PCAPPC

John Ralston Saul uses language deliberately, and many common words are given such weight that we're forced to rethink their definitions. Does the meaning of the word, "free", for example, shift when we talk about "free" trade vs. "free" speech? Our claim to language as citizens is essential to the health of civilization, and its constant exercise is essential to democracy. Perhaps in January, at our next meeting of the PCA, we can take up a few of the following words (in no particular order) which Saul uses very precisely, and whose meanings, I think, stretch our mental muscles: Management; Morality; Imagination; Intuition; Leadership; Reason; Humanism; Ideology; Legitimacy; Democracy; Knowledge; Common Sense; Ethics; Facts; Language; Science; Culture; Methods; Civilization; Citizen; Courtier; Lobbyist; Memory; Expertise; Government; God; Power; Pundit; Groups; Elite; Globalization; Specialization; Contractual Obligations; Disinterest; The Social ...

Fear isn't the object from which we recoil, nor is it the discomfort to which an encounter with the object might lead, nor a motivation to achieve the tranquility of its erasure. These are all rationalizations to an essentially irrational response. Fear, fundamentally, is a reaction which focuses our attention, briefly, on an object or some characteristic of a situation which might do us harm: a snake on the path; the edge of a cliff; a blackening sky and a flash of lightening. But with imagination came the possibility of chronic fear, the manifestation of its triggers in the mind and the pathological holding of them there. These became the seeds of ideology; the containment of a chronic fear became, in time, essential to tribal cohesion; the common fear, popularly nourished, reinforced tribal identity by defining what was inclusive to and what would be excluded from society. Our understanding of “other” began in empathy. The first step to comprehending individuality, self and othe...

Science, because its technological results are so impressive, is perceived as dealing in certainties . Force does equal mass times acceleration and F=ma is an obviously useful formula. But really, all we've done is assign a name to a conceptual quantity we invented, namely "force", and then defined it in terms of other, measurable quantities. Even the quantities one thinks of as fundamental, like mass and acceleration, are really just conceptual comparisons against some imaginary object at rest or with zero mass. Science as reductionism is the search for the fundamental quantities and relationships from which everything else can be measured. But it has been argued that all measurable quantities, from mass and charge, to space-time itself, are emergent properties which science can never adequately predict (see A Different Universe , by Robert Laughlin). The strength of the rational, scientific method, is that it pays close attention to reality and makes educated guesses a...

Here's some "light" reading, thoughts inspired by a re-reading of some of John Ralston Saul's books that I thought might be helpful, especially if you're feeling distressed at not being able to categorize his politics or summarize his philosophy... Just as methods have no conscience as to the ends to which they are applied, so too is the written word without compunction as to its reader or conscious of its affects on that reader. The spoken, which is the living reality for which the written serves only as image, chooses its audience and is animated, augmented, pruned, enriched and directed by the Other. The word as spoken is shared, dynamic, social thought . The written word insofar as it represents thought at all is entirely dependant on its being discovered, and read attentively, by the right reader. Without the possibility of modulating form, revising or repeating content in response to the reader, the written word is at best a method for generating thought in ...