References

• On Equilibrium John Ralston Saul explains how our different qualities give us the intelligence, self-confidence and practical ability to think and act as responsible individuals. He argues, however, that when certain human qualities are worshipped in isolation they become weaknesses, even forces of destruction or self-destruction. In short, they become ideologies. How can we use our qualities as positive forces in our own lives – and the life of our society? How can we use them so that each builds upon the other to reinforce us as humans? Saul's answer is Balance. On Equilibrium is an intelligent, persuasive and controversial exploration of the essential qualities of humanity and how they can be used to achieve equilibrium for the self and to foster an ethical society. It is at once an attack on our weakness for ideologies and a manual for humanist action. It is the logical, compelling and humane successor to Saul's bestselling trilogy Voltaire's Bastards, The Doubter's Companion and The Unconscious Civilisation.
• Ralston Saul searches for equilibrium Australian Broadcasting Corporation TV PROGRAM TRANSCRIPT LOCATION: http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2002s569246.htm Broadcast: 30/05/2002 Ralston Saul searches for equilibrium Reporter: KERRY O'BRIEN: Canadian John Ralston Saul has been identified as one of the world's 100 leading thinkers and visionaries, which certainly doesn't make him infallible, but does suggest his views are at least worth thinking about. He's just published "On Equilibrium", the fourth in a series of books challenging the conventional wisdoms of mainstream governments and economists. Nor does he like what he sees as the destructive obsession by the world's biggest corporations to get bigger still, with seemingly endless mergers, most of which, he says, end in failure. He attacks the ideologies of right and left, has been a consistent critic of what he sees as the narrow confines of economic rationalism, and says the real battle is between real capitalism and false capitalism. John Ralston Saul is also the husband of Canada's governor-general. He's here for the Sydney Writers' Festival, and I spoke with him this afternoon. KERRY O'BRIEN: John Ralston Saul, you paint a grim picture of the world's democracies, of societies that have lost their equilibrium. What does that mean exactly? JOHN RALSTON SAUL, WRITER/PHILOSOPHER: I think we're just coming out of -- I mean, we're coming out of 25 years, 50 years, 200 years, but 25 to 50 years of really believing that you could manage your way through, that there was a kind of rationalism which would allow you to solve all problems, and they seem to have created as many, if not more, problems, and we're just coming out of believing in that. So we're now looking for equilibrium in a more serious way than we were even five years ago. Globalisation, the sort of rational theory of globalisation is dead, it's gone now, we're just trying to figure out how to come around the corner and do something else. KERRY O'BRIEN: It would be news for George W. Bush, and for that matter Tony Blair or John Howard, wouldn't it, that globalisation is dead? JOHN RALSTON SAUL: What's globalisation? Globalisation is a particular narrow theory of a particular form of internationalism. There are dozens of ways of being international. This just happens to be a rather silly, naive, late 19th century economic theory, that we were a bunch of dogs who were going to be led around by an invisible hand. Of course it couldn't last that long. Inevitably it was going to make a fool of itself. KERRY O'BRIEN: You talk about the isolation of reason as a part of the failing, as at the core of the problem. What do you mean by that -- the isolation of reason? JOHN RALSTON SAUL: Well, human beings -- I mean, all of us, we're really interesting. We are better than dogs. We're capable of doing two or three things at once. And we're capable of doing more than thinking. We also have ethics, we also have intuition, we also have memory, the context, you know. And our weakness has always been a tendency to, I think in the west, and I think it's particularly true of western civilisation, our tendency has been to slip into ideologies and that starts by believing that there's one human quality which is the only one -- it's the only one that matters and then we kind of group everything under underneath that. So the last while, the truth, the great God has been reason, and we've justified just about every stupid thing, as well as every intelligent thing, underneath reason. The international arms trade was created in the last 40 years in the name of reason. It's really silly stuff. Some of it is good. KERRY O'BRIEN: The broad picture that you have consistently painted is of democracies generally, western democracies generally, having gone awry because they've banked too much, and almost exclusively, on reason, to the exclusion of these other human qualities you talk about. So in that context, can you point to a democracy in the Western world and say, "There is a model of what I'm talking about that would be good? JOHN RALSTON SAUL: But it doesn't really work that way. I mean I think you can look in almost government -- you can find really interesting things and you can find really depressing things. And you can find, I think for example, that in general, elected politicians have never been so depressed about what is happening because when you actually talk to them, and you must do this, with the cameras off, instead of asking really seriously about things, they don't actually believe most of the language they're told you're supposed to be using because their experiencing getting elected is much more complicated. And they have a much better understanding of the nature of society than their public language would indicate. So there is a real resource inside the democratic class which is quite interesting. KERRY O'BRIEN: And yet by the same token there is almost an overwhelming sense of cynicism by the citizens at large, about the kinds of games that their politicians play to stay in government. JOHN RALSTON SAUL: That is one of the catastrophes of the last half century, has been, that as we've believed more and more that experts and methodology would solve all problems, so you suddenly heard more and more people getting power and saying, "Well, there isn't actually anything I can do with this power because either it's in global hands or its in specialist hands." You must have heard that 1,000 times. KERRY O'BRIEN: You say you're not anti capitalist, but if you're not, why are you so critical of the major corporations that drive so much of the world's economies? JOHN RALSTON SAUL: I'm not actually critical of the major corporations at all. I'm critical -- KERRY O'BRIEN: I must have misread your book. JOHN RALSTON SAUL: I'm critical of assumptions about what those corporations can do beyond what they're supposed to be doing. KERRY O'BRIEN: You're critical of their size. JOHN RALSTON SAUL: Well, there's two things, first of all -- KERRY O'BRIEN: You say they're anti competitive. JOHN RALSTON SAUL: Let's go back to the question. I say I'm not anticapitalist but I criticise the large corporations. Who said the large corporations were capitalist? KERRY O'BRIEN: Well, I would think the people who make up the boards of the large corporations would see themselves as part of capitalism, very much so. In fact they might see themselves as amongst the leaders of capitalism? JOHN RALSTON SAUL: Yes, but do they own the companies or are they managers? KERRY O'BRIEN: They would be -- the boards would be made up to substantial degree as shareholders. JOHN RALSTON SAUL: Who would the shareholders be in those large corporations? They'd mainly be pension funds. I mean, most of the transnational corporations don't have any major personal shareholders. KERRY O'BRIEN: So what's your point? JOHN RALSTON SAUL: Well, the point is, they're technocrats, they're not capitalists, they're managers. They're civil servants of the private sector. Their biggest risk is usually the options that they have on shares that they really didn't pay much for. A capitalist is a capitalist. A capitalist is somebody who owns something. Now, if you really want to talk about capitalism and competition you can look at the small to medium-sized companies, but the transnational corporations, which I think is what you're referring to, are very, very far away from anything we've ever understood to be capitalism. And in fact, what's been so interesting over the last few years, has been we have been sliding at an alarming pace back towards monopolies and oligopolies. I mean, I thought, about 20 years ago, that I would no longer have to remember to spell oligopoly, let alone what it meant. And suddenly we were surrounded by monopolies and oligopolies again. I thought we were deregulating in order to increase competition. Why would globalisation, if it's so successful, actually produce a return to monopolies and oligopolies. KERRY O'BRIEN: I assume that you're against Third World poverty. I suppose everybody would at least say they are. JOHN RALSTON SAUL: Are you in favour of it? KERRY O'BRIEN: Would at least say they are. JOHN RALSTON SAUL: Are you in favour of it? KERRY O'BRIEN: No. As I said, I assume everybody would say they're against it. JOHN RALSTON SAUL: Yet you attack globalisation, which I think even the World Bank sees as a way of lifting more of the world's poor into the middle class. JOHN RALSTON SAUL: Well, you know, the difficulty isn't that. You know, you say, you attack globalisation as if I were in favour of a, depriving the Third World and b, in favour of protectionism -- enclosing oneself in and turning ones back on them. KERRY O'BRIEN: That's the argument -- that there is an inevitability about it but at the same time, that it does, it does produce benefits? JOHN RALSTON SAUL: Well, you really have to look at that in the full picture. You have to look at a situation, say like Argentina's, where it clawed its way out of a disastrous period, did everything the international community told it to do, in banking terms and so on, did everything the World Bank asked them to do, and then found itself nevertheless, in a catastrophic position and as it moved towards the cliff, the world just stood by and watched them fall over it. So you really have to say are we talking ideology, which is globalisation is great and it's going to make everyone rich or are we talking about the real world here? Where there is a real role for the marketplace, there's a real role for the nation's state and citizens, there's a real role for government. There's a real role for actually working carefully with developing countries. KERRY O'BRIEN: John Ralston Saul, thanks very much for talking with us. JOHN RALSTON SAUL: Thank you. KERRY O'BRIEN: And that was a morsel of John Ralston Saul is also delivering a series of capital city lectures while he's here, including Sydney tonight, and Melbourne and Hobart next week.