The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 108
Marxism is not a philosophy. Neither are its derivatives, like “Wokeness” (Woke Marxism). These are a strain within a broader category of cult religious movements that pose as economics, sociology, and politics. The broad name for these Esoteric cult religions is “Gnosticism,” but that’s a confusing label for a number of reasons. The first of these reasons is that “gnosticism” as a term, either as a descriptive or proper noun, means several things at once, which requires clarification. Another is that as economic, social, and political movements, they don’t look at all like the pre-modern spiritualist and mystical movements that go by those names. In this groundbreaking episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay clarifies the term “gnosticism” and unmasks what amounts to a huge “New Age” movement in the Middle Ages as the source of a thread of Gnostic cult belief that has shaped every facet of the West for at least the last three hundred years. He also explains how the shift from the Middle Ages to the Modern period included a shift in the Gnostic project, out of overt spiritualism and into exactly those society-building realms of economics, sociology, and politics. Join him to gain a completely new understanding of these dangerous movements and how they’re relevant to our lives today.
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40 comments
(Sociologist: I cannot reply to your comments so must post a reply at the top of the thread — so techno irritating)
Thank you for that. You are a most patient person.
What more can I say other than: “My hovercraft is full of eels.”
Funny you mention Monty Python as I happen to be re-watching the entire series at this very moment. I need it as a sanity talisman to ward off the evil eye of idiocy that threatens every morning as I head out for my 15k bicycle ride at the huge old cemetery across from my building (where my grandparents are buried) and am forced, while wheeling my bike to the elevator, to observe the day’s headlines from the mainstream media (Pravda Kanada) newspapers lying in front of the apartment doors of my retired woke senior citizen irritating leftist neighbours. If I didn’t see (against my will) these headlines each day, I would never have known that Adolph Trump had made a pact with Satan to fascist-dominate the world but only after he killed off all the retired irritating leftist woke senior citizen Canadians unless they vote for socialist Messiah Justin “Arthur Two-Sheds Jackson” Trudeau as their only hope against the new Orange Fuhrer’s wrath. What a depressingly Dasein-free world they live in, nothing but “spam, spam, spammity spam”.
(ps: self-recrimination is not self-loathing but its opposite: the germination of hope)
Quote – Justin “Arthur Two-Sheds Jackson” Trudeau”
Looking back at remarks they made throughout the history of python, it can feel like they knew everything that was going wrong with society & why sometimes. Well – they could also have said things they really did feel were absurd // except they were accurate.
” self-recrimination ”
Yes i so agree since as you remark critical thinking skills are as much the way OUT as they are IN, which btw is sometimes where JL goes wrong with his sweeping generalisations imho. Self is a fairly normal downward spiral tooling to self loathing & theres also a normal cognitive way up from it so long as society is normal. But society isn’t as governments have made war against the people pacts & the new normals are toxic. Sane people thus undergo stable processes by implementing old norms. In reality i think we are all in the sublime sense performing such indexing on ourselves even during the better times IS a normal process. The psychosocial environment of the ‘NOW’ is without question an lab made abomination. Once its thought patterns gained traction, it became a naturally selecting hybrid, where humankind nurtured its design. Thus no longer purely ideological, its p[psychosocial matter thats gained momentum in natural selection. Being Total // Totalitarianism has many definitions & playing GOD one one of them.
// New Box // stuffed up here in the way you understand.
Given that its fair to say you’ve questioned intent on all levels = individual // en masse, look below if you will . The caveat ( just at first ) being that this identifies a culvert / diversion parasite before going on to remark concerning cabalist free intent. A slight old history // then later revision circa say 1990’s
Quote – A central issue for theories of intentionality has been the problem of intentional inexistence: to determine the ontological status of the entities which are the objects of intentional states. – Unquote.
When the intentional inexistence conclusion was drawn by the scholastic school it was safe to use that POV given no illicit flow of abstraction into a modern style of algorithm then existed at the time it was compiled. It would not be long as witch trials would be made up to help tax law work – but until then all was well. But what was ‘Intentional Inexistence’ .. ( II ) With II they are referring to images in the mind eye, stating that ‘Intent’ requires a perception or subject of object = inexistent = Intent. So they are saying that intentionality have a driver, that has a file, that has an Image ( otherwise intentionality is itself inexistent. Very open to abuse this now – ‘Unconscious Bias’ is a fake file on this just like the witch trials were. In fact though ( and i cannot use another link ) but leon festingers theory of cognitive dissonance (CD) supersedes st anslem here. CD must be the most misquoted via a misunderstanding of it science online. Its used to describe people being ‘wrong’. In fact its more a description of the mechanism which is causal in us consciously deciding we ‘don’t want that which we did want’ – usually under pressure. It will be debatable as to what level of ‘pressure’ CD still works as ( say ) being drowned in a ducking stool is terror related false confession ( thats NOT CD ).
Intentionality then :
1 – Can be exploded and redeployed sociologically.
2 – Has a threshold before its not ‘Intent’ anymore
3 – Is closely linked to CD which itself is linked to cabalist manipulation.
Indoctrination via CD is an area that intends to ‘mesmerise’ the conscious apparatus at large. I.E the human mind en masse into believing it wants something it does not want in terms of dasien based intentionality.
= II = CD.
And perhaps = one of your learned remarks.
Another example might be where quite independent of what is true or false surrounding a GOD, it is not ‘GOD’ which those claiming to be ant gods types ( the baron et al ) have targeted. They targeted what they intended to I.E the different kettle of fish that is human morals & ethics & ‘GOD’ was just their ‘Windows 7’ op system in the respect. New atheism sat down at that queer original meeting to discuss how to disguise what they’d been asked to do as an anti god tirade.
It was processed via an abstraction in cognitive dissonance where new atheist followers ‘think’ they want to downgrade human morals against what their dasien tells them.
And thats just the caveat for proceeding to study what it can or cannot do to improve human relations.
Really the above refers to
Quote – “the creator debate (to exist or not exist)” // Again: Why? Why the need to “know”? – Unquote .
So to conclude this scratching of the surface respecting many remarks :
I’m unable to speak of what importance regarding the omnipotent one given the matter remains unknowable. Its the ‘Faith’ part thats been up for demolition since its seem like a typical characteristic of a totalitarian regime is default to Atheism as it minimises the proletariats sense of their human rights via the diminished tendency to discussed bone fide ethics The regimes cabalist ‘ethics’ come in exchange & in europe thats being made available by A.C. Graylings Humanism. ‘Thought Crime’ in the irreligious respect is not only potentially a highway robbers dream. If so the State is a dick turpin on the WWW highway with A.I. detecting our thought crimes like so .
Intentionality = THOUGHT = SILENCE = WORDS = CRIME. Where we think in silence until we speak = Thought Crime. New atheism also designed an algorithm that charges us with crime for Silence = not using pronouns / remaining silent. Thus thought crime is detected by the words used on the basis that ( via Intentionality ) its what we SAY what we THINK.
A GOD arguably seems not much to do with the existence of one or not the way human ethics are configured at this time. Perhaps its got more to do with the manipulation of mass intention inexistence, or the battle to defaet the idea that humanity is so worthless that it would not matter much if another human holocaust happened.
One of the biggest red herrings of ALL is the guilt tool about a GOD & Lindsays weakest character flaw for he fails to understand that via this he illustrates easy to detect intentionality discrepancies = its not him talking, its just the remaining artefacts of an old
brainwash shouting at us
Paradoxically the ontological argument as first claimed by St Anselm appears to be ‘the bargain’ of all time. The metaphysics of knowing everything by new atheisms metaphysical gnosticism in order to debunk a GOD is clearly ontological, as is the olde english archbishop of canterbury’s way of confirming one :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology
Quote : In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophical study of being. It investigates what types of entities exist, how they are grouped into categories, and how they are related to one another on the most fundamental level (and whether there even is a fundamental level).[1] Ontologists often try to determine what the categories or highest kinds are and how they form a system of categories that encompasses the classification of all entities. Commonly proposed categories include substances, properties, relations, states of affairs, and events. These categories are characterized by fundamental ontological concepts, including particularity and universality, abstractness and concreteness, or possibility and necessity. Of special interest is the concept of ontological dependence, which determines whether the entities of a category exist on the most fundamental level. Disagreements within ontology are often about whether entities belonging to a certain category exist and, if so, how they are related to other entities.[2] Unquote
The above statements being the sort that tend to be strongly self evident // quite fiendishly difficult to dispute, show us that either side of the creator debate ( to exist or not exist ) can both merely class as ontology should the expectation be a measurement of ‘Truth’.
“ontology is the philosophical study of being. It investigates what types of entities exist, how they are grouped into categories, and how they are related…”
Why? Why study this? Serious question. I know you genuinely know about these things unlike other commenters who seem to be proselytizing their chosen brand of self-deification (reification?). Please explain why anyone is investigating such things – to what end? For what purpose? Is there an outcome? If so, what is done with the outcome of the investigation? Do these investigations ever “end” or are they like Woke’s “anti-racism”, a process that never ends but is a perpetual queered “becoming”. Have such investigations contributed anything that concretely made humans’ lives more bearable in the physical actual world? If so, what would be three examples of practical useful outcomes of such ontological investigation (from any time in history) that improved normal people’s nasty brutish lives.
“the creator debate (to exist or not exist)”
Again: Why? Why the need to “know”? What difference does it make one way or the other since not one human in all history has ever been able to prove or disprove the existence of any creator (but killed millions in the process). Why waste precious time on such a futile pursuit? Unless this pursuit is merely the mask for a deeper and concealed purpose (status, vanity, money, power, ego, tribalism, baseness). What is the practical useful purpose of all these investigations into “metaphysics” including all the ones described in the comments below – all the old familiars: the magus, the adepts, special gnosis, “hidden” books, levels and stages, Enoch’s searchers, Hermes fetishists (Crowley, Anger, Lavey, Manson), the Blavatsky channelings, the demiurges, the alien uber-beings, and all of this literal rubbish concocted by fevered psyches to be sold as product to desperately lost and repellently conceited people.
To me, all of this preposterous “metaphysical” New (and Old) Age WooWoo has the same quality about it as most “serious” philosophers’ investigations: mental masturbation. Nothing wrong with masturbation of any kind (natural preventative for older men’s prostate problems btw) but it has no connection to quotidian human life and Man’s struggle to survive his span in the vale of tears. I’ll grant that some mental masturbation is fun of course. I loved Schopenhauer’s “Studies in Pessimism” (his realism made me feel optimistic). Whereas I found what little I could read of Heidegger’s “Being and Time” incomprehensible gobbledygook — all that flunging of Dasein to me was nothing more than high level monkey spanking. What use is Dasein in the real world? Some philosopher’s do impact life but always negatively, such as Sartre’s support of “revolutionary” violence or Foucault’s support of abolishing age of consent laws. Name one positive impact or outcome of the ideas of even one philosopher.
I spent years politely giving the benefit of the doubt to people who obsessed over all this stuff in the hope that perhaps it would some day have some positive use to real people until my good will died on Oct 7 2023 when all of this philosophizing became to me nothing more than an incantatory death rattle, a decadent and obscene pissing in the wind. Prove me wrong. Please.
Quote – Please explain why anyone is investigating such things – to what end? For what purpose? Is there an outcome? If so, what is done with the outcome of the investigation? Do these investigations ever “end” or are they like Woke’s “anti-racism”, a process that never ends but is a perpetual queered “becoming”. Have such investigations contributed anything that concretely made humans’ lives more bearable in the physical actual world? If so, what would be three examples of practical useful outcomes of such ontological investigation (from any time in history) that improved normal people’s nasty brutish lives” – Unquote
It takes as much grasp to even ask such questions as it does to try answer them i’d fancy. Take the frankfurt school views the human psyche as a topography in philosophy of mind. Without suggestion conscious similarity, your selection is arguably topographical inquiry in itself hence somewhat of a ‘self similarity’ or phenomenal part of human nature.
Dasien can be is viewed in at least two ways dependent on who by. Some might place the higher inference on the resultant conscious personality // others like Foucault / Derrida / Irigaray & arguably Lacan the unconscious, where their purposes are served by that for queering humanity. For me the unconscious is strictly not a personality or a set of drivers capable of bias /kink / other emotional quirk being a memory and no more. Thus as a gross over simplification the setting under which dasien slaves (for say Jung / Freud / Jaspers) is like so :
1 – The Conscious contains the bias of the personality & is the reciprocal inverse // its quantities // mathematical expression // and means of ‘live’ present time geometry. The conscious makes use of a short term memory bias that likes it best when elapsed after 4 seconds, or is renewed should ongoing frame of reference dictate. The role of the central nervous system cannot be understated given the retina is a key part of the CNS.
2 – The Unconscious is not living at all, has no link to the CNS, & presents zero opportunity for bias. It is the past set to verse from previously conscious artfacts & is nothing more than a long term memory.
3. Human drivers are controlled by peripheral vision, filtered through fight or flight by a preconscious emotional bias that has retrieved as much information that I.Q. can produce in order to present to the conscious for consideration. This is a mechano biological system that samples emotional drives chemically before sampling via the CNS as the means to culvert emotions to conscious.
People do it because it is an inner space exploration.
Quote – ” If so, what is done with the outcome of the investigation? Do these investigations ever “end” or are they like Woke’s “anti-racism”, a process that never ends ” – Unquote.
I’d regard your ‘questions’ actually as remarks given they are too well implemented constitute a search meant to end some type of ignorance. Instead are more like an ongoing inquiry. Perhaps one that semi infuriates. In that sense the might be a slight case of self loathing the way your good self ‘epi- phenomenologically’ understands much about subjects that create your ire. In case that is true i’ll do my best to report back to thunderbird 13 from the distant probe i sometimes wish i was never aboard.
Your suspicions could well be justified as the outcomes do so much seem to have mainly been appropriated and corrupted by cabalists. If so then ‘Dasien’ is but ‘one proletariat’ i.e becomes an algorithm that isn’t dasien anymore. Heidegger tried to describe the entity as unique and bespoke per human being. The only thing unique concerning a complex set of mathematical approximations ( para consistent logic ) would be ‘The Outcome’ ( you speak of ) – where approximation thus features a terminal point capable of being held still long enough to observe ( Mathematically ). However – corruption never stands still as you also infer. Therefore the approximation of humankind that becomes ‘proletariat’ & manifests from totalitarianism hasn’t got a number.
You suggest there is a measurement problem in other words & the answer is imho YES.
Quote ” – all of this philosophizing became to me nothing more than an incantatory death rattle – Unquote.
I was only sure it was alive during early monty python when they so frequently dropped in philosophical references for satires. ‘Unsuriety’ tends to come later once one is thus by then equipped enough to know it is possible to doubt. None of this is helped by humanities ongoing conditioned learning in atheism. As history has moved on, it seems to have become essential to place religion & atheism under special global management. The globalists are in control of both ofc, hence capitalising control a strategy resultant from a coupled binary manipulation = speaking both for and against ‘GODS’. They thus choose who to toss pro godness to // who to force anti godness on as // when suits. In this sense ( and independent concerning if a ‘GOD’ is real or not ) – this strategy is a main element entirely undiscussed in this sites expert remit why ?
Well clearly new atheism has been the western arm of this strategy for anyone alive from the neck up. I’ve just digressed boringly over fields well ploughed by me so do please ‘effectively’ ignore partly. Suffice it that i’d not be so destructive to expect charge to JL with embarrassment thanks to the snake oil of the baron. But reason to visit is the way both ontologies ( pro god / no god ) drain from the debates the abilty to discussed morals & ethics. This is intentional are the same social engineering lab are trying to culvert where we obtain such insight to Humanism. In other words humanism is attempting to take the place of church! Modern life is largely a scientist style guilt
trip & sociological blackmailing over faith & belief whence moral and ethical coding need not be linked to a God just to be. You mention a date. Some years ago a pact was made ( via the globalists in) giving these perpetrators the rudiments of a sovereign nation in some kinds of legal terms. That embryonic sovereign nation has not fully fledged as a sociological one thanks to complications similar to the reason the partition is shaped the way it is = for sake of maximum destabilisation. But also theres a resource in the region that most world powers had no access to UNLESS a dodgy pact could give them it in say 25 years ( from time pact discussed ). If you follow what i’m saying this enabled a rig to go to the region to begin extracting the resource before ‘noise’ began to be made concerning whose resource it was. As they do – this matter went from having no chance of obtaining something due to geopolitical reality to ‘we think its mainly ours’ by the people outside the region. As usual one of the protagonist countries said they wanted their ( majority ) unpaid WW2 reparations in the process & it could come from the resource in question. Whilst – those apparently incumbent on the embryo nation point out its theirs by sovereign law. Now the partition is arranged as it is for maximum sht stirring capability in order to inhibit the payment of reparations (1) . And its highly open to debate whether the embryo place mainly consists of travelling mercenaries // or if their are real families there. Not that those due reparations are innocent given the bungs received to person after person ( small potatoes ) in order to cease demands are a kosher way to deprive a majority.
However moving on from that, the price of eggs is somewhere here in the frame of reference you’ve configured when it comes to what good a study of the human predicament is :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentionality
So to take this for an example given as soon as phil of mind is entered things get very tight / = require precision :
Quote – Intentionality is the power of minds to be about something: to represent or to stand for things, properties and states of affairs.[1] Intentionality is primarily ascribed to mental states, like perceptions, beliefs or desires, which is why it has been regarded as the characteristic mark of the mental by many philosophers. A central issue for theories of intentionality has been the problem of intentional inexistence: to determine the ontological status of the entities which are the objects of intentional states – Unquote :
TBC // new box // otherwise forum will block
I missed this post and comment thread and just read through it now. Wow. The Woo-Woo in many of these comments is so New Age deranged, it makes Woke seem normal.
Humans are from an alien galaxy imprisoned on Earth. OK. Don’t make any sudden movements — just back away slowly. I was a fugitive from an alien reptile chain gang. The mind boggles. So many Hermes Trismegistus wannabes, so little time. Channeling more imaginary higher planes and fictitious mystical realms than Eno’s Sweet Regina who’s gone to China cross-legged on the floor. It’s an orgy of Fairyland! Enough magical thinking superiority complexes for an entire psychiatric conference.
Reminds me of this classic line from Rosemary’s Baby: “They don’t just want the blood. They want the flesh!” George Romero call home. It rubs the lotion on its skin. Certifiably Whacko! Psycho-emotional dysentery requires an enema of the brain: What does any of this nonsense have to do with the price of eggs?
Hitting the point in the point with a point. Simply an amazing thought process of contemplation.
The signes where already there when technological breakthroughs were presented as a promise to get rid of all the supposed flaws of material life.
If society can get rid of the addiction to the technological fruit of cult thinking is something to ponder about as it looks like this technology was designed to be used as a cult behaviour force multiplier.
Hey James, my name is Sonny, last name Lindsey, lol. I serendipitously found your work while having a major breakthrough in my own understanding of how these Magicians are operating. Your work has put many pieces together that begins to clarify the enemy we are dealing with.
I’m writing you because unfortunately while you have rightly identified Gnosticism and Hermeticism as being the Why and the How, I haven’t yet heard you (maybe I’m missing a podcast) strongly mention that these two things actually fall under one umbrella – Pantheism.
Pantheism is the unseen enemy. By definition it is incongruent with Christian Theism and is the real war taking place. Pantheism vs Theism. The reason it is so hard to spot is because it has over the ages gone under the name of The Mysteries in various secret societies and mystery cults – Pantheism as term itself not being coined until the 1700’s.
Christians often view the ‘enemy’ as Paganism, not realizing the Paganism is only one side of the coin. Paganism on Wiki (don’t mind the source) says that “Paganism has broadly connoted the “religion of the peasantry”. Which begs the question – If the peasants are pagans, which often translates into POLYtheists, then what are the Elites? Do you see the dialectic emerging?
The Elites worship The All – The peasants worship the Many.
Understanding the enemy is PANTHEISM is the biggest redpill, because once you see, you can’t unsee. It’s what ties all of the occult/esoteric/philosophy suspects together. And they all have one enemy – The Catholic (Universal) Church. Why? Because it’s THE ONLY religion that actually puts God OUTSIDE of themselves.
Pantheism was the ruling religion underlying EVERY culture prior to Christianity. This is why the Old Testament is so important. Who wrote The Pentateuch? Tradition says Moses. Where did Moses grow up? In Egypt. Raised by the royal family. Becoming a priest. It’s very likely he was initiated into the Egyptian Mysteries. Which would have tried to convince him of what? The story of Moses is the story of humanity beginning to understand that there is Objective Truth. Moses rejected Pantheism.
Under Pantheism, morality has no choice but to dissolve. All becomes a matter of perspective. Right and Wrong is merely an illusion of Duality. What then becomes the WHY for why kings rule and peasants drool? Reincarnation is sold to the peasants – “Well you must have fucked up in your past life, do better”. For the Elites’ – one’s own WILL becomes the rationale for their position in life. It’s Game of Thrones baby. And do what thou wilt is the whole of the law.
Keep doing the work you’re doing my friend, it’s so important. And if you haven’t become a Christian yet, give it time. If you believe in Objective Truth you’re already half way there. And if you believe you aren’t God then you might as well just throw your hands up and praise Jesus. 😛 Thank you for your hard work.
Question:
WHO deceived Eve in Genesis… was it the serpent… or was it God? (Well, you tell me.)
Gen. 2:17 — “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely DIE.”
Gen. 3:1 – Now the serpent was more subtle (crafty, cunning, shrewd, sensible, PRUDENT) than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman,” Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?”
Gen. 3:2 – And the woman said unto the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden,
Gen. 3:3 – But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye DIE.”
Gen. 3:4 – And the serpent said unto the woman, “Ye shall NOT surely die:
Gen. 3:5 – For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and YE SHALL BE AS GODS, knowing good and evil.”
Gen. 3:6 – And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one WISE, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
Gen. 3:7 – And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.
(and then,,,)
Gen. 3:22 – And the LORD God said, “Behold, the man is BECOME AS ONE OF US, to know good and evil….”
Elohim is plural for the Powerful Shining Ones. A Family of Advanced Anunnaki Alien Beings. You are Deceived. The Bible was Neutered and Feminized with Agnostic Feeling, while the Masculine Gnostic Knowledge was removed including 68 Books and Enoch, the Science that has been taken away explained Enki (Jesus) – the Serpent was Christ Knowledge of Good who saved us from being the Slave Race that his brother Enlil (Jehovah) commanded and Christ saved us from the Flood. See the Enuma Elish, Altra Hasis and Lost Books of Enki to see where the Jews plagiarized and the Roman Catholic Church hid the truth and does not exist in King James at all. Jesus taught Reincarnation and Ascension and there is No Death.
The Serpent
Was Satan
A fallen Angel
Who rejected the role God gave him
He hated humanity
Christ redeemed us because God loved us so much
He was willing to die for us and pay for our sins
He died for us and redeemed us
Something no human could do
Humans do not reincarnate
They are raised from the dead on the day of Judgement
And dealt with according to their own actions
Stop spreading Satanic lies if you want to be saved
“AS Gods”, knowing good and evil. Not “ARE Gods”. The serpent was cursed to crawl on its belly – that was God’s curse – not who God is. God wanted Adam and Eve to follow his will and the tree was their test to see if they would rebel (sin) or follow God’s instructions. To say or imply the God deceived them representing himself as the serpent is to deny God deity and call him a lier. God can not lie or he wouldn’t be God. God would not tell them to not eat of the tree and then present himself as something else to deceive them. Men are evil not God.
Dr. Lindsay,
I have to say that while I really appreciate much of your work, we really dovetail on your word-choice of “gnosis” and conflation of Marxism with the likes of DesCartes. You are being very intellectually dishonest by claiming that anyone who disagrees with your take on the mind-body duality or spiritualism is a Marxist.
I understand that you’re trying to understand Hegel and the connection between his philosophy and Marxism, or Marxism’s connection to CRT, but you can do this without attacking Christian groups that you don’t understand. You basically slandered all Rosicrucians, Hermetic Christians, etc. all in one go simply because you don’t really understand their ideas.
Additionally, as others have mentioned, you do not need a 2hr talk to say the following:
“Evil exists, Marxism is a form of evil because of x, Hegel promoted x under the guise of materialist paradigm, which Marxists took hold of, CRT evolved from Marxists who promoted x.”
Instead, you dance around the concept of evil (which is itself an Occam’s razor argument against your position) because intellectually you’re far too arrogant and immature to admit that you can’t justify your own moral authority from your self-professed position of Atheism. You therefore use the word “gnostic” or “spiritualist” to smear devout religious individuals as a way to then give yourself the supposed moral high ground.
Essentially, you are arguing the following: x,y,z amounts to spiritualism/gnosticism, gnosticism is superstitious, superstitions are bad therefore x,y,z people are bad. Bluntly, this argument does not follow from your position of atheism which rejects the notion of metaphysical evil/the quality of “badness” to begin with.
Instead James, we come to the conclusion that through your own reasoning, you yourself are engaging in “gnostic” arguments by insisting that your audience through their enlightenment from the ideas you profess, may come to know the “truth” of reality by the rejection of Marxism and CRT.
Kind regards,
Hey James, I just got around to listening to this podcast. You ask for help exploring the topic and say you reach an impasse with some Christians who only focus on ancient heresies. I’m a Christian and I’ve been reviewing “Science, Politics, and Gnosticism” in a series of posts looking from a Christian perspective. Maybe your audience would appreciate.
https://doveserpent.substack.com/p/reflections-on-voegelin-pt-1-the
https://doveserpent.substack.com/p/reflections-on-voegelin-pt-2-the
https://doveserpent.substack.com/p/reflections-on-voegelin-pt-3-what
As much as I enjoy James’s dissection of the woke religion, the biggest problem I have with his overall worldview is his conflation of Karl Marx with the essence of “wokeness.” I think we’re doing a great disservice to Marx’s most important contribution, which is *not* the idea or structure of communism as so many falsely believe, but his brilliant critique of capitalism.
Sitting here writing from a country (USA) where wages in real terms have been flat for 50 years while the GDP continues to soar, meaning the bulk of the productivity gains now go to the very top – to the banks, credit card companies, tech monopolies, and heavily subsidized fossil fuel companies (due to the de-industrialization, and financialization of the economy), how can anyone who is intellectually honest NOT take Marx’s ideas more seriously than ever? American workers are living in a late-stage, capitalist nightmare with very little bargaining power, and less ability to own a home, start a family, get an education, or receive healthcare than ever before, and compared to every other developed, first-world nation.
Now, just as (IMHO) James has taken liberties with Marx via his unfair conflation of ideas, he has now waded in way over his head with Gnosticism, Hermeticism, and spirituality. While I agree that the “woke cult” seems to be informed by a bastardization of New Age spiritual concepts, as other commenters have pointed out, there is some truth within the spiritual traditions. How much “truth” rests with the individual, particularly the personal experiences of the individual, so it’s pointless to attempt to speak to that truth in any general sense.
The moment I saw “Gnosticism” in the title here at New Discourses and on YouTube, I knew there was going to be some very intelligent pushback in the comments, and these comments did not disappoint!
James is also a religious man, only his religion is capitalism informed by atheism. Capitalism is weak and visibly crumbling, and the certainty of atheism is quite literally incompatible with the scientific method. The only rational position is agnosticism, and that fact should lead us to question James’s entire logical structure, brilliant as his overall construction is.
Is it possible to buy the book ANYWHERE else other than from Amazon? I’d rather not support that global giant. Thanks.
I must first comment on some of the lengthy posts in the comments section. One set is by someone who wrote a scholarly book and another set is by someone who self-identifies as a “sociologist.” We can all wish that more people could express themsleves more concisely. But that particularly applies to comments on another’s work. If you want others to explore your own work, get your own blog or website. I have my own blog. I have even been paying (recently) to keep ads off of it.
I also recognize that most people can’t sit and listen to James talk for two hours. I honestly don’t know why he does this, but this is his place to express himself. He could be better prepared for these talks. But so be it.
The basic concepts I can lock onto include “New Age” and “mysticism.” What I can say about those concepts, and about “ordinary” religions as well, is that they all share at least two common problems: First, there is some truth in them. Second, there is some falsehood in them.
And the higher-level problem is that most academics or intellectuals have no real idea of how to separate out the truths from the falsehoods. Thus, many are willing to dismiss all these concepts as superstitious and useless if not dangerous.
However, there are a FEW academics and intellectuals who have developed research tools that could penetrate the confusion and resolve it. These include Hubbard, the remote viewers (C. Brown in particular) and the hypnotists (such as Dolores Cannon). There are also the academic parapsychologists who are mostly working in the group that was started by Ian Stevenson.
Several of these researchers have reached the conclusion that one of the basic assertions of what James calls Gnosticism is true: That we were forced to come to Earth to live here as prisoners. Those researchers are quite sure of this finding, and so am I. But very few others share that certainty. And I don’t think we can move forward in understand the work of past intellectuals who for some reason felt they couldn’t just come out and state exactly what they thought unless we recognize that they were actually scared to do so.
In the context of ancient times, if for some reason a person could remember or recognize that they have been imprisoned here, then this could only be interpreted as personal spiritual knowledge. It would be a little like remembering a past life, which Stevenson verified can actually happen. It is then not that much different than remembering events in one’s own life, which we consider normal. Very few here can recall their past lives, so it is not considered normal here, but it is really not that different from “normal” remembering. You can understand that if someone were to constantly invalidate your own life memories, that you would be pissed off at them. And so those who authentically recall their past lives could likewise become pissed off. And the next step is arrogance and then self-protection. At that point, quackery can enter into the situation. And thus these subjects earn public scorn. We must remember, however, that these subjects contain elements of truth.
To this day, there is no agreement on how to verify spiritual truths, or (of course) what they really are. Further, there is no agreement on what to do about those truths. I consider this a sad state of affairs. But it means to me that those intellectuals who can’t find a way to penetrate the “secrets of life” will never make it to a higher (better) level (degree) of understanding.
That means, further, that the “woke” are dealing with some perceptions that are basically true. But they, like most others, are confused about what to do with these perceptions. Marx and all his intellectual descendents got it wrong. We know that by simple experience. Ultimately, we can judge all “religious sytems” in the same way: Do they work?
Maybe you’ve become offended by the way the source of oppression is using a freudian means and so is scientology. I suggest you just grow up Larry instead of posting prissy ad hominem, This world is full of paraconsistent accidents and coincidences. For instance i’d say that the globalists always would select Freud as its the superior understanding of the human mind. Thus the ‘top social engineer’ is a bit of an idiot if not going that route imho, and much to my chagrin also. But this is the second time you’ve been rude as you’ve some fucking problem.
Scholarly ? nothing i said detracted from that persons posts – they engaged conversation and feel like white knighting ? Ok – why was this very obvious abrahamic scaled religion never mentioned by the scholar ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Druze
It predates every revision of James which the poster you refer to corrected him with. Yet the scholar ‘didn’t know’ about this rather key religion in the scheme of all those things. If there was some important scholarly contribution that was worth showing open hostility about, should the scholar not have at least really known the subject ?
You self identify as Larry Cox and have a blog about a pseudo scientific religion. So What Larry!
To this day, there is no agreement on how to verify spiritual truths, or (of course) what they really are. Further, there is no agreement on what to do about those truths. I consider this a sad state of affairs. But it means to me that those intellectuals who can’t find a way to penetrate the “secrets of life” will never make it to a higher (better) level (degree) of understanding.
That means, further, that the “woke” are dealing with some perceptions that are basically true. But they, like most others, are confused about what to do with these perceptions. Marx and all his intellectual descendents got it wrong. We know that by simple experience. Ultimately, we can judge all “religious sytems” in the same way: Do they work?
You or your friends are welcome to remote view at what english university i may be found – i’ll look out for MK Ultra etc. It seems like your main contribution to these global sociological issues is actually connected to hellish judgements concerning your own personal brews on who go to purgatory and for what reason ? I’m here answering the owners call for unity and activism against ‘WOKE’ I was in a school meeting with two officials only yesterday discussing how i’ll class it as psychological abuse if any more queer theories are pushed on a student. I identify quite precisely to the activist the owner says he wants to attract. At first the social conditions were very different, but i have been the same kind of activist since Y2K i complied thousands of communication to schools and local authorities over the course of twenty years. I have reasons not to be public. What i did in the Uk predated NA and was going on before hardly anyone realised there was a problem. My activity will still total more than James has so far done as of now it was so extensive over decades. It was also far more difficult to do amongst greater apathy.
Yet you feel most appropriate via psychic powers ?
That is little more linked to the religious social engineering of people who believe Satan exists Larry rather than social science. Same old testament & creationists regardless of the scientology cult angle or what ? Usually hating the agnostics more that any other even atheism. Sometimes showing how out of control tribalism can be as creationists team up with atheists who think dislike agnostic themselves. Creationists on observing an atheist this ill informed believing they might be converted to creationism quite often. Well probably as atheism defaults to agnosticism in all creationist debates. Thus atheism pales to insignificance & the person who is not prone to getting trapped by universal paradox ( like all Atheists do ) is the true figure of Hate.
Which only leads us to similar for creationists. If you are off to paradise wtf don’t you explain how you’ll not be allowed unless you accuse agnostics of going to purgatory ? I mean you don’t think agnostics will cause you to go there by some unfortunate serpent biting its own tail effect ? I.E casting Judgement as expected only leads to what one is running from but the engineering promised it wasn’t except it now feels like it is & its chaotic psychological phenomena that is the non believers – is the believers – is everyone and noone because it is chaos etc etc etc ?Only saying as you claimed to be a defender of rights at first. But turn out to be a man hole opener person to HELL ?
Its all a bit odd ‘Larry’
The only element that can be linked to parapsychology is the way people using pronouns have started attacking each other as will inevitable happen when persons are socially engineered to hate, and the young tends to exaggerate. Meaning they’ll hate anyone available if they cannot find the target they’ve been socially engineered to. And this is when kooks like you are part of the problem. You’ve been taught to mic supernatural powers and creationism hence were engineered to hate those who might debunk remote viewing etc. Meanwhile ? – ordinary kids that have been afflicted with Q and race hate artefacts have learned about destructive fantasies concerning psychic attack and remote viewing etc and they think they can attack other kids. Its another bullying, its psychological abuse and it normally latches onto kids who are the most vulnerable. I.E are easy to upset by such claims of psychic ability to invade privacy etc -watch from afar – or attack. Even yourself clearly expects to bring the wrath of hell fire Larry – this is the same stupidity.
Not all – but a mutation found amoung those considering themselves a ‘Neopronoun Movement’ I.E Emo’s or Q’s etc etc with special powers.
So why don’t you do your witchcraft and produce this ‘ neopronounism ‘ on that site of yours ? After all am i not merely informing of the success of a nursery you know FA about & where you’d be like a GOD of mind attack and holes of fire !!
If the owner of this site doesn’t like how i choose to discuss hes welcome to ban my IP.
Your connection to Plato is accurate but gnosticism is simply the inversion/ perversion of Plato’s republic complete with “archons” or rulers, those who have knowledge vs . those who get a “noble lie” and of course the demiurge or “architect”.
Read the republic and you’ll understand all the various nonsense that “Gnosticism” claims to represent.
A study on the New Testament and Plato is also helpful as “Heremeticsm” is essentially just Christian “Platonism”.
The celebration of ignorance that is Wokeism is yet another, failed and feeble attack on Plato.
The Socialist Phenomenon by Igor Shafarevich is another book in this line of research. Shafarevich lays out how socialism is a gnostic religion and looks at the development of socialist ideas in ancient, medieval, and modern societies. The last third of the book examines the lead-up to and the catastrophic consequences of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. The final section of the book also makes it perfectly clear how the broadly western world has become more or less bolshevized, depending on the country.
The book is no longer in print, but the pdf can be downloaded for free if searched on the internet.
Whilst in reality Sokk every human on the planet is perplexed as to how the hunter gatherers who first exerted the strongest organisation seized land and thus passed it on to their kin. Who in these days are the 1% in control of power and money.
That is the true mystery we all struggle with. That is the state of affairs around the world that dictates to everyone else what happens in economics, law enforcement science & technology, education and so on. Had for example Bush Dynasty not taken land power and money in excess of 1000 years previously, at some place in the world we’d never have heard of them.
So its arguable what an outbreak of anything in the way of more sophisticated organisational ability ( like Bolshevism) really is. when at the root any socialised hunter gatherer movement is intrinsically ‘Socialist’ with a paradox attached to its means of emergence phenomenon. The common obstacle here tends link between how to place emphasis on the purely primal instinct that drives hunter gathering, and whenever intellect devised a superior way to act like animals. Which is what globalists are still doing today, its still hunter gathering, its still behaving like animals holding dominion over other animals – nothing has changed. What are ‘civil rights movements’ are after = don’t treat us like animals. And todays black CRM ? – well that states explicitly that the establishment whats black people to treat white people like animals. The white people to be treated like that by black people are whites that are accessible to this form of sociological abuse. This is since the people that organised this ( who are of a global denomination thus all colours ) – are on a NU major hunter gather program of ‘Public Land’. Being land that during more civilised times last century the top dogs were happy to consider ‘Public’. In the NU system it isn’t, and theres a scramble to buy it. Naturally since theres that situation, theres also mass scrambles to engineer situation where it can be bought for far too little.
So in the UK plans to build posh gated housing complexes on Dartmoor – which is supposed to be nation trust protected ( in trust ). NO – its already started becoming politicians property. In the USA theres much scope, but this whole anti people thing isn’t shy is it ? They’d have ways to take those national parks too. Same is be8ing planned for Africa and everywhere – in fact big obvious acquisitions as a type of advertisement for every little bit of small ground being bought up cheap by bent politicians – certainly in the UK & certainly in London.
So really the sociological turmoil being unleashed everywhere has the purpose of binding the people up in their own social glues of attacking each other while hunter gatherers grab land and power just as they did during the tribal periods of old. This is the part that seems ‘Bolshevik’ I.E the change of tactics of not so much going up to people and killing them, but enacting ways they’ll attack each other. Well at a minimum of social upheaval thats highly distracting |& would result in martial law if more anti white hate is injected toward black people. In the UK all the other ethnicities have heard the messages and are hating whites also.
We are not used to using the term ‘Ethnic Cleansing’ for this kind of creeping sociological warfare but should since it is. All ethnic cleansing that has taken place was based on a program such as the anti white agenda going on now.
But really since the organiser hunter gatherers are a rainbow of global people its got to the point where attributing such to any race is simply off the table. Thus as such all the common denominators default to the most primitive instincts and not a lot more. Atheists ( only for instance ) shooting themselves and everyone else in the foot by pressurising Religion. Previously religion pressurised Morality. But now hunter gatherers inhabit Religion & only want to put weaker humans in chains over the same old quest to obtain more land and wealth. Indeed they’ve begun stealing the ‘church wealth’ by planting establishment figures with fake religious credential in. Example – UK Archbishop is a Oil Executive.
And Gnosticism again ? – just part os similar processes. Often ( not always but often ) where persons of decent conscience who disagreed with human slavery tried to think of better ways whilst under duress. Often from families with some power and wealth & hoping to persuade other to act more peacefully toward fellow human beings. The complication with Gnosticism is that it could only really be done by persons of means. When not done via means thats a hermit in a hole. Since these persons would have it, they’d also be enemy to violent establishment and lose their possessions to decadent war like types. One of the main reasons Socrates was poisoned is that he began to disagree with slavery as the means to build empires. Plus he moved out into a life among the peasants.
One might as well accuse Plato of Gnosticism thus go straight to a tyrant with it to the contrary. His ‘theory of forms’ identifies to theosophy so perfectly he could have been Alice Bailey & got it all from ‘The Tibetan’ < her claimed 'trace channel spirit'. Plato is not normally consider like THAT though, and all greeks of the period were slave driving murderers, ( except Soc) so wheres it all at is plainly on the table
But we'd fixate on gnosis quite pointlessly. What is it anyway ?. Well at its root claim Gnosis is the outcome of Metaphysics. I.E the mind escapes its material bonds and visualises X & that 'X' leads to 'Y' improvement in knowledge, or at least an Ideology. Thus Y will be the claimed Gnosis & in effect this is the same as saying that the mind can place 'Propositions' to itself ( Dialectics ) a. Much of this came from Pythagorus who found a musical scale that worked like this & does to this day. Incidentally Pythagorus also found that separate music tones combined created a 'new tone' in addition to the predicted sound coming from harmonics going in etc = something more than actual sum of musical parts taking place. in other words the process alters the nature of the information. Greeks then did what greeks do and discussed how this was a 'arrival' etc. Behaving like that could be guessing it could be philosophical its hard to say.. Pythagorus notions that planetary bodies 'move to a harmony of spheres' are more or least 'correct guesses' since size weight and gravitation matters equate to this.
There are plenty in science itself that question ( as it were ) 'Gnosis' One of the most lively debates today, concerns how the Retina creates a cinema image in a brain thats supposed to not have a mind according to the atheist argument in mind body problem.
Difficult. If there is no mind its hard to know what instead organised the way we sense feel and see. Hard to explain the success or failure of tribal period hunter gathering. That cross over point where strongest tribes become the major land and power owners leading to hegemonic modern societies. All by a brain with no Mind ? – mind / body remains difficult.
Today ? – the male anus is a pussy in the trans argument right ? Yet again this state traces to the mind/body problem . Radical feminism ( when it stupidly decided to assist trans which it now regrets ) used Essentialism Existentialism & Metaphysics in this postmodern bitches brew.
The fact is that ever since humans developed a society that contains more that war and sex the mind body problem has matter a enormous amount. The reason is simple – when still acting like animals who kill for sex and power we just do not question Morals. As soon as humankind did, we place our naturally selected human behaviour processes directly on the harkness table. And once that happens its only ever going to be a matter of time until somebody thinks up a mind body problem.
That state of mystery is then going to dominate everything until its solved or not. Athesists think it is. But they again that position is the closest enabling position to Fuck Morals isn't it ????
FUCK MORALS.
Thats the Globalist Now. Far as i know its why they funded A.C.D.C. Gayling & his mates in Europe etc. Its like they want his kind of people to back up their desire to say fuck morals. Then they might fuck anything that moves & of any age. Would they thus fuck this and fuck that like the sex pistols wrote ?. Well its hard to knows the intent, but 'Morals' are being seen as a nuisance to make obsolete.
Where would that leave anyone ? First off back to whether something that doesn't exist such as Morals = Gnosis. And whether not wishing to enslave is strength of mind or weakness of mind. In hunter gathering its Weakness ofc.
We best be careful what we wish for
Footnote
I’m not a Gnostic but an Agnostic and so are all Atheists given that agnostic is where you always are once the stupidity of pontificating whats out there in the cosmos is pinned down by a believer and proven to have been agnosticism all along. Thus as a natural philosophy ‘Atheism’ consists of nothing more that reserving the right not to believe in things – usually a GOD and quite rightly so. ‘Atheism’ has never had a leg to stand on in any scientific or even religious argument as it only special pleads desire to human Freedom.
Quite rightly so.
Who were these fools that went around arguing and pontificating when Atheism is such a minimal marginal expression of Freedom ? And of a mind said to be nothing but chemical ?
So FREEDOM for a CHEMICAL MIND.
Right – just a default to trans-humanism then, by a silly convoluted route when freedom to believe or not is Agnosticism & Atheism’ only ever described Trans-humanism.
This is not ‘exactly right’ as theres been great Atheists in the past – well long long ago before the type of idiot that came along.
Hurry up and go somewhere totally obscure Dawkins before the globalists are inspired by any more of your stupid nonsense!
Just wanted to drop in and say TY FOR THIS.
The topic is daunting, the material is obtuse when compared with the ‘shapes’ and ‘associations’ people are mentally primed for. But I think you’re on to something, and I will soooo be reading your book rec by O’Regan.
Cheers!
Replying to my own comment because that’s how my brain works. Damn it.
Watching your lectures with Sovereign Nations, one thing I kept being reminded of was how creepy Marx’ book ‘Oulanem’ is. The inversion of Immanuel.
James, check your edition of Voegelins “Science, Politics nd Gnosticism”. At 0:56:27 you ruminate about “thingness” (Intro). However, my edition reads “…the ancient gnostics respond to the condition of ‘flungness’ in the alien world.” And I am not aware of “thingness” as a Heideggerian term. Verdinglichung appears in Hegel, Marx and Adorno frequently. However, this is not thingness but rather reification.
James, You say gnosticism and hermeticism are difficult to describe. Historians of science have been describing it for several decades. From my book The Soul of Science:
In 1964 Frances Yates published a book that dramatically changed the study of science
history. She brought into the hallowed domain of science a whole host of things previously
shunned as unworthy of serious attention—mysticism, magic, religion. Titled Giordano
Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, Yates’s book argued that the Renaissance philosopher
Bruno (1548–1600), often portrayed as a martyr for the sake of science, was in reality no such thing. Instead, he was a magus who traveled across Europe preaching a pagan gospel rooted in mystical hermetic texts.
Bruno was, it is true, an early advocate of Copernican astronomy—hence his standard
portrayal as a hero of science. He is frequently treated as a representative of rationality, a ray of truth in a dogma-darkened world. For example, in The Making of the Modern Mind,
historian John Herman Randall describes Bruno as “the great martyr of the new science… a
man whose soul was set on fire by the Copernican discoveries.”
But this stirring picture ignores most of what Bruno actually wrote and said. His soul, it
turns out, was set on fire less by Copernicanism than by pagan religion. He regarded himself
as a missionary for the hermetic tradition, a movement based on the writing of Hermes
Trismegistus, erroneously thought to be an Egyptian sage from the time of Moses. The
hermetic writings frequently treat the sun as a god, and the rest of the universe as moving and hence alive. This, it turns out, was the real reason Bruno was attracted to Copernicus’s
heliocentrism. The divinity of the sun seemed compatible with an astronomy that granted it an honored position at the center of the planetary system.
Although Bruno also had some acquaintance with the scientific and mathematical basis of
Copernican theory, it was not on those grounds that he defended the theory but rather on
religious grounds. In the words of historian Hugh Kearney, “Bruno transformed a
mathematical synthesis into a religious doctrine.” Eventually, in the Inquisition Bruno was
burned at the stake—not because he courageously promulgated a better scientific theory, as is often maintained, but because he claimed to offer a better religion. He argued that the
Egyptian pantheism described in the hermetic writings was superior to Christianity.
Bruno was not the only thinker of his generation to plumb ancient mystical texts for
inspiration. Renaissance thinkers often sought wisdom from the ancients, which they hoped to present as an alternative to Aristotle’s philosophy, then the ruling orthodoxy in theology,
philosophy, and science. Among the alternatives that emerged was neo-Platonism, a mystical
philosophy from the third century that made extensive use of the hermetic writings. Bruno
participated in this broader revival of neo-Platonism.
The new interpretation of Bruno as a neo-Platonic mystic did not come easily to Frances
Yates. Originally, she says, she had simply intended to make an English translation of one of
Bruno’s writings “with an introduction emphasizing the boldness with which this advanced
philosopher of the Renaissance accepted the Copernican theory.” Yet as she read his works,
Yates was puzzled by a sense that what really concerned Bruno was not Copernicanism per se but something else. So thoroughly was she primed by the standard historical interpretation that it took several years of study to recognize that the interpretative key to Bruno’s thought was hermeticism.
By treating seriously the philosophical and religious context of the historical debate over
heliocentrism, Yates helped spur a new trend among science historians. She was among the
first to suggest that mysticism had exerted a positive impact on the origin of the scientific
outlook and was therefore a proper object of study for the historian. The Yates thesis, as it
came to be called, did not merely hold that science had emerged from a world permeated with magic and mysticism; that was already widely known. Her novel interpretation was that
mysticism produced a frame of mind that actually fostered the rise of modern science.
Standard histories of science treat magic and mysticism as the antithesis of science—as
superstitions that hindered the emergence of the modern scientific outlook. For example, Sir
James Jeans denounces the “dismal ages” of the medieval period as a time concerned with
alchemy, astrology, and magic—“wholly unprofitable quests.” Yet this interpretation of
history, Yates argues, has limited explanatory power. It can explain and follow the various stages leading to the emergence of modern science in the seventeenth century, but it does not explain why this happened at this time, why there was this intense new interest in the world of nature and its workings.
The “new interest” in nature had to come from outside science. In fact, it often came from
neo-Platonic and hermetic notions of natural magic. As Yates says, magic promoted a new
conception of humanity as an active controller of natural forces and inspired an effort to
understand nature’s mysterious workings.
The Yates thesis sparked extensive polemical debate and helped inspire a new generation
of historians who began to work on topics previously deemed marginal and insignificant.
https://www.amazon.com/Soul-Science-Christian-Natural-Philosophy/dp/0891077669
Renaissance humanism grew out of a revival of the hermetic, neo-Platonic tradition. From my book Saving Leonardo:
During the Renaissance, the Platonic Academy in Florence revived neo-Platonism. Philosophers such as Marsilio Ficino regarded it as a “perennial” wisdom given by God to the Gentiles, parallel to the Old Testament given to the Hebrews. As a result, they were convinced that they could harmonize this perennial wisdom with Christianity. What they really did was transform it into Renaissance humanism.
Recall that for neo-Platonism, the source of evil and suffering was dualism. The spirit was trapped within matter (the body), which was subject to death and corruption. Ficino’s philosophy thus began with the question: How can we overcome dualism? His answer was that humans must rule over matter. Created in the image of God, the human being must become a “terrestrial god.” He is “god of the animals” because he governs them; he is “god of all materials” because he uses them to manufacture the things he needs. Instead of calling for a monastic retreat *from* the world, Renaissance humanism called for mastery *of* the world. The old-age dichotomy of spirit and matter would be overcome as spirit conquers matter. In this way, writes one historian, Renaissance thinkers hoped to overcome “the impediments and limitations resulting from man’s dualistic nature.”
https://www.amazon.com/Saving-Leonardo-Secular-Assault-Meaning/dp/1433669277
You mentioned Madame Blavatsky. Artists are well aware of theosophy:
Hegel’s philosophy appeared before any of these archeological facts were available, so it was entirely speculative. Yet it had enormous impact. Spiritualized versions of evolution became hugely popular, especially among artistic and literary figures. They began flocking to assorted spiritual and mystical techniques—astrology, mediums, séances, automatic writing, psychic research, and spirit guides. They embraced occult philosophies such as Theosophy, which had roots in neo-Platonism. In earlier ages, as we have seen, theologians had sought to make neo-Platonism compatible with Christianity. But now people tended to be more intrigued by its affinities with Eastern thought. Schopenhauer became the first philosopher to import full-blown Buddhism into the West. (Nietzsche dubbed his philosophy “European Buddhism.”) Because Schopenhauer also offered a highly influential aesthetic theory, his Eastern ideas penetrated deeply into the art world.
However, it was a Russian medium named Madame Blavatsky who had the greatest impact
on artists. In the late nineteenth century she developed Theosophy into its modern form. It became a common-denominator mysticism that synthesized Eastern and Western thought, teaching that everything is part of an all-pervading divine essence. Through mystical experiences, the mind can evolve to higher levels of consciousness until it reaches a state of oneness with ultimate reality, the Absolute.,,,
Consider, for example, the twentieth-century abstract expressionist Ad Reinhardt, who was deeply influenced by Theosophy. He “developed a religious perspective that blends Eastern and Western mysticism to form what is, in effect, an artistic via negativa,” says
postmodern theologian Mark Taylor. Reinhardt is best known for a series of black paintings that represent, in his own words, a “mystical ascent.” The mind leaves
behind “the world of appearances” composed of separate images until it reaches an “undifferentiated unity.” In this state, there is “no consciousness of anything”
and “all distinctions disappear in darkness.” The mind attains “the divine dark.” It has immersed itself in the cloud of unknowing.
https://www.amazon.com/Saving-Leonardo-Secular-Assault-Meaning/dp/1433669277
I think the broader label that might be helpful is neo-Platonism.
Like the Romantics, the symbolists mined mythology and dream imagery. The dramatist
August Strindberg wrote plays with titles like The Ghost Sonata and A Dream Play. They believed that these dream-like symbols had immense power because they functioned as windows into a higher reality. Where did this conviction come from? It was derived from “the neo-Platonic concept . . . that natural forms were living symbols of a higher reality and that the artist’s imagination was the key that could reveal these spiritual truths.”21
That may sound abstract, but we can understand it better by focusing on that term neo-
Platonic. Though we have touched on this philosophy a few times already, we must now dig more deeply, for it played an enormous role in the continental tradition. Neo-Platonism was founded in the third century by a Greek philosopher named Plotinus, who sought to imbue philosophy with the inspirational power of a religion. He patched together elements from the major Western thinkers—Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics—then cast his net still further to include Eastern thought. From these diverse sources, Plotinus crafted a “big tent” worldview.
You might think of neo-Platonism as the New Age movement of the ancient world because it combined elements from both East and West .22 Its central concept, as we saw earlier, was that ultimate reality is the One, the Absolute. This was not a personal God who thinks, feels, wills, and acts. Instead it was a nonpersonal essence or substance. But how does a nonpersonal essence create the world, since it cannot consciously will or act? Neo-Platonism answered that the One was so “full” of being that it simply emanated other beings automatically, without conscious intention, like the sun radiating light or a fountain spurting water. The world was thus an emanation or manifestation of the divine being. Just as a fountain may cascade down in successive waterfalls, so the world consisted of several levels of being—first a succession of spiritual entities (somewhat like the ranks of angels), then humans, animals, plants, and finally rocks and inanimate matter. And just as the sun’s rays gradually fade into dark, so at each descending level, there was less spirit and more matter. The entire series of
emanations was called the Ladder of Life or Great Chain of Being. The goal of life was to reascend the ladder and re-unite in mystical union with the One.23
Back in the Roman Empire when neo-Platonism was first proposed, its main appeal was
that it offered an alternative to Christianity. During the first three centuries after Christ, the Christian church grew so rapidly that pagans began casting about for a philosophy attractive enough to counter it. Neo-Platonism seemed to fit the bill. It was not just a philosophy but also a mystical vision of spiritual ascent. Soon it was being wielded as a weapon by paganism in its battle against the church. When Roman emperors persecuted Christians, they often justified their harsh actions by citing the words of the neo-Platonic philosopher Porphyry, who was bitterly opposed to Christianity. In the fourth century, the emperor Julian tried to oust Christianity
and restore paganism as the official religion of the Roman Empire. Though he did not succeed, the form of paganism he sought to reinstate was neo-Platonism.
Plato and Modern Science
Despite this hostility to Christianity, surprisingly the church fathers did not reject neo-
Platonism outright. It did at least acknowledge the reality of a spiritual realm, in contrast to the materialist philosophers of the ancient world (such as Epicurus and Lucretius). Consequentlymany early Christian theologians—Clement, Origen, Augustine—reached over and borrowed philosophical arguments from neo-Platonism to defend doctrines such as the existence of the human soul. Augustine even said his conversion to Christianity was helped along by “certain books of the Platonists,” which historians believe were works by Plotinus. (The more precise term neo-Platonism was not coined until the nineteenth century.)
The writer whose neo-Platonism had the widest influence on later times went by the name of Dionysius the Areopagite, a convert of St. Paul mentioned in Acts 17:34. He was later discovered to be a fraud who lived four hundred years later, so today he is known as Pseudo-Dionysius. Yet for centuries his work was thought to be genuinely apostolic, and was therefore highly revered. Translated into Latin in the ninth century by John Scotus Eriugena, it influenced virtually of all of medieval theology.
During the Renaissance, this neo-Platonized Christianity became quite popular among
philosophers and artists (chapter 4). It also had a significant impact on the rise of modern science. Take heliocentrism, the idea that the sun, not the earth, is the center of the planetary system. Where did that idea come from? It was inspired by neo-Platonic dualism, in which God is the immanent soul of the material world. And what would be the most fitting place for the divine presence to be concentrated or localized? The sun. Just as God is the spiritual source of life, so the sun is the physical source of life on earth. And where should the sun be located? The most fitting place was the center of the universe, the only position compatible with its dignity as a divine symbol.
We detect a touch of this neo-Platonized Christianity in the writings of Copernicus, Kepler, and other champions of heliocentrism. In his writings, Copernicus quoted neo-Platonic literature hailing the sun as “the Visible God.” He described the sun as “the Lamp, the Mind, the Ruler of the Universe [who] sits as upon a royal throne ruling his children the planets which circle around him.” In a similar vein, Kepler wrote that the sun “alone appears, by virtue of his dignity and power, suited for this motive duty and worthy to become the home of God himself.”
Thus the concept of heliocentrism arose not so much for empirical reasons as for philosophicaland spiritual reasons.24
Among the early chemists, neo-Platonic dualism led to the conviction that every natural
substance consists of matter (called the passive element) combined with an internal divine spark or vital force (called the active element). The active element in any substance was thought to be the source of its potency—which is why the labels on medicine bottles still list the “active ingredients.” Paracelsus, one of the founders of the chemical approach to medicine in the sixteenth century, decided that the active or spiritual ingredients could be discovered by heating and distillation. For example, alcohol was referred to as the “spirit of wine”—which is why alcoholic drinks are still sometimes referred to as spirits.
Even the great Isaac Newton retained elements of neo-Platonism, especially in his theory of gravity. The mechanistic scientists of his day taught that causes and effects must have direct physical contact—just as a billiard ball can cause another ball to move only by colliding with it. But Newton’s concept of gravity works without any physical contact. The earth does not physically push and pull the moon to keep it in its orbit. Instead it exerts an invisible, intangible force. To mechanistic thinkers, that sounded like magic, not science. They reacted the way we might react to a movie scene when blue lightning zigzags out of a Jedi’s finger and causes a spaceship to rise.
Where, then, did Newton get his idea of force? From a neo-Platonized Christianity which suggested that invisible spiritual forces—active elements—represented God’s immanent power working in and through the created order. As one historian explains, the concept of force “served for Newton as a manifestation of the divine in the sensible world.”
Given this brief background, we can understand why the Romantics still considered neo-Platonism a live option for buttressing a spiritualized view of nature.
https://www.amazon.com/Saving-Leonardo-Secular-Assault-Meaning/dp/1433669277
One more comment–the relation of Hegel to neo-Platonism. From my book Finding Truth:
When the Romantics reached out for conceptual tools to
defend their spiritualized conception of the world, they revived
neo-Platonism, a version of idealism with roots in the third century.
University courses in philosophy often skip neo-Platonism.
(I did not have a course on it until graduate school.) Yet it had a
significant influence on Western history.25
As the name suggests, neo-Platonism started out with Plato’s
thought, which was patched together with bits and pieces from
other Greek schools of thought and then spiced with Eastern pantheism.
From these diverse sources, neo-Platonism crafted a “big
tent” worldview. You might think of it as the New Age movement
of the ancient world, combining elements from both East and
West.
The central tenet of neo-Platonism was that the world is an
emanation of a spiritual substance called the One or the Absolute.
Like a fountain cascading down through multiple levels, the One
emanated a descending series that flowed down through several
levels: from spiritual entities to human beings, then to sentient
creatures (animals), living things (plants), and finally material
things (rocks). This was called the ladder of life or the great chain
of being. The goal of the spiritual life was to re-ascend the ladder,
escape from matter, and reunite with the One.26
What attracted the Romantics to neo-Platonism was the
idea that nature is permeated by soul or spirit. For the idealists,
says Eagleton, the Absolute served “as a form of secularized
divinity.” This was not a personal God who thinks, feels, wills, and
acts. It was a non-personal spiritual essence or substance. Ralph
Waldo Emerson called it the Over-soul: “the soul of the whole …
the eternal ONE.”27
Hegel’s Evolutionary Deity
Neo-Platonism was given a novel twist by the philosopher Hegel,
who added the concept of historical development or evolution.
Until then, the ladder of life had been static. It was a fixed list
or inventory of the things that exist in the universe. But with
Hegel, the ladder became dynamic. To picture the change, you
might think of the ladder tilting over to become an escalator, with
the entire universe progressing upward through a series of stages.
Hegel called his pantheistic deity the Absolute Spirit or Universal
Mind. And because it was the soul of the world, it was said to
evolve along with the world.28
What Hegel was offering was a spiritualized version of evolution.
(Nietzsche even said that “without Hegel, there would
have been no Darwin.”) The difference is that Hegel applied the
concept of evolution not to biology but to the world of ideas. His
claim was that all our ideas—law, morality, religion, art, political
ideals—result from the gradual “actualization of the Universal
Mind” over the course of history. Everything is caught up in a vast
historical process advancing toward a final perfect state.29
For many people, the law of historical progress functioned as
a substitute for divine Providence. “When science seemed to take
God out of the universe, men had to deify some natural force, like
‘evolution,’” explains Randall.30 A goal-oriented version of evolution
comforted people with the hope that every event has a reason,
a purpose, within the upward progress of the universe as a whole.
https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Truth-Principles-Secularism-Substitutes-ebook/dp/B00QN345NG
Throughout history any movement that opted to escape matter were stating this via the survival of a disembodied Spirit, mostly including a survival of the Personality also. It tended to be difficult for these teachers to have their initiates understand death denial philosophy without the individual personality living on beyond dualism. It suffices it to say that even figures like Blavatsky tended to be quite inadequate unless she explained herself so they students could be themselves when ‘Dead’. It is obvious why, very few people have such spiritual integrity and selflessness, that they’ll believe they know nothing concerning what they are being expected to study. Once they are dead. Or ‘Passed’ if thats more politically correct. Of course this far from means that anyone minded to escape dualism was/is a ‘Spiritualist’ as is understood by standards of an organised religion thats under 150 years old. However people in that movement are of the opinion that Jesus ( for instance ) might have been the worlds greatest ever ‘Medium’ etc. Thus many spiritualists believe its an ancient belief. It probably is, i’d just not be too sure how old their formats are. For example they claim to bring messages from the dead, give psychic insight/advice, they belief in EVP, ESP etc and automatic writing/drawing on fee basis.
But really this things most common denominator about dualism and the absolute is impossible to unleash from the concept of Spirit.
While the podcast here is having a bit of a mare while it uses a stream of consciousness to debunk stream of consciousness )et al ) it seems like, Tapping into an Absolute or collective consciousness as Jung remarked. :
is Gnostic = Globalist Evilest. according to this video
Elite people that definitely are financing sick social engineering programs against all other people, but don’t get this line with James, its so way off. Hes as bright as a button in all the other stuff, but this ?
James
This line of your work contains too much nonsense. And its such incredible nonsense that you really ought to know better before it becomes some kind of beginning of an end or something. These talks are beyond all reason and are a weird struggle with the plain old mind body problem debate!
Its as though you are literally at odds with any system of belief which sought to place the human mind in a position of this ‘Gnosis’, which in itself is only a concept whereby its believers speculate on the creative aspects of the mind. Thus in effect here you’d be at war with all the poets which i’d leave unnamed for simplicity. But also the like of John Lennon, Jon Anderson of Yes, Geddy Lee & Neil Peart & Alex Lifeson of Rush, Then theres people like Jackson Pollock, the avante gardists, gestalt psychology et al & in fact the list is endless.
In order for you to make even slight sense here you require a transhumanist position of some type. I’m not sure what that might be, but perhaps along lines of (say) this basic
* since the human brain is just a chemical machine – therefore – it is wrong for anyone to speculate on its ability to create thoughts independent of this process*
So i quote just a very fundamental position from atheism concerning the debate about the brain, Which tbh is a mind body problem matter usually vs Descartes. To me it just fels like you are being outraged that any person throughout history dare behave as though there is a MIND in addition to a BRAIN & that the mind might be able to take one line of thought – then another line of thought – then mix them together – and thus emerge with another line of thought that is unique from the inputs. To you thats sinister and its what the globalists of today were building up to from 7000 BC ?
I dunno what to say really if someones going to struggle with the mind body debate in this grotesque way. Richard Dawkins certainly should be publicly spanked on youtube by a group of leather clad gay boys for twisting you mind thats for sure.
As for this mind earth / mind is a prison to be despised and escaped from thing. It about yes, but its the Spiritualists who do that stupid. They do it as really behind their worshippers backs freemasons infiltrated their movement as soon as it became lucrative with people donating real estate and fortunes to them. With any spiritual or mystical religion, – if first takes decades until people have lived in these things ( well naturally it does ). Once a cult religion like spiritualism has matured , then the people whose blindly followed start handing over valuable as they die etc. Masons make sure they’ve infiltrated where this is at. In some ways then you are getting confused between lower level toe rags freemasons who manipulate the more minor religion. They do that get hold of peoples wills, and its not big enough for global establishment either to be interested or connected – well certainly in spiritualisms case, the main exponents of this idea that the earth is a prison. In fact a flaw in what you say is evident as i think you say Mind is a prison to these people ? To people interested in the mind / ‘Gnosis’ ? Are you serious ? It has both freedom to act as a gnostic tool of mind and they feel an imprisoned oxymoron ?
Well – the atheist argument is just as valid as it always was. The mind body debate ditto. Its worth noting where some get easily confused with the mind body problem here. ‘The Brain’ is in fact of the same physicality as the body in this argument. We really do have to make sure we are struct in understanding that all or anyone debating is treating the physical brain as flesh like the body, and the ‘Mind’ as this bone of contention. Otherwise its not actually a mind body debate but a misconception. People do it, even well educated people do it trust me 🙂
If you’ve got issues with the mind body problem you should deal with that first, Not essentially as remarked just above, that doesn’t;’t have to be the dilemma at all. The extended regions of the debate are not much different from the local regions inasmuch as its
about whether theres chemical reaction or more. Its basically a Atheists vs Believers argument, just as thats exactly what you are doing in a most unprofessional way James.
You are wasting your time and energy of a flawed project.
Theres some globalists in esoteric religion. Most of them have a religion of doing personal stuff with other people where its very arguable that no human should do that stuff. Some have ‘bits’ of them that don’t work properly anymore & they turn to nasty things that can reinvigorate a dying nervous system in search of mental excitement. Really most collect trillions watch a lot of TV & go to balls with other who do precisely the same. They ARE idiots after all.
You are on a hiding to nothing with this stuff James and really should refine and perfect other material before you are looking back wishing you did one day. Don’t throw it all away. New Atheism was a cynical mindless wind up of a commercial enterprise that served No Genuine Purpose.
Inside these talks IS NA & its being being heuristically trivial all over again.
Give us the 20 minutes. Marxism isn’t that hard to understand, nor is WOKE. Just call it Confusion and Evil on a large scale. I love listening to you, but say it in less words…..
Sorry to have to say it.
Lenin enabled Marx’s rescue from obscurity in the early 20th Century.
https://mobile.twitter.com/PhilWMagness/status/1608506473142697986
https://watergate.info/1960/08/21/nixon-the-meaning-of-communism-to-americans.html