"Cultural" elite?

[fpb]

I recently read an interesting but, to me, oddly extreme article by Frank Furedi: http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CAF37.htm, in which he seemed to me to make rather too much of a number of hysterical reactions against "religion" - that is, of course,

Comments

[bufo_viridis]

The main problem here is the extreme broadness of the definition of "culture". I can't give the quote, but at two anthropologists counted something like 150 definitions, which could be grouped into several categories.
More important here is the differentiation between "cultural (I)" meaning educated, polished, refined, cultivated, well-mannered etc., in short between evaluative sense of the word. And "cultural (II)" which means belonging to the realm of culture, which we have to describe, but let's for a moment assume it's all this verbalised and non-verbalised knowledge which serves as our social environment and at the same time is our tool in dealing with the world (descriptive sense of the word).

Anyway, why the PC (Politically Correct, isn't it?) can be called cultural elite? Mainly because they make it. In both meanings in fact. That the shape of their production may not be to our taste, it is something different.

Our culture, our heritage, is made of works of art or of the intellect, which are beautiful and noble enough to be remembered.

And also all the things antonymous to the above. Without knowing such works like Mein Kampf or Communist Manifesto (or rather without having a vague idea what they are about; I'm afraid it's the same with many of the other classics; people rather tend to know more-or-less what Dante wrote about, than actually read Dante) we won't understand much of the current arts, literature, popular culture etc.

Now the curious fact is that, discounting the masterpieces composed before the rise of Christianity, which by their nature cannot be Christian, and the work of certain scientists, nine out of ten of the heights of culture just happen to be Christian.

I know it's a figure of speech, but I'd find it curious if it was otherwise. For the last 2000 years Christianity was a dominant ideology here. Nothing strange most of the arts deal with its subjects or problems it raises, either in direct or indirect way.
Same goes for any other cultural circle.

It is more significant still - in fact, it is all but conclusive - that even those of the real giants whose Christianity was problematic or nonexistent, were actually more Christian in their work than in their stated public belief.

Again, fairly obvious. They were people of great ability; they struggled with the great problems of life. The questions they dealt with were shaped by the Christian framework of the culture which surrounded them. So, even if they declared themselves (or were declared) "enemies of the faith" they might have actually be closer to it - by its negation.
I guess Salman Rushdie may be in a way "more Muslim" than many of those who'd rather see him dead. Tout proportions, etc...

[fpb]

As far as Rushdie goes, I doubt it. I think his relationship to the culture of his youth is that of an uprooted intellectual, and that, at any rate, the more he delves himself into it, the more he shows interest in heterodox and popular traditions that good Muslims would do anything to reform out of existence. It is not of Islam that the poet said:

For it is only Christian men
That guard even heathen things.

[bufo_viridis]

Frankly, I haven't read Rushdie, it was just a name of a person from a different cultural circle, who attacked the core values - but by the attack related to them.
Probably there would be better examples, but I don't know them.