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.
The Western world is full of paradoxes. We talk endlessly of
individual freedom, yet we've never been under more pressure to
conform. Our business leaders describe themselves as capitalists,
yet most are corporate employees and financial speculators. We call
our governments democracies, yet few of us participate in politics.
We complain about invasive government, yet our legal, educational,
financial, social, cultural and legislative systems are
deteriorating.
All these problems, John Ralston Saul argues, are largely the
result of our blind faith in the value of reason. 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. Whether
in politics, art, business, the military, entertain-ment, science,
finance, academia or journalism, these experts share the same
outlook and methods. The result, Saul maintains, is a civilization
of immense technological power whose ordinary citizens are
increasingly excluded from the decision-making process.
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.
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