the materialist elite

There was a review of a very interesting-sounding book in the Guardian on Saturday - The Magician's Book: a sceptic's adventures in Narnia by Laura Miller. But this review illustrates, i think, something of the intellectual and moral prejudices, one might say neuroses, of today's ruling intellectual elite.

In the final volume of the Narnia series, The Last Battle, a book which enthralled me as a child and made very sad that the sequence was over, it's suggested that Narnia is only a shadow copy of something in Aslan's real world.  The reviewer, Jenny Turner, calls this suggestion 'Creepy..disordered and confused..' She goes on 'Why did Lewis feel he had to do it?' I don't know if there's an implication here that he felt compelled to do something dishonest, but the straightforward answer to her question is that because Lewis was a Christian, he was a believer in idealism, the belief system behind most art and literature, from the Bible and medieval cathedrals to the paintings of the RRenaissance and music and poetry of Romanticism - and, as i suggest in my book, much of the great culture of even the twentieth century, the great century of materialism. None of it can be properly appreciated except if you are prepared to imagine yourself into idealism's world-view - assuming of course that that's not where you live.

I'm tying not to rant here. Just to say that a philosophy of life that was mature, balanced, secure in its assumptions - and perhaps a little bit genial as a result- wouldn't fear idealism so much. It would be relaxed about considering the strengths and weaknesses of the opposing arguments, rather than, as i've written in my book, trying pour scorn on it and to eradicate all traces of it from the universee.

 Why do today's intellectual elite find the possibility of transcendence so fearful? 

Comments

[Al]

Why are they so fearful?
Elitism is the feeding of the ego, while transcendence is the loss of the ego for a greater connection to everything. It's a scary thing to feel what most people view as their identity drop away like a discarded mask.

[Nick]

Frankly the gaurdain is a load of shit; smug, arrogant, socalist shit

Tell the editors to take their shitty views and hobble back to North Korea

presuming of course that they would be let in

if not then prehaps we could do with trimming down some of their reader's usless vote - assuring public sector jobs and get them into a more useful field - say - cannon fodder.

[Dan]

Yes .. what ARE they scared of I wonder?

I'm amazed to see bus side advertising endorsed by none other than Richard Dawkins himself - telling us that there probably is no God. Intellectuals spending money to promote their own kind of bigotry. Because they are unable to feel a force, it doesn't exist for anyone else!?! How selfish. Perhaps they just don't recognise or want to acknowledge that force - but they're sure as hell reacting to it.

I remember turning the pages of The Last Battle - the final chapters of which blew my little mind. Also, plenty of food for thought in The Silver Chair.

[Adam]

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2240891008

I'm partial to agree with you on The Guardian

But Jonathon Black my thanks for your book, I greatly enjoyed it.

[Nick]

In the light of day perhaps I should review my comment..

It rather aggravates when you consider the 2 inch by 3 inch mindset of the writers of the Guardian when you consider their MasterCard Marxist / Champagne Socialist hypocrisy ; often pouring scorn and distaste over the capitalist system and greed despite advertising for grossly over paid public sector jobs, advertising for the latest in technology and the advances made by capitalist innovation yet literally saying they hate they system and then lap up the fruits of it's labour.

Similarly I recall once reading one of their writers advising any of their readers who would describe themselves as "even remotely spiritual" to "punch themselves in the throat until bleeding".

Another brick in their mindset wall is their reverence to their perverse and tainted philosophy of Dawkin’s mindset; the shinning ignorance of their belief of putting some above others based on nothing more than “celebrity” or their jobs. Bollocks to that - 200 odd years ago they said “one never buys a horse based on the bridle or saddle - similarly, one must never adhere to a man based on his clothes and rank. Judge him by his thoughts and actions”.

Not that they would understand such a concept - they follow the mindset of the sickening celebrity grovelling. Rather amusing when one witness perfectly respectable men manifesting into spineless drones in the presence of a celebrity. They seem to content just to follow and serve this people, then brag about it elsewhere. Instead of actually striving to be able to make, write, produce, do something that would warrant their own self respect; instead of striving to be a John Lennon, they are content to subscribe to serving the jokers hand and foot.

If this is the bastion of the intellectual 'elite' (ahaha - sack them from their jobs and rip up G2 magazine and watch the ivory towers fall faster than Wossy's ratings); Dear God, please, bring back Adam Weishaupt, tell him to bring a mace.

It's this kind of crap that considers itself able to define what people can choose to believe; the idea that they can write such shit and be paid such ludicrous amounts dose require a sense of awe.

[Lawrence Gasman]

One reason the elites "fear transcendence" is that many of them have invested so much time and energy on the materialist view of things.

A few years after the fall of the USSR, I met an old American Communist Party member who had spent his life defending and working for the Marxist cause. He was intellectually honest enough to admit that it had all been a waste of time. But he looked tired and broken.

Many -- possibly most -- people would rather go on believing the same old shit than admit that their thinking of possibly thirty or fourty years had been misguided.

I am almost 60 and have spent almost exactly half my life in the U.K. and half in the U.S. and it seems to me that maybe we have a slightly better chance of moving beyond materialism here in the U.S. than in Europe. Here, at least, most of us get some notions of a spiritual life from regular-ish attendance at a church. In Europe it seems that materialism is a philosophy that is much more widespread than just the elites. (Someone tell me if I am just being biased.)

Very glad this blog is back, BTW.

[Edward Wyatt]

Good documentry on the history of Christianity on channel 4. Jonathon Bartley comments.

[Nick]

Thanks; I caught the last half an hour

--Nick

[Anthony]

It is rankling in the extreme that there is such prejudice today against idealism.

It seems now that religion is (supposedly) discredited, that spirituality is gone too. Its as if the smug scientific set are all saying, Ha ha! In your face, old grey beardy man in the sky! We sure do know better than to believe in you anymore.

But as Jonathan's book so rightly says, when one delves into the latest scientific theories, they inevitably leave "a twist of disappointment in the stomach". All these folk are looking for is rock; lumps of rock doing random things in space. They aren't doing what most of us are doing which is searching for meaning, for what FEELS right deep down.

And it's exactly this feeling that, throughout our human history, has led to great advancements in social justice and other human endeavours. I can't help wonder what is the logical conclusion of such materialistic attitudes; that since we are only lumps of matter we have no peronal value? Its as if this scientific types have gone completely blind, historically and socially-speaking. I for one choose not to live in their world!

[Maureen]

They are afraid of it because they can't do it. Psychopaths can't transcend; they are at the bottom of the heap and trying to pull us down there with them. The only good thing about evil is that its always stupid. Thats what will ultimately save us.

[gordon phinn]

Intellectual elites and the possibility of transcendence: they've inherited the rejection of church dogma from previous generations without realizing that it is shakily based on the religious dogmas of scientism, and in their continued but denied terror of death they comfort themselves with the bounty of toys, possessions, status and family success.
They hate to be reminded that (a) Faith is real and (b) it can be evolved into knowledge with dedication and practice, an unshakable knowledge that breeds serenity and compassion, a compassion they mistake for mere muddle-headedness.
The only thing they're more afraid of than mortality is immortality, and when I hear them talk bravely about "confronting one's mortality" I think "Na mate, you got it all wrong, confronting your immortality is what it's all about"

gordon phinn