Paulo Coelho The Alchemist: Materialism Posing As Spirituality

Paulo Coelho The Alchemist: Materialism Posing As Spirituality

Honesty, I wonder what people believe being tempted by the Devil would appear to be like, or perhaps such a concept has been totally forgotten in this new enlightened day and Age. But in “The Alchemist” we are shown the scenario where an individual agrees to abandon society and all sense of duty, and goes off in pursuit of every sensual pleasure and enough treasure to buy us all and make the World his Slaves. We are told this is a ‘Spiritual Metaphor’. Well, then, what would a Sensualist Metaphor be like? Anyway, the ‘moral’ of the story, if one could call it that, is that the Universe will reward such a person with an almost infinite bounty, and for what? – for such a concentrated focus on his own Selfishness and single-minded Egotism. That’s right, the more one abandons Society and flips off Civilization the more will be one’s own ‘Spiritual’ Reward.

So that’s why God has not been answering our prayers. We hadn’t been Greedy or Selfish enough! It’s a good thing we have authors like Paulo Coelho to point that out for us.

Of course this is an inversion of our Old Religious Wisdoms. All this would not be so bad if we were told outright that it would be Satan who would provide us with all this plunder, but, no, we are asked to believe that it is God who is the One funding all this Corruption. God’s Plan! I suppose this is why Paulo Coelho is respected as a new innovative writer. It does take some degree of innovation to switch the places of God and Satan, and then to have people believe it. Bravo!

But does this Moral switch and turn really hold up? If God is now patronizing Greed, then what is Satan up to? Shouldn’t we rather suppose that God is still FOR Civilization, and that Satan would be the one who would encourage treachery and the overthrow all Responsibility and Duty. God is FOR Society. That hasn’t changed. Satan is the guy who lures souls away with temptations and promises, no? When was all of this forgotten? I suppose when Religious Education was abandoned, so too was discontinued any warning wisdoms concerning Religion’s Opposite. As much as people hate Religion, they need to consider that the Opposite of Religion might possibly be even worse. If people think that Religion has Moral Problems, then they can only stand back and see what Unashamed Materialism is capable of! But, really, while all our Modern Historians are ranting about all the trouble the Priests had caused, I wonder that they forget to mention the predations of the Vikings, the Huns, the Mongol Hordes – all those fine upstanding Barbarian Materialists who were practically free of all those corrupting influences of Institutionalized Church and Organized Religion.

Oh, and there is the important matter of Deception in Satanic Promises. People often forget that not every Promise MADE is a Promise KEPT. While a Reward is PROMISED to those who give up the productive work in Society to go off digging holes for buried Treasure in the Forest, the Truth is that Satan got what he wanted as soon as he first sowed the seeds of Social Disintegration. Satan laughs in the faces of those who would hold him to his Promises. Especially promises based on the flimsy tissue of supposing that if one wishes hard enough, completely enough, desperately enough, then the wishes will come true – that if one’s Faith is strong enough then God will provide for any lust or urge.

Well, the Truth is that the Doctrine of Faith has always been suspect. After all, it was Paul who taught of Faith – not any Real Apostle. So it may be the unfortunate Truth that we cannot rely solely upon the hope that our Wishes will come true. We might have to remember what they used to say before the New Age Movement took hold – “Get a Job”. You want something, then join with the rest of Society, and earn it – take your even slice of the pie and be Happy with that.

In every Civilization, particularly with those Civilizations that actually lasted and functioned well for some period of time, it had been the expression of the Religious and Spiritual Institutions that the Individual had to make sacrifices, that the Individual would give himself for the good of All. The Saint would live his life for and give his life for the good of the Many. It wasn’t about hoping that God would aggrandize certain special individuals – those who could find just the right Magic Formula or Secret Prayer. The Idea was that everybody would contribute together for a Better Total Life Force, and that in a certain sense God could be considered our Shared Common Being. In that view any Personal Quest would only subtract from the Whole, leaving the rest of us poorer.

But really, I suppose Humanity is at an Evolutionary Crossroads. Are we Herd Animals or lone predators. Are we the Sheep that Christ envisioned us to be? Or are we cannibalistic New Age Wolves?

And then even apart from my philosophical and moral objections to the book, I must add that I found the book so dry and artless. “The Alchemist” doesn’t even pretend to want to corrupt some pure and worthy individual. Drawing up an interesting and noble character was perhaps beyond the capacities of the Author. The “hero” of the story is a young man who was bored with the advanced intellectual and spiritual education he might have gotten in Seminary, and so persuaded his obviously well-off father to buy him his own business, an entire herd of sheep, so he could bum around, drinking wine all day and forever scheme to seduce the daughters of his customers. No innocence here (the French Translation laying it out much more clearly than the stayed and prudish English edition). All the hero’s thoughts are in some mundane imbecilic rut… or maybe the author thinks that’s how everybody thinks – the most interesting piece of the book not coming from the author’s mind at all but taken directly from Oscar Wilde (search Narcissus, Poems in Prose, the Disciple), and maybe it was suggested by somebody on the Editor’s Team who had the intuition that the book should not be entirely dummed down and stupid. Anyway, the most extraordinary thing about the book’s Hero is just how extraordinary he isn’t. He is different from us only by being worse – lazier, stupider. But despite all that, we are to suppose that God or Satan, as the case may be, could find no better Target for their Temptations – in the Entire World the best that God or the Devil could come up with was just some everyday ordinary lazy good for nothing sensualist wine-soaked parasitic bum. It just doesn’t make any sense to me, Moral or Artistic. This is not the makings of great storytelling and drama. One should have some sympathy for the main character of a book. But with this character… I needed to wash my hands every time I even touched that book.

I had just come off of re-reading Thomas Hardy’s “Jude the Obscure” where the hero is exactly the opposite of “The Alchemist’s” little dirtbag. Hardy’s hero, as a young man, wanted above all things to go to School and participate in the World of the Intellect. “The Alchemist’s” little dirt bag, Paulo Coelho’s anti-hero, on the other-hand, placed in University by Family Privilege, felt simply bored by it all. Yes, Hardy’s hero confronts temptations (Life for many of us is a tension between our Ideals and our Temptations), but with Hardy’s character the ideals remained intact. Paulo Coelho’s hero, has no ideals. As the Book goes along his Wish List gets bigger, and that’s it. Coelho gives us a character who has the soul of a Bug, the definitive quintessential ‘Low-life’ if there ever had been, and we are supposed to consider THAT to be our New Age ideal.

Then there is the matter of Coelho’s approval of a Father supporting his son’s rejection of respectability and descent into dissipation – congratulating a Father for concluding that his son must learn wisdom on his own. You know, during the actual time that this book is meant to portray, fathers rather insisted upon their authority and they were also wise enough, then as now, to know that by the time their stupid children learned anything on their own, it would be too late to do anything about it. Mistakes are irredeemable, and one can’t un-ring the tolling Bells of our Lives. One is more often than not crippled by the mistakes that give us the Experience we think we need for Life, and while we Know, we can no longer Do. It would be so much better if we would only listen to our Fathers. Some do. Look at Asia.

Humans were once considered more advanced than the Apes because Humans could pass down knowledge from generation to generation. And not just Knowledge, but Property also. You know, if knowledge could be ignored by headstrong children, than institutions of Property and Power could serve to enforce Parental Authority until the Young Ones finally mature… as they say, “Life begins at 40”. Sons do not remain imbeciles forever, but until they do mature, a viable set of Civilized Institutions should be in place to protect them from themselves. And one very important Institution which should remain intact is that a Father has every right to tell a son what to do – Forever! Not just until a boy reaches the age of 21. After all, we all know what nonsense it is to say that a 21 year old is an Adult. Yes, they are big. But children in their twenties and even some in their thirties are notoriously inexperienced and lacking in judgment. It is for their own good that every Civilized encouragement be given to support the authority and responsibility of their Fathers, in telling their tall and bearded children what to do, to advance their material wellbeing and to keep them out of trouble. But, now with Paulo Coelho’s little “The Alchemist” tract, we are being asked to revert back to the Apes who must start every generation afresh. If only Monkeys could talk, surely they could give us a Chronicle of the Same Mistakes, over and over again. But if they could talk, maybe they would be wise enough to obviate the Problem. Not like Human Beings who can Talk but Won’t. Human Parents are now expected to just Shut Up and let their children go off wild and on their own – to run off and look for Hidden Treasure… a metaphor for finding themselves! Is it not rather that they are wasting themselves? And Life is often too short for second chances. Perhaps another book needs to be written, telling young people that Mistakes can’t be so easily taken back. Call the Book “Listen to Your Parents”. We can be better than the apes if we really really try.

Oh, and there are other reasons to detest that little book “The Alchemist”. Apparently the Author has some interest in the Business End of New Age-ism, or maybe he simply passes along certain New Age tenets by rote conditioning. Again and again we have the constant New Age chant about giving any New Age Representative who should happen by 10% of one’s fortune. Give a little to get a lot. Yes, of course, so it will be returned by a hundredfold. That’s what they all say, but typically the people who say such things are happy getting their 10% from the people silly enough to listen. Do the math – if some New Age Guru gets only ten people to hand over 10%, then he can quit his Day Job. And if he perpetuates this Swindle in the name of an IRS Registered Religion, then it’s even Tax Free. God Bless America!


And this is hardest of all to understand… that ordinary people are so willing to hand over every Spiritual Laurel to such obvious, such overt Money Grubbers, Chisellers, Swindlers... whose only claim to Art is their Con-artistry. There’s nothing to recommend the books. Are they not written at something like the 4th Grade Level? (Wouldn’t wish to alienate all those nice working women because they never went to College… or High School… or Junior High…) There is nothing subtle about the Predatory Greed of these New Age Gurus. The Price Lists are often right on their Menus. The Gurus Un-Conditional Love is overflowing only after the Check clears. Why is it that Spiritual Leaders are allowed behaviors that would not be tolerated in friends or family? I can only suppose it is a case in which Nice People refuse to admit to themselves that there can be Evil in the World. Nice People don’t want to believe that some Honored and Respected author standing there smiling at them, shaking their hand, flattering them, can actually be some Two Faced Liar and a Thief. So they extend the benefit of every doubt. Oh, yes, and of course it is drilled into them that their Doubts are simply manifestations of Lack of Faith… and we mustn’t have that, must we? So nobody cries ‘Wolf!’. And the Wolves take advantage.

It’s ultimately the fault of the Publishers. Because these trashy books obviously appeal to a sizeable market segment, like pornography, they are published. It little concerns these Publishing People that real damage is being done to Society in general and to True Religion. Their argument is that they are only giving people what they want, and it is up to the people themselves to make their own Moral Decisions. But the question arises as to whether every person has the Intelligence necessary to support any real sense of Moral Responsibility. Yes, most everybody knows Right from Wrong if the conditions are kept simple and easy. But Moral Deception and Trickery always come with a degree of Complexity – the cards are shuffled and the pea is hid under the moving shells. The truth is that many people simply do not have the intellectual wherewithal to keep themselves from being easily deceived. Show them the Truth and Show them a Pretty but False Picture, and while their Limited Intellects can’t tell much of a difference, they WILL have an emotional preference for what they FEEL is Pretty. The Greater Part of the Masses do not Think, they FEEL. And feelings can be manipulated apart from all Rationality. And the Publishers know that they are providing these Counterfeit Choices. After all, while they are willing to take advantage of everybody else’s stupidity, they are probably very smart themselves. In that sense, there is no doubt concerning their Moral Responsibility.