In the 1980s I was very curious about Gnosticism (I’ve a tendency to dive head first into the things society on the whole condemns) and obtained the so-called Gospel of Saint Mary Magdalen. I was so disappointed in it. Gnosticism is everything I stand against.
It's a very strange idea that seems to pop up again and again. I'm not sure if that's because it's an innate psychological tendency, or if it's bits of belief being recycled again and again through the generations.
I doubt that any of the social justice believers see themselves as the inheritors of an ancient Christian heresy but the links seem to be there.
I suspect that the idea that the material world is all warped illusion, and that the spell can be broken (my meditation, or secret codes, or radical social reform) is a satisfying one to certain kinds of educated and unhappy people. If only political opinions could redeem us! Then we wouldn't have to DO anything, or grow spiritually. How easy it would be.
Of course social justice hypocrites don't think their beliefs are religious much less gnostic. For the Catholic Church, gnosticism is a heresy. I didn't used to think the notion of heresy useful or important but I do now. These things come with age, I suppose. I don't know how Protestants, Jews or Muslims view gnosticism or what the gnostic currents in those religions are.
Gnosticism is basically a discounting of the material world and the human body as unreal, as evil illusions, it is extreme dualism, a kind of solipsism, Manichaeism. This is very clear in the trans movement in which "gender identity," or the gendered soul, is more real than the actual physical body. You can also see it in the general belief that language determines or creates rather than reveals reality, using she/her pronouns turns a man into a woman, that is transubstantiation, calling a person "unhoused" rather than "homeless" improves their position in the world.
In the 1980s I was very curious about Gnosticism (I’ve a tendency to dive head first into the things society on the whole condemns) and obtained the so-called Gospel of Saint Mary Magdalen. I was so disappointed in it. Gnosticism is everything I stand against.
It's a very strange idea that seems to pop up again and again. I'm not sure if that's because it's an innate psychological tendency, or if it's bits of belief being recycled again and again through the generations.
I doubt that any of the social justice believers see themselves as the inheritors of an ancient Christian heresy but the links seem to be there.
I suspect that the idea that the material world is all warped illusion, and that the spell can be broken (my meditation, or secret codes, or radical social reform) is a satisfying one to certain kinds of educated and unhappy people. If only political opinions could redeem us! Then we wouldn't have to DO anything, or grow spiritually. How easy it would be.
Of course social justice hypocrites don't think their beliefs are religious much less gnostic. For the Catholic Church, gnosticism is a heresy. I didn't used to think the notion of heresy useful or important but I do now. These things come with age, I suppose. I don't know how Protestants, Jews or Muslims view gnosticism or what the gnostic currents in those religions are.
Gnosticism is basically a discounting of the material world and the human body as unreal, as evil illusions, it is extreme dualism, a kind of solipsism, Manichaeism. This is very clear in the trans movement in which "gender identity," or the gendered soul, is more real than the actual physical body. You can also see it in the general belief that language determines or creates rather than reveals reality, using she/her pronouns turns a man into a woman, that is transubstantiation, calling a person "unhoused" rather than "homeless" improves their position in the world.