly portrayed, an impulsive decision, but rather something which gestates very gradually within the mind of the sufferer. The danger is that this internalized dialogue, over the course of years, may eventually lead to the rationalization or acceptance of suicide as a logical option or self-fulfilling prophecy.

Art, however, is not depression, and depression should not be construed as something which only afflicts those in the arts. When you are depressed, anything can inflame the situation. Both the fire and the water used to douse it. It is for this reason that I take a moment to bring this up. So that people may understand what is, for lack of a better term, a mental illness. Allow me to suggest a wonderful series in the Globe and Mail, perhaps the best collection of stories and first-person recollections on the subject to be found in any newspaper.

I tip my hat to Wallace, to Gray. I mourn for the grief experienced by their loved ones.

God Is In The Details

A new documentary, if it can be called that, has been recently released through a limited selection of venues in the U.S. and Canada. I'm not interested in naming it, though a cursory glimpse of recent newspapers will make it clear which I'm referring to. It takes the Michael Moore approach (in other words, disingenuously removing anything which does not conform to a frustratingly partisan point of view) in an attempt to prove its thesis that there is a systemic (nay conspiratorial) effort to discredit scientists who believe in creationism (more specifically, the recently-minted term "intelligent design" or "ID" for short) by those in the scientific establishment who extol the findings of Darwin.

Reading the paper Friday morning, my wife commented on an interview with the film's host and narrator, Ben Stein. She took note of his perspective on the debate and thought it was interesting. I was less than enthusiastic (if not hostile toward Stein), though to be honest his interview wasn't that bad (unlike the film, which has been almost universally derided with contempt outside of evangelical circles). What upset me is that I actually think there is a debate to be had (if not owed) between secularists and Creationists.

I'm not a religious person. I was raised a quasi-Catholic, but found myself too interested in other streams of thought to figure that any one system of belief - secular humanism being one in a series of legitimate choices - had the copyright on truth. I'm very comfortable calling myself Agnostic, though these days wary of those who would have the public believe that Agnosticism is simply a less-assured branch of Atheism. I respect Atheists. I just wish more Atheists would respect Agnostics.

For me, Science, Art, and Religion are the same; they each aim to spelunk the chasm between knowing and not knowing. To investigate the disparity between the I and the not I in the universe. I've never been prepared to declare that there is or isn't a higher intelligence/level of consciousness at play in the unfathomable orchestration we find ourselves surrounded by, whether it exists only for mankind to perceive or something more holistic and all-embracing.

I'm frustrated that, in this age of elaborate misinformation, the only time an interesting perspective is given publicity it's usually loaded with so much subjectivity and partisan half-truth that it's tainted with suspicion before it even comes to the table of debate. And this is my problem with this documentary. The dice of its argument are so loaded from the start that it negates intelligent discussion from the start.

One cannot talk about this without referring to previous unsuccessful efforts by the current United States government, endorsing "intelligent design" to be taught in science classrooms as a legitimate alternative, and that the theory of evolution be referred to as a "current theory". The problem being, procedurally speaking, there's nothing remotely scientific about "ID", whereas Darwinism and the theory of evolution are demonstrable, regardless that there are many disagreements on the details. As a result of this meddling on behalf of the Bush administration, scientists across America took to the streets (or the web, at least) denouncing the idea, aided by the burgeoning Atheist movement, driven by the likes of Richard Dawkins.

In other words, the water in this wading pool is poisoned.

The question of Darwinism's compatibility with the idea of a higher intelligence/consciousness, if such a thing exists, is not a zero sum game. One does not, theoretically, eliminate the other's existence. I would love nothing more than an open discussion on the subject, if only to highlight the limits of understanding in both Science and Religion and perhaps find perspectives which intelligently respect opposite approaches. Unfortunately, given the current climate, this isn't likely to happen outside of a university campus, and in the case of the documentary released last week, the prospects of we - the intelligent public, of which I include you, dear reader - being treated to such a thing without the deck being stacked by partisan ideologues of either side of the argument is slim.

Dispatch - 02/15/08

An eclectic stew for you today, the reader.

Last night's show at Mitzi's Sister (see previous entry) went very well. The band was tight, though I found myself slightly disappointed overall in the experience. Part of it has to do with the fact that, when you step onto a stage to perform (whether it be reading, acting, or drumming), particularly when you don't have the opportunity to very often, time passes like a buttered bullet. You find yourself walking off the stage, seemingly five minutes after you got up there when in fact it's been more like forty. As the glare of the stage lights leave your eyes and you join the ranks of the audience, ending your turn as it were, you feel as if you could've done more - either in your performance or in your enjoyment of the experience.

The last time we played (same place, nearly the same date), the situation was reversed. I had a blast and thought we did a great job (also the crowd was bigger and they defied the typical "Toronto audience" behaviour, with one or two actually dancing), but when I talked to the band they were less than thrilled.

Methinks this disconnectedness is a drummer-thing. Or a writer-posing-as-drummer-thing. Someday I'll know what I want to do when I grow up.

- - -

Yesterday there was school shooting in Illinois at a university. Five dead and fifteen wounded. While this left me numbed - what really can I or anyone else do about it after the fact? - what I found staggering was that this was the fourth shooting at a U.S. school in the last week.

In the (normally poisonous) comment section on the Globe & Mail, someone noted how this phenomena (of which we are certainly not immune in Canada) seems to be applicable only to wealthier Western societies. In other words, for no apparent logical reason, given the superficial socio-economic circumstances of the communities in which these acts occur.

Earlier this week, my wife and I finally got around to watching Gus Van Sant's Elephant. I'd avoided seeing it because, although I was sure it was going to be well done, I didn't want to see something that articulated such a heavy-hitting subject - the Columbine massacre of April 1999. The film surprised me, in that rather than meditating on the after-effects (ie. 2 video-hours of grief), it dealt with the event as it happened, mostly in real-time, from the perspective of several characters who are students in the high school, including the two killers. Neither glorifying the horror nor practising intellectual avoidance, I thought the film was very strong, though ironically I thought it could've been more meditative in the end - perhaps a more hands-on narrative was necessary. This is not to say that it was Peckinpah via Linklater.

Aside from the coincidental nature of seeing Elephant amidst a surge of related killings across the U.S., I cannot help but wonder what lies at the heart of this. I can tell you what doesn't, as far as I'm concerned: guns, videogames, and violent films. Each, in their own way, are massively influential on youths, but I refuse to believe that they are in any way a cause.

It's as if, more and more, there is a proportion of our society that acts as if it's had a frontal lobotomy, thus removing a moral imperative that, for most, would stop us from taking enjoyment from the random killing of others around us. I find myself looking for answers: is this a bio-medical condition (say, exposure to heavy metals), a psychological illness, or strictly speaking is this something that can be explained sociologically? All of the above?

But another part of me often wonders: when we removed Christianity from public spaces like schools (and I don't argue with the need to do so), did we replace it with anything substantial? I sometimes wonder if, in the removal of a code of behaviour (as corrupted, hypocritical, or out-of-touch as it may have been) are we thoughtful of what should be put in its place - something substantial and not generic, p0litically-correct lip service which ends up inspiring no one? Or, am I kidding myself, in that we are all really indiscriminate savages on the inside, holding on desperately to illusions of civilization?

- - -

I remember, as a kid and avid comic-reader at the time, reading a story called The Realists. A handsome high school hunk-type is lured by the "new girl", a beauty, back to her house after school one day. She tempts him with a special drink. When he drinks it, it's like he's under the influence of a drug - everyone around him is ugly and fat, food is rotten, he stares at his reflection in the mirror and sees that he's hideous. She tells him that what he drank is real water, and that what he and the rest of society consumes is laced with a drug which provides the illusion of a beautiful "normalcy". He runs out of her house, screaming, and as the "drug" wears off, he decides to treat the experience like a bad dream and forget the fact that what he thinks is reality is actually an engineered apparition.

- - -

These are fleeting thoughts, sufficiently scattered. Enjoy your weekend.

Language and Meaning

"The limits of my language mean the limits of my world"

- Ludwig Wittgenstein

I was reading the New York Times Sunday Magazine last weekend and caught this article, written by Michael Pollan, about the rise of agricultural diseases. In it, he begins with bemoaning the decreasing power of the word "sustainability", seeing as it has been turned impotent; yet another zombiefied corporate catch-phrase designed to make what one does appear useful even when in practise the reality is much more ambiguous.

There is a biting summary of this phenomena in the second paragraph of Pollan's article:

Confucius advised that if we hoped to repair what was wrong in the world, we had best start with the “rectification of the names.” The corruption of society begins with the failure to call things by their proper names, he maintained, and its renovation begins with the reattachment of words to real things and precise concepts. So what about this much-abused pair of names, sustainable and unsustainable?

I sat at the breakfast table, thinking about this paragraph. It stunned me, because my awareness of the philosophical questioning of language - its power to distort and clarify - didn't extend as far as back in time as Confucius. To read it made me understand that this conflict - the fight to keep language from becoming a meaningless putty in the hands of technocrats - has been going on probably since the dawn of communication. It wasn't until reading, of all people, Confucius - that old aphorism-spewing chestnut - speak about it that my understanding of the conflict was deepened.

The two writers who outlined this conflict most beautifully for me were Wittgenstein, quoted at the top (from his treatise, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus) and John Ralston Saul, who rallied against the rise of technocrats most effectively in his books Voltaire's Bastards, and The Unconscious Civilization. Each fulfilled a means of illuminating the power of language in a way that was neither impractically academic nor precious. Saul warns about how the images and words we share can be/have been actively distorted by those with corrupting self-interest. Wittgenstein's very philosophy is about the parsing of truth and falsity (or senselessness, as he would put it) in how we use language to construct a world view.

With the discovery of Confucius' addition to this subject, I now have more to research and reflect upon. I suppose I'm fascinated with this subject, and for reasons I don't think are trivial. We are beset by corrupted means of communication every day: images that lie as well as they seduce, thoughts withheld from publication/broadcast because of vested interests. And yet, most importantly, I believe it's also language that can save us - the very tools used to fool us can be used to liberate.

I suppose one of the first questions I have is whether there are more than a handful of people out there who give a shit, or whether this is a pursuit (non-Quixotic, I insist) only a begrudging elite will ever have interest in following. Sometimes I'm haunted by the words of writer William Sturgeon, who - when asked if it was true that he thought 90% of science fiction was crap - answered that, actually, 90% of everything is crap. What haunts me is how this somewhat off-the-cuff pronouncement translates into the percentage of everyday people who truly care enough about things like this. It's important to me that people understand that the corruption of language (visual, textual, audible) is not simply an academic concern, and that it's possible to put up an effective, civil defense against it.

Update: For more on Confucius and the "rectification of names", please see this link for some context.

Article: Regarding A New Humanism

I came across an extremely well-written essay on the Edge site today. Written by Salvador Pániker, Regarding A New Humanism contains exactly the right sort of balance of passion and intellect that I find missing in so many essays concerning the path "we" (read: society) should take. It is neither heavy-handed nor exclusionary. I'd take the time to summarize it, but look, it's a short essay. If you can't spare the time to read it for yourself without a synopsis, even though the title is pretty darn self-explanatory, then...well, that's just too bad. And it's Friday.

An excerpt:

Indeed, those who pit science against sacred texts or science against art do so in error. Respective boundaries of autonomy aside, everything forms a part of the same prodigious struggle. The pursuit of the real which, in a sense, is the also the pursuit of the absolute. The absolute that is intuited, though it remains inaccessible. A fusion of fields as was seen in the Renaissance is certainly no longer possible; the mountain of specialization has grown too high. However, one might demand that the different fields of knowledge communicate with one another and without undermining each other.

Anonymous Taunts and Random Fools

Pay no attention to what the critics say;
there has never been set up a statue in honor of a critic.

- Jean Sibelius

There is a class of person in our online world whose existence, it seems, is defined by stalking news forums and user-comment sections so that they can anonymously spew views which seem crafted to achieve nothing more than outrageous reaction. Within the vernacular of the internet, these people are trolls. I can only assume that, when the internet included more than five people, the term was coined shortly thereafter.

Microsoft vs. Linux, Liberals vs. Conservatives, Anglicans vs. each other, the list goes on. Essentially, wherever there is a potential conflict, a troll will shortly be there to stir the pot and create, as trolls do very well, more anger.

For example, on the Globe and Mail website, within seconds of an article being posted about either the minority governing party or their rivals, the trolls go to town, essentially blaming one side or the other for the fall of society (which, while we're talking about it, I believe happened somewhere in-between John Lennon's assassination and the advent of "grunge" music).

Of course, I'm no angel. Sometimes, I'll go on the G&M comment section and, irregardless of what the article is about, post something wildly accusing "Liberal judges" as the source of the problem (even if the article is about, say, busing rural students). I do this to demonstrate the rash (and frighteningly predictable) mindset of the trolls. Now, whether people enjoy my little play-theatre is another question. Perhaps I'm being a jerk and making things worse...mind you, you could use that phrase for anything.

I suppose I wouldn't have a problem (or a blog for that matter) if people simply conducted themselves semi-professionally in public. I'm not asking for a formal essay from people submitting comments on the G&M - just keep the generalizations to a minimum and leave the partisan politics to...um...the politicians.

Book Review: The Unconscious Civilization, by John Ralston Saul

As mentioned previously, House of Anansi recently re-released their acclaimed CBC Massey Lectures series. This news is a significant boon to the reader who values provocative, intelligent discussion which often straddles the fine line between social anthropology and philosophy. Having been pleasantly surprised with Doris Lessing's Prisons We Choose to Live Inside (reviewed previously here), I picked-up John Ralston Saul's The Unconscious Civilization with hesitant interest - I say hesitant because I'm already well-acquainted with his work.

I was first introduced to Ralston Saul many years ago with his book Voltaire's Bastards (ISBN 9780140153736). I was impressed with his bold and thoroughly-referenced perspective on what he contends is the growing paralysis of Western civilisation throughout history. However, in retrospect, this was probably the wrong book to start with; for one thing, it's about 656 (trade paperback) pages which, considering his dense style and cogent analysis, makes for a bit of a brain slog. Nonetheless, I followed this with the successive releases of Confessions of a Siamese Twin (ISBN 9780140259889), his treatise on Canadian social/political identity, and On Equilibrium (ISBN 9780140288032), his elaboration on six foundational aspects of civilization.

I wish now that I had first read The Unconscious Civilization.

Clocking-in at a comparably svelte 205 pages, Unconscious Civilization finds Ralston Saul boiling down the magnum opus that was Voltaire's Bastards into something much more approachable for the average reader without filing down its fangs. The thesis is partially revealed in the Preface, written for the 10th anniversary re-release:

When I wrote these Massey Lectures, I was convinced they would cause a shock. After all, I was describing the state of the West in a manner quite off the radar screen. I was saying there had been a persistent growth of corporatism in spite of the outcome of the last world war. And that this growth continued. Why would this be shocking? Because corporatism was part of the anti-democratic underpinnings of Fascist Italy in particular, but also of Nazi Germany. Beneath the uniforms and the military ambitions and the dictatorial leadership and the racism lay corporatism. It was the intellectual foundation of fascism. And it was supposed to have been destroyed along with both regimes in 1945.

So, it's not exactly light reading. Throughout history though, concepts and arguments that heed us to re-evaluate our surroundings (whether or not we end up holding fast to them) are often dissonant to our day-to-day perspective on life - in other words, controversy often ensues difference. Ralston Saul is unafraid to call a spade a spade.

The Unconscious Civilization lays out in dense, history-shifting references, the problems and origins of corporatism and how it has become an increasingly acceptable means to run modern societies, in spite of its history of stifling democracy and rewarding conformism.

One of the key points made is how one can propose to adjudicate the underlying strength of any given society - that is, asking: where does its legitimacy lie? He proposes that this legitimacy lies in one of four areas: God, a king, groups, or civilian individuals working as a whole. While the history of Western society has largely been influenced by the former two, Ralston Saul feels that we are most certainly in the hands of groups: think-tanks, specialists, and managers.

The corporatist model, he argues, in the tradition of the Catholic Church, is obsessed with God and Destiny - albeit transposed onto contemporary concerns such as the trade markets and privatisation of public interests. Corporatist language is thus cloaked in a similar sense of inevitability and sycophantic awe that the Church used to instill fear and hold power over the populace.

Although the density of Ralston Saul's arguments is impressive (in particular, his contention that Jung and Freud allowed the posterity of their work to fall victim to an inarticulated obsession with mythology) , I feel it's this same quality that weighs down the over-arching themes of the book. At points, particularly with his repeated references to Athens in the days of Socrates, I longed for the simple first-person perspective that gave Doris Lessing's Prisons We Choose To Live Inside its sprightliness and pactical immediacy. At times, Unconscious Civilization buckles under the considerable thickness of its content, which makes me wonder what the average reader will take away from it (without re-reading).

However, this doesn't change the fact that this is powerful stuff. Not content to only point out what's wrong with society, his last chapter is dedicated to thinking towards solutions. In particular, I found great interest in his contention that the public school system is out of step with the lifestyle changes over the last 20 years - as people are set to retire later and later, would it not make sense for children to enter into school later and then be required to receive a more complete education than the current system which is only concerned about cranking out specialists for the marketplace? Ralston Saul also delves into his equilibrium theory, to which he devoted a book in 2002, in which he postulates that individuals and society alike must work to remain balanced rather than hyper-focused on any one quality, in particular rationality, which has been used to justify abuses throughout history.

I would not hesitate to suggest this book to anyone interested in challenging views of society in general, and Ralston Saul's ideas in particular. For the latter, The Unconscious Civilization is the ultimate primer. For the former, you will undoubtably find yourself spending a great deal of time wrestling with its well-researched and sometimes scathing message.

The Unconscious Civilization is available for sale at a fine independent bookstore near you and online at House of Anansi Press, as well as...Powell's, Amazon, Chapters. Published by House of Anansi Press (ISBN: 0-88784-586X)