As I said recently, I am a mono-dualist: it provides 2 for the price of one and the best of both worlds.
The nature of existence is paradox, but this is probably only because the human mind (fallen into a "good vs evil," knowledge-dependent framework) constantly splits truth into two opposing propositions and thence factions.
The Book of Job gets close to the situation IMO. Satan/evil works for God/goodness, that is, evil comes out of good, as a necessary pretext for interacting with/as the temporal realm of Matter; this doesn't make Matter evil, only necessary for God to individuate/incarnate (the crucifixion).
Ergo evil is only objectively real within the realm of objects. Within the spirit realm that is formless there is no evil because no Time (or form). Yet the formless-transcendent is also immanent within the world of Matter/form, ergo it experiences no evil there either (tho the objects do). (God saw that it was good, etc' Man, dis-identified temporarily from God, saw that it sucked pretty hard)
The problem is the interloper/usuprer of the satanic mind (fallen noos), by which identification with the body becomes the ruling or defining (deifying?) principle for interpreting and thus experiencing reality.
Giving our judgment back to "God" allows the soul to experience what is happening to the body-mind, and evil thus becomes good: not in the Lucifer "reign in hell" sense, but the Christly sense of the highest being the servant of all.
I like your approach to good vs evil. Have you studied much of Rudolph Steiner, German Christian Mystic from c. 1910? Even if not entirely true, it is beautiful. His creation story discusses the creation of the soul of man by the heirarchy of angels. Why would the Old Testament focus on the mundane ceeation of his body?
If the point of the beauty and messiness of all that is around and within us were to maximize happiness for each individual at every point in history, I could agree: That target was missed by miles! If the point of all of this is communion, however—if the point is to accompany one another through sorrows and through joy, as the freedom-loving among us repurpose technologies to build alternatives to being culled, while each generation dwells with and is energized by the Divine—I find it easy to affirm the goodness of our world. Children need challenges to mature. Our immune systems need dirt and disease to keep from turning against us in various cancers. Similarly, in order to develop and carry forward approaches to life that respect human dignity, preserve human agency, and catalyze human creativity, humanity likewise needs the canvas we have—upon which institutions that try to centralize control, and to reduce variety in order to achieve their dystopic "ideal," nevertheless paint a hellscape, again and again. The evil of most centralizing institutions does not require a demiurge. The catastrophes of nature do not require a demiurge. No Demiurge… just the vicissitudes of life, and the cruelty or courage of persons, accompanied by a God who loves us enough to preserve a canvas upon which we can paint a better today. Even if (God forbid) I depart this life wracked with pain, gasping for breath at the hands of torturers, I trust that God will be with me, and that God can redeem even that, in ways I don't have to comprehend. —Mᶜ
Although I agree that across your proposals 1 is mostly incoherent and 2 is unsatisfactory, I think you're dismissing 3 way too easily.
The track record argument is not sound, and the only way you can even come up with it in the first place is by dismissing the greeks and romans as not belonging to this category, but to an obscure polytheistic approach. As a matter of fact, this polytheistic approach was extremely close to what you call "pantheism". They just couldn't conceptualize properly the different aspects of nature and the human psyche, and so they externalized them. The "whims" of gods are just the inherent fickleness of life and nature.
As for the argument of bringing no comfort... Spiritual "comfort" comes with a price. That price with dualism (or gnosticism for that matter) is the decoupling of earthly lifeand happiness. Nature is a tough mistress. If you don't even try to make this life better, sure as hell it won't be all that great. The ultimate end goal of gnosticism is suicide. Why live in a wicked world that you have no power over? Besides, is that world really so terrible? Don't friendship, innocence, awe, maybe love even exist?
In the end, the way I see it is: do we prefer a comfortable lie or a painful truth? I think mankind is ready for the painful truth. It has the tools to handle it and conceptualize itself within a world that is both good and evil as an agent of free will.
Hi Thomas, thanks for the comment. Even if one lumps in the Roman/Greeks into pantheism I don't think it solves the problem of track record. After all, if their system adhered more closely to the laws of the universe than its competition then it shouldn't have been completely and utterly snuffed out by the conquest of Abrahamism in its various forms. Or alternatively, if the Hellenist Gods were real why they have all lost or receded entirely from the world of men?
Regarding your comments on dualism, yes, misery and suicide are dangers of taking it too far. There are upsides and downsides, risks and rewards of every belief system; nothing is all or nothing. L.P. Koch commented on the dangers of interpreting gnosticism or dualism in the wrong way:
"This danger of esoteric ideas is also present in Gnosticism: clearly, some gnostically inclined folks have taken all of that way too far. Escapism is not the solution, and neither is waging war against reality itself, dreaming up an utopia of eternal bliss instead of engaging with the world as it is, suffering and all.
Transcendence means seeing the unseen as reflected in the material world, not overcoming the material world by declaring it irrelevant. It means paying more attention to reality, not less, with the mind firmly oriented towards the higher and the lower worlds simultaneously….
All things esoteric are dangerous. It’s all-too easy to lose the plot and go off the rails, as so much nonsense in the New Age department and other cultist delusions over the course of history have shown, including parts of the so-called Gnostic movements.
Hence, it is understandable, at least to a degree, why the church has always considered Gnosticism, Hermeticism, and all kinds of other mystic movements as heretic abominations.
Religion plays the role of a guardian, a protector that keeps people from plunging headlong into dangerous terrain that might turn them into madmen and, ultimately, throw them into the arms of the Devil. The scientism of our age has played a similar role: it has kept the masses from exploring fringe ideas that might threaten the fabric of society and their personal sanity.
The thing is, though, that some of us will never be content with this sort of “protection.” In our search for truth, we are willing to face the danger. Our longing tells us that there must be more out there than meets the eye."
Regarding the first point, one can argue that it is their deviation from nature's laws which led to their downfall. This is what Nietzsche does when he accuses Socrates of being weak, ugly and a pest constantly inquiring higher men of their "reasons". He would be a symptom of this decadence in this context, besides.
It should also be noted that I am no polytheist and I don't argue the greek gods were ever real. I am more of a jungian and I think that most religions or belief systems are a projection of fundamental truths about the human experience or human psyche. Jung even goes so far as saying astrology is true-ish because it's actually us projecting deep truths about our psyche onto the stars.
I also think that societies live in cycles. Sometimes it's hard to distinguish them, because you can have cycles within cycles, linear events within cycles, and of course the fact we're living it first hand. Nevertheless, it is interesting that recurring anti-natural patterns seem to happen during decadent phases : loss of spiritual belief, the "emancipation" of women, materialism, hedonism. All things that are contrary to nature's laws. It is likely that man has this tension in himself between what is artificial and pleases our senses (pleasure, good food, even music and art) and what is organic but also rather primitive. Nietzsche summarized it well as, respectively, what is dyonisian and what is apollinian.
Anyway, regarding the dangerousness of gnosticism. I myself share quite a lot of your beliefs. The issue is that the masses do not have your (or hopefully, my) depth of thinking or nuance regarding such issues. If you tell them the material world is evil but the spiritual world is good and perfect, then a non-negligible amount of people WILL suicide. I mean, people nowadays are sterilizing themselves in the name of the climate. Even the church had this issue and had to forbid suicide on rather weak theological grounds should I say. Advocating against suicide in a gnostic theology is like walking on burning coal.
Nice response, Thomas. I agree with most of it... Yes, Jung was described by gnostic Bishop Hoeller as the greatest gnostic of the modern era, and I plan to read more of his work in the not distant future. I believe in astrology as well, as documented in this prior post (a belief I arrived at independently): https://neofeudalreview.substack.com/p/astrology-science-or-psuedoscience
Regarding cycles, who's to say that what you refer to as "anti-natural" patterns or "decadent phases" are not part of nature's laws? After all, it was Spengler who likened a civilization to that of a living being, just on a much longer timeline: a birth phase, a maturation phase, and then a death phase. Where does one draw the line between what is natural vs. not natural? Perhaps you are referring to the laws of what is in accordance with society's greater good which are clearly violated during the decline/death phase...
I agree with you that the subtlety and nuance required in the esoteric tradition, the blending of opposite thought resulting in higher synthesis, to not go off the rails imbalanced in one way or another is well beyond the scope of the masses. I struggle with it often myself; I don't put myself in a higher category, although I focus on this more than most. It's likely that the masses need pretty lies to function well; but that is not my target audience here...
Masses are certainly not your target audience, that is the price to pay for almost any interesting content I'm afraid. I also think most people need clear, easy, sound guidelines, although truth should be preferred if it is bearable. Gnosticism thus cannot shape the paradigm of the next age, but can be studied and discussed by higher circles. Realistically, the next paradigm will base itself upon 1 or 3 among your points, and I think 3 is closer to the truth. The truth notwithstanding, christianity is so thoroughly dead that people will instinctively reject 1, whereas 3 seems reasonable depending on how you frame it.
Regarding decadence being a part of cycles and of life... What you say is most likely true. But anti-life/anti-nature behaviours can still be clearly identified. The fact that young children are groomed into mutilating themselves, to cite only one of its most egregious manifestations, cannot be described as anything but contrary to man's purpose, to nature's law and indeed to the spirit of life. Whether or not this is part of the cycle of life is not relevant to the fact that natural law provides a framework to condemn such a behaviour, and that is useful to us. I hope you understand what I'm saying.
Gnosticism is what's driving most of our current problems. Greens seeking to free Gaea from the evils of human existence and prosperity. Transsexuals/transhumanists seeking to free their spirit from the prison of their bodies.
Heck, from a Gnostic point of view why should we regard the vulture and child vision as evil? Shouldn't we be happy that the child's spirit is about to be freed from its evil material body?
Hi Eugine, can you define your use of the term gnosticism? Terms often have multiple definitions, so it's important to get on the same page about them in order to have a proper discussion. The Cathars focused on the concept of a lesser, evil creator God, but did not place any special relevance upon knowledge (gnosis) as an effective salvific force. Under matter/spiritual dualism, a worship of gaia ("a transpersonal devotion to earth as a superorganism") is still a form of material reality, as is transsexualism ("one's personal identity is defined by their physical body"), and I would argue both are heavily influenced by the lies of the Demiurge.
The relevant property here is the belief that the material world, especially the material world as influenced by humans is evil. It's not a completely coherent philosophy since it's impossible to separate matter and spirit cleanly in practice, but it does manage to do great damage.
Rudolph Steiner differentiates between different evil forces. Ahriman was the dehumanizing force obsessed with technolgy and subjegation. Ahriman would be the god for the Technocrats and transhumanists. Satan was your typical evil diety of seven sins and earth/body focused. I am not entirely sure where I would place the nature spirit Pan. But we likely have an entire ecosystem of spirits and imps of various power and intelligence. If visible it would look like a lively jung. On a good note, some entities would be quite weak to the human will and spirit.
The Problem of Evil provides us with an abundance of theological gobbledygook, IMO, and cannot be logically squared with an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God. The concept of a Demiurge, which I associate with Manicheism, negates God's omnipotence, so it misses closely. As I suggested in reply to Cathy's comment, and as raison d'etre for my Rational Spirituality argument, we need to move beyond outgrown monotheistic conceptualizations of God. This requires an evolutionary leap in human consciousness, which is what this epochal paradigm shift we're experiencing is all about.
Well... when I read (not sure if it was on this entry or a few others I went on to read after this one) that you see the animal and vegetal law of constant suffering, and can face the reality about the amount and degree of evil in this world, I should I say it gladdened me really to have found someone else who can see.
I am a Christian. A genuine one. The day came that I knew. I would never have "believed", but, likewise, I can't unknow what I was made to know.
The most patent "ground of untruth" in the Christian official faith is where they (don't) explain evil's abundance and prevalence in the world.
It should be noted that the official "Church" is, very obviously, the place Evil would need and care the most to infiltrate, and whose ranks to fill with minions working for It.
More truth-oriented branches of Christianity (Cathars, for one) were exterminated by the "Only, One, and Roman". More than a few of those deviations from mainline Christianity had got important intuitions re the truth of this world, and the conflict between Good and Evil, each with its army (consisting nearly totally of unconscious ministries and soldiers on the Evil camp, since the first ones to be deceives are Its soldiers and minions).
You could say some of those deviations were the association of Christians that, much unlike their persecutors, believed in Christ and the Gospel.
I think it right to share the title of a most interesting book for everyone who can see: you may have not heard of it: it's the Rose of the World.
It has always puzzled me... the scores of people, and Christians, who can see a wild feline do what they do to their prey and stick with the official Church doctrine of everything in this world being allowed by Good, or even wanted by Good precisely as it takes place.
It puzzles me much when they are genuine good people and Christians.
Probably it's... the average human impossibility of critical and autonomous thinking, and they cannot draw any conclusion they haven't seen drawn by someone else (someone authoritatively placed, or a clear majority of common folk).
The author of that book says that ascribing all what happens in this world to the good God is blasphemy of probably the worst kind.
I don't agree with you that Good doesn't work in and for this earth. If It didn't, everything would be like those scenes seen in "nature documentaries".
It is at work here, with resources, and sympathy, and tolerance of our inane behaviour all so beyond what we can imagine that it's unspeakable.
The real prime (or only: it may depend by how one looks at his own existence in this world) goal in this life is to wake up to the reality of the perennial clash between the two armies, make one's choice, and be the best soldier one can.
Take a walk outside; see the mountains, the earth, sometimes blessed and green. The earth has been rent in great upheavals; the crust is shattered; there exist vast wastes where no green and pleasant thing grows; ancient homelands sleep under waves. But still nature strives for symmetry; still the rain falls; still much that is fair and beautiful grows or is born.
Though it has seen hard times, and every day we feel the pangs of the evil let loose on the world, the physical world was still made to be good and abundant.
Seeking answers to such questions, to the degree that one's efforts might bring solace and understanding, if sought solely by means of discursive thought ... this is like the ouroboros and cannot lead us to that which we seek and desperately need. We are helpless creatures in a fallen world, wholly dependent on the undeserved mercy of Almighty God. There is no more lost and endangered being than the intellectual who fervently prays at the altar of reason. See: "The words of the wise are as goads, and as nails deeply fastened in, which by the counsel of masters are given from one shepherd. More than these, my son, require not. Of making many books there is no end: and much study is an affliction of the flesh." — Ecclesiastes 12: 11 - 12
The TaNaKh isn't shy about the source of evil: "In order that they know from the shining of the sun and from the west that there is no one besides Me; I am the L-rd and there is no other. Who forms light and creates darkness, Who makes peace and creates evil; I am the L-rd, Who makes all these." Isaiah 45: 6-7 (What if Judaism is the true worldview but you're not Jewish: https://petronius.substack.com/p/attn-hr-i-complained-about-the-rainbow)
Perhaps the most serious challenge to Theism is Necessitarianism, brilliantly defended by Amy Karofsky. Philosophy is a footnote to Parmenides! It's not that contingency doesn't exist. It's akin to those impossible Escher shapes. It can't exist. Reality is like some vast Mandlebrot set. Every slice of time from the Big Bang to your current thought has the necessity of prime numbers or Pi. Few Philosophy books can awaken one from dogmatic slumbers like this. G-d's existence is impossible because G-d is a being with free will, which is a metaphysical non-starter: https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_Case_for_Necessitarianism/7jVVEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover
If Nietzsche took the Eternal Recurrence literally (and it seems he did), this would be a flavor of Big Bounce Cosmology + Necessitarianism. I'm not a Plotinus scholar, but I don't think the One has anything resembling "free will," so his ontology (and Spinoza's, obviously) are also Necessitarian-friendly.
Unless I misunderstand, EN's reference to Gaia was to "deep ecology," a type of insanity. That's different from Lovelock's "Gaia Theory," which posits a self-regulating morphogenetic field that maintains Earth as an inhabitable planet. It's a biologically driven negative feedback loop. That particular morphogenetic field, along with many others, are subsets or nodes of the Akashic Field, a.k.a. aether, vacuum, Zero Point Energy, or whatever. In my own cosmology, the Akashic Field is synonymous with God as "Ground of All Being."
As I said recently, I am a mono-dualist: it provides 2 for the price of one and the best of both worlds.
The nature of existence is paradox, but this is probably only because the human mind (fallen into a "good vs evil," knowledge-dependent framework) constantly splits truth into two opposing propositions and thence factions.
The Book of Job gets close to the situation IMO. Satan/evil works for God/goodness, that is, evil comes out of good, as a necessary pretext for interacting with/as the temporal realm of Matter; this doesn't make Matter evil, only necessary for God to individuate/incarnate (the crucifixion).
Ergo evil is only objectively real within the realm of objects. Within the spirit realm that is formless there is no evil because no Time (or form). Yet the formless-transcendent is also immanent within the world of Matter/form, ergo it experiences no evil there either (tho the objects do). (God saw that it was good, etc' Man, dis-identified temporarily from God, saw that it sucked pretty hard)
The problem is the interloper/usuprer of the satanic mind (fallen noos), by which identification with the body becomes the ruling or defining (deifying?) principle for interpreting and thus experiencing reality.
Giving our judgment back to "God" allows the soul to experience what is happening to the body-mind, and evil thus becomes good: not in the Lucifer "reign in hell" sense, but the Christly sense of the highest being the servant of all.
Roughly that!
I like your approach to good vs evil. Have you studied much of Rudolph Steiner, German Christian Mystic from c. 1910? Even if not entirely true, it is beautiful. His creation story discusses the creation of the soul of man by the heirarchy of angels. Why would the Old Testament focus on the mundane ceeation of his body?
Yes, spent some time on Steiner & did a podcast series on also.
I did not know you created content. I subscribed and will review more of your writing.
the RS material is here:
https://auticulture.com/the-liminalist-272-the-anatomy-of-destiny-enter-the-centaur-reading-rudolph-steiner/
https://auticulture.com/the-liminalist-274-rudolph-steiner-2/
https://auticulture.com/the-liminalist-278-the-lost-etymology-of-god-reading-rudolph-steiner-3/
https://auticulture.com/the-liminalist-284-rudolf-steiner-4/
If the point of the beauty and messiness of all that is around and within us were to maximize happiness for each individual at every point in history, I could agree: That target was missed by miles! If the point of all of this is communion, however—if the point is to accompany one another through sorrows and through joy, as the freedom-loving among us repurpose technologies to build alternatives to being culled, while each generation dwells with and is energized by the Divine—I find it easy to affirm the goodness of our world. Children need challenges to mature. Our immune systems need dirt and disease to keep from turning against us in various cancers. Similarly, in order to develop and carry forward approaches to life that respect human dignity, preserve human agency, and catalyze human creativity, humanity likewise needs the canvas we have—upon which institutions that try to centralize control, and to reduce variety in order to achieve their dystopic "ideal," nevertheless paint a hellscape, again and again. The evil of most centralizing institutions does not require a demiurge. The catastrophes of nature do not require a demiurge. No Demiurge… just the vicissitudes of life, and the cruelty or courage of persons, accompanied by a God who loves us enough to preserve a canvas upon which we can paint a better today. Even if (God forbid) I depart this life wracked with pain, gasping for breath at the hands of torturers, I trust that God will be with me, and that God can redeem even that, in ways I don't have to comprehend. —Mᶜ
I wonder what you think of that regarding good and evil.
https://markusmutscheller.substack.com/p/from-the-tree-of-knowledge-of-good
Good and evil is not the problem. Ignorance of our true nature is.
Although I agree that across your proposals 1 is mostly incoherent and 2 is unsatisfactory, I think you're dismissing 3 way too easily.
The track record argument is not sound, and the only way you can even come up with it in the first place is by dismissing the greeks and romans as not belonging to this category, but to an obscure polytheistic approach. As a matter of fact, this polytheistic approach was extremely close to what you call "pantheism". They just couldn't conceptualize properly the different aspects of nature and the human psyche, and so they externalized them. The "whims" of gods are just the inherent fickleness of life and nature.
As for the argument of bringing no comfort... Spiritual "comfort" comes with a price. That price with dualism (or gnosticism for that matter) is the decoupling of earthly lifeand happiness. Nature is a tough mistress. If you don't even try to make this life better, sure as hell it won't be all that great. The ultimate end goal of gnosticism is suicide. Why live in a wicked world that you have no power over? Besides, is that world really so terrible? Don't friendship, innocence, awe, maybe love even exist?
In the end, the way I see it is: do we prefer a comfortable lie or a painful truth? I think mankind is ready for the painful truth. It has the tools to handle it and conceptualize itself within a world that is both good and evil as an agent of free will.
Hi Thomas, thanks for the comment. Even if one lumps in the Roman/Greeks into pantheism I don't think it solves the problem of track record. After all, if their system adhered more closely to the laws of the universe than its competition then it shouldn't have been completely and utterly snuffed out by the conquest of Abrahamism in its various forms. Or alternatively, if the Hellenist Gods were real why they have all lost or receded entirely from the world of men?
Regarding your comments on dualism, yes, misery and suicide are dangers of taking it too far. There are upsides and downsides, risks and rewards of every belief system; nothing is all or nothing. L.P. Koch commented on the dangers of interpreting gnosticism or dualism in the wrong way:
"This danger of esoteric ideas is also present in Gnosticism: clearly, some gnostically inclined folks have taken all of that way too far. Escapism is not the solution, and neither is waging war against reality itself, dreaming up an utopia of eternal bliss instead of engaging with the world as it is, suffering and all.
Transcendence means seeing the unseen as reflected in the material world, not overcoming the material world by declaring it irrelevant. It means paying more attention to reality, not less, with the mind firmly oriented towards the higher and the lower worlds simultaneously….
All things esoteric are dangerous. It’s all-too easy to lose the plot and go off the rails, as so much nonsense in the New Age department and other cultist delusions over the course of history have shown, including parts of the so-called Gnostic movements.
Hence, it is understandable, at least to a degree, why the church has always considered Gnosticism, Hermeticism, and all kinds of other mystic movements as heretic abominations.
Religion plays the role of a guardian, a protector that keeps people from plunging headlong into dangerous terrain that might turn them into madmen and, ultimately, throw them into the arms of the Devil. The scientism of our age has played a similar role: it has kept the masses from exploring fringe ideas that might threaten the fabric of society and their personal sanity.
The thing is, though, that some of us will never be content with this sort of “protection.” In our search for truth, we are willing to face the danger. Our longing tells us that there must be more out there than meets the eye."
From: https://luctalks.substack.com/p/red-pilled-in-disneyland
Regarding the first point, one can argue that it is their deviation from nature's laws which led to their downfall. This is what Nietzsche does when he accuses Socrates of being weak, ugly and a pest constantly inquiring higher men of their "reasons". He would be a symptom of this decadence in this context, besides.
It should also be noted that I am no polytheist and I don't argue the greek gods were ever real. I am more of a jungian and I think that most religions or belief systems are a projection of fundamental truths about the human experience or human psyche. Jung even goes so far as saying astrology is true-ish because it's actually us projecting deep truths about our psyche onto the stars.
I also think that societies live in cycles. Sometimes it's hard to distinguish them, because you can have cycles within cycles, linear events within cycles, and of course the fact we're living it first hand. Nevertheless, it is interesting that recurring anti-natural patterns seem to happen during decadent phases : loss of spiritual belief, the "emancipation" of women, materialism, hedonism. All things that are contrary to nature's laws. It is likely that man has this tension in himself between what is artificial and pleases our senses (pleasure, good food, even music and art) and what is organic but also rather primitive. Nietzsche summarized it well as, respectively, what is dyonisian and what is apollinian.
Anyway, regarding the dangerousness of gnosticism. I myself share quite a lot of your beliefs. The issue is that the masses do not have your (or hopefully, my) depth of thinking or nuance regarding such issues. If you tell them the material world is evil but the spiritual world is good and perfect, then a non-negligible amount of people WILL suicide. I mean, people nowadays are sterilizing themselves in the name of the climate. Even the church had this issue and had to forbid suicide on rather weak theological grounds should I say. Advocating against suicide in a gnostic theology is like walking on burning coal.
Nice response, Thomas. I agree with most of it... Yes, Jung was described by gnostic Bishop Hoeller as the greatest gnostic of the modern era, and I plan to read more of his work in the not distant future. I believe in astrology as well, as documented in this prior post (a belief I arrived at independently): https://neofeudalreview.substack.com/p/astrology-science-or-psuedoscience
Regarding cycles, who's to say that what you refer to as "anti-natural" patterns or "decadent phases" are not part of nature's laws? After all, it was Spengler who likened a civilization to that of a living being, just on a much longer timeline: a birth phase, a maturation phase, and then a death phase. Where does one draw the line between what is natural vs. not natural? Perhaps you are referring to the laws of what is in accordance with society's greater good which are clearly violated during the decline/death phase...
I agree with you that the subtlety and nuance required in the esoteric tradition, the blending of opposite thought resulting in higher synthesis, to not go off the rails imbalanced in one way or another is well beyond the scope of the masses. I struggle with it often myself; I don't put myself in a higher category, although I focus on this more than most. It's likely that the masses need pretty lies to function well; but that is not my target audience here...
Masses are certainly not your target audience, that is the price to pay for almost any interesting content I'm afraid. I also think most people need clear, easy, sound guidelines, although truth should be preferred if it is bearable. Gnosticism thus cannot shape the paradigm of the next age, but can be studied and discussed by higher circles. Realistically, the next paradigm will base itself upon 1 or 3 among your points, and I think 3 is closer to the truth. The truth notwithstanding, christianity is so thoroughly dead that people will instinctively reject 1, whereas 3 seems reasonable depending on how you frame it.
Regarding decadence being a part of cycles and of life... What you say is most likely true. But anti-life/anti-nature behaviours can still be clearly identified. The fact that young children are groomed into mutilating themselves, to cite only one of its most egregious manifestations, cannot be described as anything but contrary to man's purpose, to nature's law and indeed to the spirit of life. Whether or not this is part of the cycle of life is not relevant to the fact that natural law provides a framework to condemn such a behaviour, and that is useful to us. I hope you understand what I'm saying.
Gnosticism is what's driving most of our current problems. Greens seeking to free Gaea from the evils of human existence and prosperity. Transsexuals/transhumanists seeking to free their spirit from the prison of their bodies.
Heck, from a Gnostic point of view why should we regard the vulture and child vision as evil? Shouldn't we be happy that the child's spirit is about to be freed from its evil material body?
Hi Eugine, can you define your use of the term gnosticism? Terms often have multiple definitions, so it's important to get on the same page about them in order to have a proper discussion. The Cathars focused on the concept of a lesser, evil creator God, but did not place any special relevance upon knowledge (gnosis) as an effective salvific force. Under matter/spiritual dualism, a worship of gaia ("a transpersonal devotion to earth as a superorganism") is still a form of material reality, as is transsexualism ("one's personal identity is defined by their physical body"), and I would argue both are heavily influenced by the lies of the Demiurge.
The relevant property here is the belief that the material world, especially the material world as influenced by humans is evil. It's not a completely coherent philosophy since it's impossible to separate matter and spirit cleanly in practice, but it does manage to do great damage.
Rudolph Steiner differentiates between different evil forces. Ahriman was the dehumanizing force obsessed with technolgy and subjegation. Ahriman would be the god for the Technocrats and transhumanists. Satan was your typical evil diety of seven sins and earth/body focused. I am not entirely sure where I would place the nature spirit Pan. But we likely have an entire ecosystem of spirits and imps of various power and intelligence. If visible it would look like a lively jung. On a good note, some entities would be quite weak to the human will and spirit.
The Problem of Evil provides us with an abundance of theological gobbledygook, IMO, and cannot be logically squared with an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God. The concept of a Demiurge, which I associate with Manicheism, negates God's omnipotence, so it misses closely. As I suggested in reply to Cathy's comment, and as raison d'etre for my Rational Spirituality argument, we need to move beyond outgrown monotheistic conceptualizations of God. This requires an evolutionary leap in human consciousness, which is what this epochal paradigm shift we're experiencing is all about.
https://rationalspirituality.substack.com/p/trinitarian-theory-of-consciousness
Well... when I read (not sure if it was on this entry or a few others I went on to read after this one) that you see the animal and vegetal law of constant suffering, and can face the reality about the amount and degree of evil in this world, I should I say it gladdened me really to have found someone else who can see.
I am a Christian. A genuine one. The day came that I knew. I would never have "believed", but, likewise, I can't unknow what I was made to know.
The most patent "ground of untruth" in the Christian official faith is where they (don't) explain evil's abundance and prevalence in the world.
It should be noted that the official "Church" is, very obviously, the place Evil would need and care the most to infiltrate, and whose ranks to fill with minions working for It.
More truth-oriented branches of Christianity (Cathars, for one) were exterminated by the "Only, One, and Roman". More than a few of those deviations from mainline Christianity had got important intuitions re the truth of this world, and the conflict between Good and Evil, each with its army (consisting nearly totally of unconscious ministries and soldiers on the Evil camp, since the first ones to be deceives are Its soldiers and minions).
You could say some of those deviations were the association of Christians that, much unlike their persecutors, believed in Christ and the Gospel.
I think it right to share the title of a most interesting book for everyone who can see: you may have not heard of it: it's the Rose of the World.
It has always puzzled me... the scores of people, and Christians, who can see a wild feline do what they do to their prey and stick with the official Church doctrine of everything in this world being allowed by Good, or even wanted by Good precisely as it takes place.
It puzzles me much when they are genuine good people and Christians.
Probably it's... the average human impossibility of critical and autonomous thinking, and they cannot draw any conclusion they haven't seen drawn by someone else (someone authoritatively placed, or a clear majority of common folk).
The author of that book says that ascribing all what happens in this world to the good God is blasphemy of probably the worst kind.
I don't agree with you that Good doesn't work in and for this earth. If It didn't, everything would be like those scenes seen in "nature documentaries".
It is at work here, with resources, and sympathy, and tolerance of our inane behaviour all so beyond what we can imagine that it's unspeakable.
The real prime (or only: it may depend by how one looks at his own existence in this world) goal in this life is to wake up to the reality of the perennial clash between the two armies, make one's choice, and be the best soldier one can.
Take a walk outside; see the mountains, the earth, sometimes blessed and green. The earth has been rent in great upheavals; the crust is shattered; there exist vast wastes where no green and pleasant thing grows; ancient homelands sleep under waves. But still nature strives for symmetry; still the rain falls; still much that is fair and beautiful grows or is born.
Though it has seen hard times, and every day we feel the pangs of the evil let loose on the world, the physical world was still made to be good and abundant.
Look, here is what the creator has given us: https://www.tychos.space/
Seeking answers to such questions, to the degree that one's efforts might bring solace and understanding, if sought solely by means of discursive thought ... this is like the ouroboros and cannot lead us to that which we seek and desperately need. We are helpless creatures in a fallen world, wholly dependent on the undeserved mercy of Almighty God. There is no more lost and endangered being than the intellectual who fervently prays at the altar of reason. See: "The words of the wise are as goads, and as nails deeply fastened in, which by the counsel of masters are given from one shepherd. More than these, my son, require not. Of making many books there is no end: and much study is an affliction of the flesh." — Ecclesiastes 12: 11 - 12
watch this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B43RWs9wy4c
The TaNaKh isn't shy about the source of evil: "In order that they know from the shining of the sun and from the west that there is no one besides Me; I am the L-rd and there is no other. Who forms light and creates darkness, Who makes peace and creates evil; I am the L-rd, Who makes all these." Isaiah 45: 6-7 (What if Judaism is the true worldview but you're not Jewish: https://petronius.substack.com/p/attn-hr-i-complained-about-the-rainbow)
For a Calvinist solution to the problem of evil, read Vincent Cheung. This is scarier than anything by Stephen King. Bonus points for consistency: https://www.vincentcheung.com/books/The%20Author%20of%20Sin.pdf
Perhaps the most serious challenge to Theism is Necessitarianism, brilliantly defended by Amy Karofsky. Philosophy is a footnote to Parmenides! It's not that contingency doesn't exist. It's akin to those impossible Escher shapes. It can't exist. Reality is like some vast Mandlebrot set. Every slice of time from the Big Bang to your current thought has the necessity of prime numbers or Pi. Few Philosophy books can awaken one from dogmatic slumbers like this. G-d's existence is impossible because G-d is a being with free will, which is a metaphysical non-starter: https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_Case_for_Necessitarianism/7jVVEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover
If Nietzsche took the Eternal Recurrence literally (and it seems he did), this would be a flavor of Big Bounce Cosmology + Necessitarianism. I'm not a Plotinus scholar, but I don't think the One has anything resembling "free will," so his ontology (and Spinoza's, obviously) are also Necessitarian-friendly.
Unless I misunderstand, EN's reference to Gaia was to "deep ecology," a type of insanity. That's different from Lovelock's "Gaia Theory," which posits a self-regulating morphogenetic field that maintains Earth as an inhabitable planet. It's a biologically driven negative feedback loop. That particular morphogenetic field, along with many others, are subsets or nodes of the Akashic Field, a.k.a. aether, vacuum, Zero Point Energy, or whatever. In my own cosmology, the Akashic Field is synonymous with God as "Ground of All Being."
https://rationalspirituality.substack.com/p/trinitarian-theory-of-consciousness