I reread The Great Divorce recently for another project and I was struck again by the richness of the vision of the life beyond our own. Lewis makes the eternal space of Heaven clear as opposed the chosen hells that are found through the small openings that are underfoot. So, here's a question -
In the first chapter of The Great Divorce the narrator, which we assume is Lewis, questions his surroundings and how people in the grey-colored town can be satisfied. A fellow bus rider says, “They’ve got cinemas and fish and chip shops and advertisements and all the sorts of things they want.The appalling lack of any intellectual life doesn’t worry them.” We also learn of the lonely exile that residents create for themselves as they move from house to house without anything being solid. I wonder if there's a prophetic relation to a life that is navigated by computers and devices that maintain solitude yet never quiet. Do you think the grey town is a parallel to our world? What do you think Lewis is saying about the "lack of intellectual life" and does that change faith and our pursuit of a happy life?
9.27.2011
A Lack of Intellectual Life
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8 comments:
This is a worthy question. Now that you point to that passage, I see a beautiful irony that Lewis constructs by creating a heaven whose grass is too concrete for souls whose pleasures are more concrete than heavenly.
But the whole point of the "lack of intellectual life" comment in The Great Divorce is how much is misses the point. The speaker is just as mired in Hell as any of the others that the narrator meets, and is shown to be quite deluded in thinking that intellectual life per se is anything to do with the solution.
I am convinced that the grey town is indeed analogous to life on earth. Lewis has a Spirit explain that for those who end up in heaven after having been in hell, they never were in hell, it was pergatory, or in other words our destiny is retroactive. So this life becomes a retroactive extension of our ultimate destiny. In that regard, the solitary moving from house to house is instructive of our current world where we connect by computers and become more disconnected from real people. It also reminds me of Farenheit 451. Interesting line of thought. Thanks!
First, it is ironical, that we are discussing people becoming disconnected by computers through an electronic medium.
Second, I think the dangers Lewis is discussing here are that the cinemas and advertisements all provide distraction that keeps those living in the grey world focused on these material things. What is appalling about a lack of intellectual life, is that one doesn't turn their thoughts outwards and towards the "supreme good".
Without such contemplation people become mired in mundane experiences and become content to settle with physical pleasures, until that is all they know. Heaven then becomes unobtainable
Nice comments. Thanks for the interaction.
Perhaps Lewis would have been clearer if he had said "spiritual life" instead of "intellectual life."
Our devices today are functionaly no different from all the other tools human civilization has created. I believe they are morally neutral; it's how you make use of them that counts (instead of letting them make use of you).
Perhaps Lewis would have been clearer if he had said "spiritual life" instead of "intellectual life."
Lewis was always clear. He said "spiritual life" when he meant spiritual life, and "intellectual life" when he meant intellectual life. He of all people would never have confused the two.
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