tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post2588205878631567495..comments2024-03-15T00:12:57.489-07:00Comments on Covenant Zone: Velvet Fascism (8.1): Death Hippies and the Mud-Peopletruepeershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16401984575637492845noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-52651178771852861002007-03-29T15:34:00.000-07:002007-03-29T15:34:00.000-07:00This is an exciting post, as your vision is becomi...This is an exciting post, as your vision is becoming whole, catholic, though I imagine newcomers will still need help tying the pieces together. I know I still need time to digest all the ideas here. It's hard to know where to begin with a comment, there's so much.... I think I'm in sympathy with most of what you say. One thing that prodded my critical eye was this:<BR/><BR/><I>Variations abound throughout history. to deny the commonality of contemporary gnosticism with that of Plato is to have missed an essential point. It is the essence if not the details that makes one Gnostic the same as another, regardless of the changing nonsense of time and terms.</I><BR/><BR/>-but what is this "essence"? I think it is not really some metaphysical quality but rather some kind of experience of existence that, in its basic form, is shared by people across the generations. How do we go about better detailing this experience so that people can grasp Gnosticism at a level more plain than that of its various symbolic gymnastics through time. I move on from this query to question this remark:<BR/><BR/><I>Gnosticism in personal living is not significantly important to discuss. Gnosticism as cultural motif is oft times not merely deadly but geonocidal.</I><BR/><BR/>-while I obviously share your sense that Gnosticism really becomes most dangerous under modern conditions of "secular" totalitarian ideology, why is the "personal living" not significant to discuss? You are basically saying, I am only going to tackle Gnosticism as a political question and am not going to play the dirty game of making the personal political. OK, but how are you really going to help someone who has - as most Canadians have - a personal spiritual struggle that is wrapped up in Gnostic ideas, and thus help us insure that there will be less support in future for Gnostic politicians? Don't we need to under the basic experience of Gnosticism at a personal level? IN other words, can the solution to the Gnosticism problem be political? Must we not ultimately work at the level of the individual soul in existential and spiritual struggle if we are to get serious about this problem?<BR/><BR/>Then, moving on to the political (once the spiritual base is sound), must we not find a way of offering our fellow citizens new kinds of experiences in relations with each other? Must we not offer to join with them in covenants and not just in political debate about Gnosticism? Or, does it make more sense to stick with the political, provide each other covenantal experiences at the political level, and hope and expect that people will then work backwards to the spiritual and faith questions on their own? I suppose we need people working both sides of the question.<BR/><BR/>The comment on Islam being Mithraic came as a bit of a jolt. Is that a common assumption? It's new to me, though I know very little about Mithraism. I tend to think of Islam as a Jewish heresy, less something Persian. Anyway, after denying Islam Gnostic status, you then go on to lump Allah with Hitler and Stalin in terms of the desire for a Genius/Fuhrer figure, which is confusing.<BR/><BR/>Finally, just a thought on the belief that history is linear. Linear views of history are obviously a product of thinking about the shape of the past, and then wrongly projecting this vision of the past onto the future. IN other words, when we look at the past, we see a series of events that seem to relate one to the other in some kind of logical progression. Sure, according to any measures of ethical progress, we see lots of steps backwards and sideways, and not just forwards, but in the long run there clearly is some kind of development towards greater freedom and complexity in human societies (there is greater ethical or organizational complexity, if not any greater moral knowledge or progress at the individual level - as exemplified by the like of, say, a Joseph Mengele). WHat's more, once something big happens, there is no going back, and everything that comes after is in some sense a reaction to that event, so that the event seems to be a determining, or at least powerful, force shaping what comes after as a series of reactive steps. Of course, the moment before something big happens, none of this is clear and the future is truly unpredictable and awaits the choices of human freedom as to what will happen. <BR/><BR/>So, the past looks linear and yet the future is truly open-ended, and our position in the present is thus a confusing existence between the linear pressures of the past and the unshaped future, as if we are in the delta of a river opening into a vast ocean with tides and currents pushing back up river. Those who can't stand the existential uncertainty of the tidal delta, want a vision of the river charging right through the ocean to some end point. Hence all the Gnostic fantasies. We need to help people live with the uncertainty of the ocean, even as we learn to understand ourselves by studying the river and all its tributaries.truepeershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16401984575637492845noreply@blogger.com