The Collapse of Globalism by John Ralston Saul

Author:John Ralston Saul
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atlantic Books

20

The End of Belief

“You ram something down your throat and you’re bound to throw up.”

— MARSHALL MCLUHAN

Ideologies resemble not very good theatre of the romantic sort. That is why Coleridge’s formula — the willing suspension of disbelief — applies so neatly to the natural life of any ideology.1 In defence of the poet, he had in mind a far nobler use of the human ability to choose to suspend our disbelief — a nobler idea of theatre and of the romantic ideal. But you could argue that the more flimsy the theatrical device — a romance novel, a Schwarzenegger adventure — the greater the demonstration of our ability to suspend our critical faculties.

How we arrive at the decision to suspend our disbelief when it comes to ideologies is mysterious. Historians and social scientists spend their lives trying to explain the phenomenon. Creative writers usually do a better job at explaining this sort of politics, because in a curious way they are in the same business as the ideologues. Both are dealing with the human heart.

Less mysterious is how we decide to drop our suspension. The inevitable — and here the word is accurate — failures of any ideology gradually build up. A growing number of people notice. The propaganda of triumph evolves into one of denial. Language that was once enthusiastically received by the public is increasingly treated as the equivalent of elevator music, then as an actively annoying noise, and finally as inadvertent comedy. When the voice of power is heard by the public with irony, skepticism and, at last, as if from a farce, our willingness to suspend our disbelief has seeped fully away. The ideology may go on for a time because its advocates hold so many of the mechanisms of power. But this is simply power.

While the true believers continue to insist — sometimes enthusiastically, but more often angrily these days — on global inevitabilities, you will hear, if you listen carefully, a rising babble of contradictory sounds. A growing number of nation-state leaders, along with the more interesting businessmen, have changed their vocabulary, gradually weeding out the global assumptions. The new discourse is more complex, sibylline, less grandiose. Much of it is built around the idea of citizens and society. On the other hand, some of it suggests an accelerating political meltdown matched by rising levels of disorder. There is a growing incidence of old-style nationalist violence. Our memory has changed again. There is no longer an assumption that the years 1945 to 1973 were such an era of failure. It is accepted as normal that there were both disappointments and systemic flaws during those three decades, but it is again respectable to admit that the era preceding Globalization was one of the most successful in history for both social reform and economic growth. Why, apart from an ideological sweep, should we ever have dismissed it as a failure when we could have weeded out its weaknesses and built on its accomplishments?

The idea of failure was central to the dramatic arrival of the Globalist ideology as a rescue mission.

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