As with our earlier worship of saints and facts, there is something silly about grown men and women striving to reduce their vision of themselves and of civilization to bean counting. The message of the competition/efficiency/marketplace Trinity seems to be that we should drop the idea of ourselves developed over two and a half millennia. We are no longer beings distinguished by our ability to think and to act consciously in order to affect our circumstances. Instead we should passively submit ourselves and our whole civilization -- our public structures, social forms and cultural creativity -- to the abstract forces of unregulated commerce. It may be that most citizens have difficulty with the argument and would prefer to continue working on the idea of dignified human intelligence. If they must drop something, they would probably prefer to drop the economists.

It includes Baraka or The Lives Fortunes and Sacred Honor of Anthony Smith The Next Best Thing and The Paradise Eater which won the Premio Letterario Internazionale in Italy. In the same vein he criticizes both those in the Quebec separatist Montreal School for emphasizing the conflicts in Canadian history and the Orange Order and the Clear Grits traditionally seeking clear definitions of Canadian-ness and loyalty. Out of this time came his novels The Field Trilogy.

As an essayist Saul is particularly known for his commentaries on the nature of individualism citizenship and the public good; the failures of manager-led societies; the confusion between leadership and managerialism; military strategy in particular irregular warfare; the role of freedom of speech and culture; and his critique of contemporary economic arguments. John Ralston Saul CC (born June 19 1947) is a Canadian author essayist and President of PEN International.