Non-fiction: The Unconscious Civilization

Overview
John Ralston Saul argues that modern democracies have become "unconscious civilizations" when citizens surrender their collective responsibilities to market forces and technocratic specialists. He contends that the triumph of market thinking has reframed public life as a series of transactions, replacing civic imagination and public purpose with managerial efficiency and consumer choice. The book names a cultural shift: societies no longer deliberate about what they owe one another, they outsource that judgment to anonymous systems and private interests.
Saul's diagnosis centers on how language and institutions have been reshaped to normalize this surrender. Terminology such as "efficiency", "competitiveness" and "consumer demand" become unquestioned metrics for all decisions, crowding out moral and civic vocabulary. The result is an increased role for corporate power and experts and a declining sense of shared responsibility.

Diagnosis of the Problem
The core problem is routinization: public life is governed by procedures and performance indicators rather than public debate and ethical judgment. Bureaucracies and markets run on rules that discourage imaginative public reasoning, turning citizens into customers and managers into neutral implementers. When decisions are framed as technical rather than political, democratic accountability erodes and the space for common deliberation shrinks.
Saul points to the diffusion of responsibility that occurs when tasks are delegated to specialists and institutions. People come to believe that because experts manage issues, there is no need for civic engagement. This delegation, coupled with media narratives that privilege market framings, produces passivity and a diminished capacity for collective action.

Causes and Mechanisms
A key mechanism is the ideological dominance of market liberalism, which elevates the market as the primary organizing principle for social life. Privatization, deregulation and the outsourcing of public functions are symptoms of this broader shift. Political leaders and cultural elites increasingly measure success by economic indicators, while social goals are reframed as matters of individual choice or corporate responsibility.
Saul also highlights the role of education, advertising and professional cultures in normalizing market categories. Schools and workplaces emphasize technical expertise and careerism rather than civic virtues. Language changes follow: public goods and social obligations are discussed in the language of risk, cost-benefit analysis and consumer preference, making it harder to imagine alternatives.

Consequences
The consequences extend beyond inefficiency. The loss of a shared public imagination weakens solidarity and erodes institutions that mediate between individuals and the state. Social fragmentation grows as people retreat into private spheres, and public problems like inequality, environmental degradation and civic alienation become harder to address because they require collective will and long-term commitment.
Democracy itself suffers when citizens accept managerial rule and defer to market outcomes as inevitable. Electoral politics is reduced to tactical competition within a narrow policy space, and moral authority shifts from elected representatives to anonymous market forces and technocratic elites.

Remedies and Renewal
Saul calls for the recovery of civic institutions and a renewed commitment to public purpose. He urges citizens to reclaim responsibility for common decisions, to rebuild deliberative spaces and to reinvigorate language that makes collective life intelligible and desirable. Protective public institutions, cultural practices that encourage participation, and education that fosters civic imagination are central to his remedy.
He insists change requires more than policy tweaks; it demands cultural work: resisting the colonization of public language by market metaphors, reviving narratives of shared obligation, and cultivating institutions that translate private interests into public deliberation. Active citizenship and insistence on ethical judgment must complement expert knowledge.

Significance
The Unconscious Civilization remains a provocative critique of late 20th-century liberalism and a warning about the costs of depoliticizing society. Its insistence on the moral dimensions of public life and the need to reclaim collective imagination resonates with contemporary debates about inequality, democratic backsliding and climate change. The book challenges readers to reconsider where authority should lie and how citizens can rebuild the institutions needed for a humane and participatory public life.