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"˜The Smug Minority'
(Published 12.6.2009)
http://www.dailynationalcourier.com/national_courier/jun2009_daily/12-06-09/artical/artical1.htm
Pierre Berton is Canada's most loved, revered, respected and decorated laureate. He is credited, and rightly so, for giving the Canadian history the colour that it deserved but never had before him. I prefer to call him Canada's conscience.
He loved to expose the underworld thugs of the Canadian Society as well as unscrupulous businesses that ripped off their customers ruthlessly. One of his themes that drew ordinary Canadians, as well as intelligentsia, to him was his rejection of inherited wealth that made him bequeath his 3.5-hectare property to the Ontario Heritage Foundation, to be used as a retreat for struggling writers, in his later years. I have read a number of super laureate's books, one of which "The Smug Minority" has influenced me immensely.
This was primarily so because Pierre Berton convincingly argued that inherited wealth, no matter how legal and socially acceptable it may be, should be as much unacceptable in Canada as social, political, cultural or financial inheritance. This is also so because that though the book was written with Canadian backdrop, background and foreground in totality its theme was so universal that it seems to be talking about decadent society of ours. "Smug" is a broad-meaning word. It may variedly mean- self-satisfied, self-superior, self-righteous, arrogant, conceited, haughty, full of oneself. And when you add "Minority" after "Smug" it seems as if the book is written for us- a society where luxury of few and misery of many is not only an acceptable norm but also guaranteed. I produce below excerpts from "The Smug Minority", Published in 1968 and now out of circulation, in an attempt to make you understand the workings of our very own "˜smug minority' ruling as per their own whims and fancies without the slightest conscience whatsoever. To make you realize the systematic "˜process of conditioning' to accept the rampant injustices, exploitation, profiteering and a culture of stealing, pillage and plunder by our own rulers.
"The right to free speech and free expression in Canada is hedged around with a variety of subtly inhibiting factors, many of them economic. A very large proportion of Canadians are afraid of being outspoken because of the fear"”a real one"”of losing their jobs if they express unorthodox opinions... The truth is that an army of people are working in jobs which are not really of their own choosing and which can only be described as degrading. None of these people can be said to be free in the proper sense of that overworked and mangled word.
"A poor man is not free and a destitute man is as much a prisoner as a convict... A man who can't afford a streetcar ticket, let alone real travel, who can exercise no real choice in matters of food, clothing, and shelter, who cannot follow the siren song of the TV commercials, who can scarcely afford bus fare to the library let alone a proper education for himself or his children"”is such a man free in an affluent nation? There are such men and women in Canada and their numbers are legion. Until there is a basic economic floor beneath them, these people cannot begin to participate in the whole range of what we mean when we talk glibly about a free society."
"Will a guaranteed annual wage kill incentive among the poor? If a man is given a certain amount of security, won't he quit working? Exactly the same contention could be made about the sons of the wealthy who are left large fortunes. Yet the evidence suggests that, given economic freedom, people will generally choose to do that which interests them most. It is up to society to see that these interests are widened and that too requires investment."
"...where those people really like serfs? They would have resisted the name; but in our terms they were... historical evidence makes it clear that the masses of the people who lived in Canada in the Sixties were chained to tedious and degrading jobs which they despised; that between one-fifth and one-third of them were prisoners of a poverty so grinding we can scarcely contemplate it; and that only the wealthy had the freedom to enjoy a proper education.
"...the smug minority... who were they? A small, in-bred, establishment of business and political leaders who had a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.
"... but why didn't the people revolt if conditions were as bad as that? Because the minority convinced the majority that life was wonderful
"...Oh come on, Pop. That's stupid. Read your history books. You'll find that's what happened. Of course the big establishment had the help of the minor establishments-religious, educational, journalistic, judiciary-in this brainwashing.
"...You mean they convinced people serfdom was an okay thing? Oh quite easily. The most menial and wretched toil was held to be highly honourable. It conveyed a magical thing called "status." People preferred it to happiness. "...But all that poverty... Surely they didn't prefer that? Wasn't there any kind of public planning to prevent that? No, quite the contrary... The minority convinced the majority that public planning was bad for them. They called it "government interference." They said the people would lose their hard-won freedom if they had it. "...But hold it... They didn't have any freedom! That's right. But the minority boasted so loudly about this non-existent freedom that they convinced the majority they had more of it than any people in history.
"...I just don't understand why the people didn't complain. Because the minority convinced them that it was better that way"”that anything else would be foolishly extravagant besides being an invasion of freedom.
Pierre Berton's "˜smug minority' is not only alive and kicking but it is also extremely busy accumulating more power; wealth; political, social and cultural influence by each passing day here in Pakistan. Would we ever be able to get rid of it is a question that we should ask more openly and more loudly at all forums available to each of us in his/her own capacity.
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