Multicultural gnosticism

Here is something I just came across which I wrote in February 1991, when I was reading and thinking a lot on the subject of gnosticism:

Gnosticism in its original form says this world is inherently evil, fundamentally separated from God, and that truth can only be found by hidden knowledge, gnosis. Augustine overcame gnosticism by showing the relationship between the City of Man and the City of God. The City of Man is inherently imperfect, but it is created by God, and ideals of justice can be pursued within it, even though the full realization of justice can only occur in the City of God. Augustine’s vision presents a kind of hierarchy of truth rather than an absolute dualism. The Augustinian conception made culture possible because it showed that there were divinely ordained principles—even if imperfectly realized—at work in this world. Gnosticism, on the other hand, makes any kind of sustained culture impossible, because it denies that there can be any value or sanctity in the natural and political world. As H.B. Parkes says, “A civilization cannot preserve its vitality unless its institutions are seen as embodiments of ultimate values and ideals.” Gnosticism denies that any earthly institution can embody ultimate values and ideals.

Now, our modern antinomian philosophies all turn out to be forms of gnosticism: feminism; deconstruction; Marxism; the view that U.S. is inherently racist, and so on. What they all have in common is the view that the current order of civilization (analogous to “the world” in Christian terms) is inherently “evil,” sustained by “false consciousness.” True culture (analogous to God) can only be realized by an intellectual vanguard possessed of esoteric truth. And like the religious gnosticism, the modern gnosticisms deny that values can be inherent in existing cultural forms. So when we speak of the denial of value in modern culture, we are speaking about gnosticism.

The idea that justice can only be realized in a totally multiracial/multicultural society is a form of gnosticism because it makes the current order not merely imperfect while capable of reform, but inherently evil and devoid of value. And because the multiracial utopia is a fantasy that can never be realized, multiracial gnosticism denies the possibility of value in any conceivable social system existing in this world. So it is a perfect set-up for a gnostic priesthood which gains power over society by convincing people of their inherent and irredeemable “sinfulness,” i.e., their racism. (See pp. 32, 65 of The Path to National Suicide; here is pdf with original pagination.)

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Kristor writes:

The thing I could never understand about gnosticism is how the gnostics could fail to notice that, since gnosticism is a feature of the created order, then if the whole created order is evil and twisted, so is gnosticism. Likewise, with liberalism, if the whole of the West is evil, then liberalism, as a feature thereof, is likewise evil. These absolutist philosophies often end by making themselves impossible; but their proponents seldom seem to notice that, if they are true, they are false.

Before the discovery of the Nag Hammadi library, our best source of information about the Gnostics was Irenaeus, who sought to demolish them. His method was simply to describe their theosophical systems, and let absurdity thereof speak for itself. VFR is doing much the same thing, in respect to liberalism.

Felicie writes from Europe:

I am not sure about this. The most salient feature of utopian ideologies—Marxism, feminism, multiculturalism—is, as I see it, their underlying belief in the infinite perfectibility of human nature. If we only raise people’s consciousness, if we only educate them sufficiently, if we only foster the new type of consciousness (that of a Communist-builder, for instance), etc … etc … then all our problems are going to disappear. How does this chime with gnosticism? I don’t know.

LA replies:

But isn’t the notion of this-worldly perfectibility a gnostic idea?

The key thing to remember is that there are many variations of gnosticism. Some condemn “this world” as total illusion. Some envision the perfectibility of “this world.” But the idea they all share in common is that the current order of things—whether we’re speaking of the cosmic order or the social order—is not what it appears to common sense and the common experience of mankind, but is rather a “vast right wing conspiracy” that traps our true selves, which must be liberated. The liberation may take the form of knowledge of the one true god beyond this false world and its false creator God (the God of Genesis is a false God according to the gnostics). Or it may take the form of a perfected humanity and perfected social order, where all men will be equal and hold property (and wives) in common. Whatever the specific contents of the gnostic goal, it represents a reversal of the current order, a reversal of the order of the world as seen by ordinary rationality and common sense.

As an example, consider Rousseau. Rousseau said that before civilization men lived in a state of equality and mutual compassion, and that civilization ruined this primordial state of human goodness and harmony. But of course Rousseau was writing this (as I remember) in a comfortable country house and harmonious pleasant surroundings that had been made possible by the civilization that he was saying was the source of all human misery. To say that the primitive state of mankind was happy, virtuous, and equal, and that Christian civilization created inequality and meanness, is a gnostic reversal of ordinary experience, certainly of the ordinary experience of the ordinary inhabitants of Christian civilization. In fact, it was Christian civilization that gave birth to and cultivated the very virtues that Rousseau claimed had belonged to the primitive state of nature and were destroyed by Christian civilization.

Ken Hechtman, VFR’s Canadian leftist reader, writes:

You wrote:

What they all have in common is the view that the current order of civilization (analogous to “the world” in Christian terms) is inherently “evil,” sustained by “false consciousness.” True culture (analogous to God) can only be realized by an intellectual vanguard possessed of esoteric truth. And like the religious gnosticism, the modern gnosticisms deny that values can be inherent in existing cultural forms. So when we speak of the denial of value in modern culture, we are speaking about gnosticism.

The idea that justice can only be realized in a totally multiracial/multicultural society is a form of gnosticism because it makes the current order not merely imperfect while capable of reform, but inherently evil and devoid of value. And because the multiracial utopia is a fantasy that can never be realized, multiracial gnosticism denies the possibility of value in any conceivable social system existing in this world.

Well said, sir.

I had to read 300 pages of Norman Cohn’s “Pursuit of the Millenium” and make my own leap of logic to figure out what you explained in two paragraphs:

This is where the left comes from. These are our ideological ancestors, the Origin of our Species, if you will. We don’t like to talk about them much. We find them a bit embarrassing. Even professional “historians of the left” like Howard Zinn won’t talk about them. We prefer to begin our family tree with Karl Marx as if he spontaneously called himself and his ideas into existence fully formed. But you look at the Christian heretics, especially the medieval ones who built on and re-invented Gnosticism a thousand years later—Cathars and Hussites and Anabaptists and such—and the family resemblance is too obvious to deny.

LA replies:

Thank you, and thank you for your honesty about where the left is coming from. Of course, my basic understandings of gnosticism ancient and modern come from reading Eric Voegelin, who had the genius insights concerning the similarity between the two.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 21, 2007 04:15 PM | Send