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DECONSTRUCTING THE “GREAT BOOKS”:
Note: I wrote this essay in November and December
1993. It outlines some of the basic ideas that I would pursue for some years
to come. A few of the basic ideas behind my book the Empire of the
Intellect are outlined here. I have edited this essay slightly in 2004,
but none of the changes are very substantial.
Myths are stories that organize a culture's conceptions of knowledge and power into patterns of action and behavior. The Illiad is such a myth. The Gods in the Illiad are paradigms of the knowledge deemed desirable by the Greek society of the time. This is to say that the Illiad is not merely a story but a total vision of reality to which the original hearers of the poem would have sought to adhere. My first question about the Illiad was to determine what the text itself can tell me about Homer's motive in writing the book as he did, and what he wished to impart to the hearers of the poem through the book. It became clear that the purpose of the book was to exhibit to the ancient Greeks the power of the Gods and the necessity of acting in accord with the will of Zeus. The book conveys a vision of what is knowable in the universe, and how man should behave in relation to the Gods, who organize the universe in a manner dictated by the will of Zeus. The religion of Homer implies a politics . Having answered the question of the fundamental intention of the Illiad, I could then inquire into the meaning of the Illiad as a part of Greek history. It became clear that the theory of knowledge imparted by the Illiad was fundamental to Greek culture, and that the motive of Greek culture would develop and become differentiated by the age of Plato and Alexander the Great. I was then in a position to compare the theory of knowledge of Homer to that of Plato, especially as Plato goes to some lengths to criticize Homer. Plato's intention in criticizing Homer is clearly the result of Plato's effort to centralize knowledge in the service of the totalistic state that he advocates in the Republic. Thus I began to realize that Plato's theory of knowledge is also a theory of action, specifically a gnostic theory of action. Having answered these questions as best I could then I considered the overall refinement of barbarism and the exquisite horror by which Homer describes the endless battle scenes of the Illiad. I had begun to realize that the theory of knowledge in both Homer and Plato results in a theory of social control and action, and that therefore Plato's theory of knowledge was not only questionable but that it was central to the development of knowledge systems used as a means to social control and empire building in the west. Thus I began to discover the relation of Homer and Plato to Christ, the Roman Empire and the eventual unfolding of a dominant European culture which extended itself over the globe. I began to understand why Homer and Plato are considered "classics", and how these “classics” influence German, English. French and American efforts to build empires of their own. I began to realize that it is no longer possible to have an uncritical attitude to these so called “great books”. Indeed, I began to realize that the need to be great or powerful, or the need to attain to a transcendent or total knowledge carry within themselves seeds of injustice and corruption. (1) The discovery that Plato's theory of knowledge is actually a theory of action (a politics), and thus enshrines a will to power, and that this will to power is fundamental to western culture even today , indicated to me the need of a more thorough inquiry into the relation of knowledge systems to the will to power. I am calling this relation of knowledge systems to the will to power the ‘gnostic tradition’, and what follows is a general inquiry into the nature of a development of the gnostic tradition, with particular attention upon, but not restricted to Homer and Plato, But gnostic systems are extremely diverse, and this paper will explore some general aspects of this diversity.
GNOSTICISM The general question I am asking of Homer and Plato regards the nature of knowledge systems: how do theories of knowledge operate within societies and what is the relation of a theory of knowledge to the way a society organizes itself In order to situate and explain the function of knowledge in the Homeric or Platonic world view and then explain how Homer and Plato are situated in the history and development of ideas, it is necessary to explain the nature of knowledge systems. The larger question here is; what is knowledge?-but to answer this question requires first that one determine what knowledge is not. The best way to determine what knowledge is not is to trace the development of knowledge systems over time and chart their actual results. To do this one must inquire how knowledge has been treated or enshrined in the myths and ideas of other cultures. Eventually it may be possible to determine what knowledge is, but this paper will be concerned, primarily, with what knowledge is not. *** The historian Eric Voegelin defines Gnosticism as "the enterprise of returning the Pnuema [spirit] in man from its state of alienation in the cosmos to the divine pneuma of the Beyond through action based on knowledge".(2) I would agree with this definition insofar as gnosticism is a theory of knowledge that dictates a theory of action that assumes man's alienation. But I think Voegelin's understanding of gnosticism is too restricted. Voegelin's own gnostic or Platonic presuppositions prevented him from seeing the extent of gnosticism. He seeks, for instance, to justify Platonic gnosticism, while condemning modern forms of gnosticism being "deformations". Such "deformations” include Romanticism, Marxism, Fascism and other forms of gnosticism which appeared in the wake of the French Revolution. Voegelin's blindness toward the extent of Gnosticism arises from a strain of rather reactionary and mystical orthodoxy in his philosophy which is itself gnostic. He resembles the Traditionalists in attempt to revert to ancient metaphysical explanations, and to the “Classics”, particularly to the Greeks. Voegelin applies the concept of gnosticism so broadly that it seems to take in everything. Moreover his philosophy of history is politically on the far-right and his metaphysical ideas are archaic, conservative and repressive. It might be possible to say that Voegelin’s notion of ‘gnosticism” is too restrictive to his political beliefs, which I do not share. The term gnosticism is therefore questionable. The word "gnosis" is Greek, and is the origin of our word "knowledge". I use the word gnosis as a synonym for system of knowledge that involves a will to power. My definition of the term is both more exact that Voeglin’s and broader. Voegelin’s own system is a “gnostic system”. My definition has the accent on knowledge that has both a metaphysical and a social purpose. Therefore, I begin at the outset by saying that my definition is wider than Voegelin's and very much wider than the usual designation of gnosticism as referring to the Christian sects that uprose in the first few centuries after Christ. These sects are gnostic, but they are not very important in the history of what I mean by gnosticism. Both St. John and the Catholic Church itself, are far more typical of what I mean by gnosticism. Indeed, Augustine, history demonstrates, had a much more far reaching and destructive influence than the Donatists and other groups whose ruthless destruction Augustine advocated and participated in. Under Augustine's authority whole towns of these groups were murdered, and Augustine's writings were among the primary texts which justified the torturous practices of the Inquisition.(3) It is important therefore, to make clear what gnosticism is before moving on to the way in which metaphysical and epistemological systems are developed into the equation of knowledge and power. Gnosticism is a theory of knowledge by which a theory of action is imposed upon a society. For this to occur it is necessary that there be a systematic effort to conform conformation of the will of the people in the society to a Symbol (such as God, the Party, the Furher, The Church etc.), or a set of symbols, of what the elite of this society consider to be ultimately real. In gnostic systems a theory of knowledge is always a theory of social power. Thus all the major religions are gnostic systems, Taoism, Islam, Buddhism , Christianity and so on. So is Marxism. The emphasis in a gnostic system is upon the conformation of the will to the theory of knowledge. This is crucial because the ability to command obedience to a knowledge system is essential to the perception of the systems credibility. Those who are to profit from a system of knowledge generally impose their beliefs on a population by force or by media control. The credibility of the Catholic Church, for instance, rests partly on the fact that for centuries the Church has cultivated lies with political powers, armies, banks and states that can impose the will of the church by force. But in addition the Church Magisterium, or hierarchy of the Church, has been able to convince the “faithful” of the infallible, non-negotiable and unquestionable nature of dogma, doctrine and Papal Authority or the Authority of Scripture. This is accomplished by rites, feasts, iconography, literature, the Sacraments and other methods of conforming the will through the control of sexual, emotional, physical and psychological factors. This amounts to a system of suggestion and mind control that is extremely sophisticated and effective. It is all the more effective when this process of conformation of the will occurs in an individual such that the individual believes he has chosen obedience out of the freedom of his own will. The writings of Augustine are a particularly good example of the gnostic will to power masked behind a professed humility and obedience that affects to freely choose self abandonment to divine power, but who uses this humility in service of the motive a creating a world conquering and totalitarian institution. The essence of gnosticism is the equation of
knowledge and power imposed through action. It probably would be easier to
simply refer to gnosticism as “knowledge/power”, since the conjunction
“knowledge/power” is what I mean the gnosticism. But for this essay I will
retain the use of gnosticism in order to emphasize the peculiarly mental
nature of knowledge/power systems. In Marx the Symbol God is replaced by the Symbol of the State, which assumes a quasi divine role. The state is the "supreme individual" Marx said. For Marx, "man is god for man".5 This idea of man as god is actually a logical development of Christian ideology, derived by Marx from Hegel's conception of the intellect as the embodiment of the Logos, and the vehicle of a universal self consciousness. In any case, the nature of gnostic systems is such that they are prone to a hopeless competitiveness and presumption of uniqueness, and therefore Christians and Marxists tend to project their own narrow-minded will to power upon the other, who is then blamed for that which, in fact both are guilty Gnostic systems generate power, and power wants all rights to itself, and Platonism and Christianity, or Marxism and Christianity only cooperate with each other if their is some advantage to be gained. All three of these systems are gnostic because they seek to impose a theory of knowledge by force, and all three seek to radically reform man according to system of belief which men could only refuse under threat of some kind of punishment in this world or the next. I point out that the same gnostic pattern exists in all three of these systems because the partisans of each of these systems would only accept comparison with the others if advantage could be seen. The combination of Plato and St. John, in the early Church Fathers, resulted because the Greek concept of total knowledge combined with the gnosticism of St John and the missionary zealotry of St. Paul to produce the totally centralized Christian State. The combination of Christianity and Marxism likewise represents a grudging union of two gnosticisms for the purpose of achieving a new form of social power and control.(8) In any case, the hostility of these systems to one another is typical of gnostic systems in general, as is the tendency to merge somewhat with other systems. A system that presumes to be able to attain a vision of total knowledge is able to claim, in some cases, a nearly absolute loyalty from its followers. The will to power that encourages this loyalty, also encourages the attempt to defeat rival gnostic systems. This bitter rivalry of Christians and communists being a case in point, when, in fact, both systems are gnostic systems formed on the same basic pattern of ideas. Gnosticism then, is a system of knowledge that generates a theory of action which results in the equation of knowledge and power. The "purest" gnostic systems are to be found in Plato, Christianity, Hinduism, Vedanta, Islam, (especially Sufism), Egyptian religion and society, the Roman Empire, Romanticism, from Hegel and Marx, Taoism, and modern science, though in this later case, there are complicating factors. These are some of the principle forms of gnostic systems, there are others. Virtually any system of knowledge that is used as a poltical tool to subjugate or create an unequal system of power is what I mean here by the term ‘gnostic system. The presence of gnostic systems of knowledge in so many
cultural contexts is due to its success in generating systems of power, and
not to the supposed truth of a "Perennial Philosophy". The Perennial
Philosophy, with its thesis of the "transcendent unity of the religions"
does not in fact prove that there is any underlying truth behind the great
systems of knowledge and the civilizations that resulted from them. It
merely draws attention to the fact that the social utility of certain
theories, ideologies and myths were employed by diverse peoples who had
similar motivations and ambitions to expand empires, achieve power, and
create self-justifying systems of self glorification through mythical,
ideological or and symbolic constructions. The Perennial Philosophy itself
is an outgrowth of romanticism and a nostalgia for former knowledge
systems, such as the ancient theocracies, which employed hierarchical and
totalitarian systems of social control. It is a reactionary ideology, that
has kinship to all forms of fundamentalism, from Confucianism, Hindu,
Catholic and Islamic fundamentalism. It is usually fiercely
anti-democratic, hateful of the "modern world” has a certain kinship to
Fascism and the Monarchism of De Maistre or Metternick, who wished to turn
back the Enlightenment and return to the glory of the days of the divine
rights of Kings. (9) The creation of a
gnostic system of knowledge occurs when human motives or concrete
occurrences are detached from the original motives or things that inspired
them and thereby given independent status. The World of the Ideas, as Plato
called it, or Heaven, as the Chinese or Christians call it, eventually comes
to be considered more "real" than the world that we actually live in. (11).
When the world of the Gods or the world Beyond, is considered to be more
real than this world, then a tension is set up between the actual world and
the imagined transcendent world. This tension results in a continual need to
assert the superiority of the world of symbols or concepts over the world
that actually exists. Someone must be able to traverse the gulf between the
world that actually exists and the symbol-reality that is postulated in
myths, religions and conceptual abstractions. This is the supposed to be the
business of saints, geniuses and other culture heroes, shamans, kings,
priests, scientists and artists. Saints, for instance, are those who claim
to have entered into union with the reality of the Symbol, or are
martyred for the Symbol and who thus indirectly attest, or "witness" to the
greater Reality assumed to be Beyond. But because there is no actual proof
of the facts claimed by the religion or mythic system, endless numbers of
saints must be piled one atop or another. The need to continually assert
afresh the reality of the greater world beyond this world results in there
having to be new saints that die for the faith, new philosophers to explain
the mystery of the unexplainable, new artwork created to illustrate the
nature of the imaginary Creator.(12) This is why Plato in his Republic calls for the "conjunction of political power and philosophical intelligence" (13). This is also why Muhammed felt justified in brandishing the "Sword of Gnosis", that is the sword of his spiritual knowledge, and used this ideological sword to cut off real human heads in the name of God. This is also why Christ said that” I come not to bring peace on earth but a sword, to turn brother against brother and sister against sister”. The gnostic seeks to gain power over reality through the power of creating and sustaining a transcendent image or symbol. The symbol actually has no power except that which is invested in it by association. Religious concepts are conjuring tricks, intellectual sleight of hand. The symbols symbolize human needs, motives and perceptions, but are not these motives or perceptions. But once the symbol is created, and it must be continually refreshed and recreated to exist, it becomes a way of gaining control over human motives and perception and thereby a way of orchestrating reality. By seeking to identify himself with a transcendent Symbol of his own making man seeks to exalt himself to the level of the Symbol. This occurs in the most diverse cultural settings. For instance, a Shaman in an Alaskan tribe will work himself into a trance in order to penetrate into the world where sick souls go, and will actually ascend a mythological tree in search of the offending cause of the illness, and return to the ordinary world. The reward this activity is that the medicine man becomes an important member of the tribe, he achieves recognition, and he lives near the power center of his people. In the case of Christianity, the Shamanistic journey to the "real" world beyond is not necessary because the mythical Christ himself is claimed to have made the journey and absolved the need of other such journeys. This act of "salvation" is exclusive, total and unique. Christ, by his resurrection, becomes a Symbol of total knowledge, and therefore both the image of the total universe, as well as an image of the power that created and will end the universe. The creation of an apocalyptic theory of knowledge is essential in Christianity because the only way that God can become a man is for God to kill his "Son", as redemption depends on this sacrifice. However, because "I and my Father are one", in a certain sense God is killing himself, in willing his son's death. The price of God being killed is that man must be destroyed, unless man should prove himself obedient to God. The martyrdom of Christ thus creates an illusion of universal indebtedness which acts to prepare "souls" to be receptive to control. Thus when God sees his Son on the Cross and says "this is my Son in whom I am well pleased" he is expressing the paradox of the knowledge power relationship. God has willed his own sons death in order to prove his power over the world by willing his crucifixion, but, at the same time, this gruesome death is offered as a gift for mankind, a gift for which no one has asked, and a gift that required his sons death. But yet this "free gift" has a price after all; those who accept this gift of God's love will be eternally saved, but those who refuse this gift will be eternally damned. The whole procedure is thus really a form of psychological rape, and the symbols of this rape are the crucifixion itself. The identification of Christians with this image creates an psychological elevation of victims above all others, and it is this that gives Christians an absurd sense of superiority over all other peoples as well as animals and nature. To consider the basic
Christian ‘modus operandi’ some what differently…, It is as if, suddenly,
the humble shepherd and Prince of Peace has become a tyrant and a power
broker, employing a species of spiritual blackmail in order to preserve
obedience and control. The suicidal willing of Christ's death, like most
suicidal efforts, is an effort to create obedience through a kind of
moral blackmail, One must submit to God and his church or suffer eternal
damnation.'~ Christ's death means that all men are guilty, the priests never
tire of saying. Humanity is guilty even retroactively, and can only achieve
innocence by obedience to the church. "Extra Ecclesium Nullus Salus", “there
is no salvation outside the church”, thunders one of the church dogmas. The
free gift of Christ's death turns out not to be a gift at all but a
strategy to create universal indebtedness to a system of knowledge, a
set of symbols and institution that controls them both. This mythic
granting of supremacy to an institution that claims access to
unverifiable symbolic knowledge and the ultimate destiny of the soul and the
world is extraordinary. So is the belief that this elite group of chosen
vessels of the one and only true knowledge should be granted power because
it alone possesses the legitimate authority to interpret what is real and
what is not real. The ability to control what people think is real or not
real is the essence of power. The dogmatic, unquestionable and
non-negotiable character of the basic axioms of knowledge systems is part of
this power.'(14) The Church dictates the dogmas that the Church up as the
standard of truth. The Church declares itself infallible and even the
declaration of its infallibility is supposed to be infallible. This self
serving mythology eventually led to both the inquisition and the
Enlightenment reaction against Christianity. Knowledge and Power
To examine the relation of knowledge to power in gnostic systems further, it may be useful to consider the concept of "purity", and its dual role in both knowledge systems and political systems. Plato's conception of knowledge erects a hierarchy that posits ‘pure knowledge’ as its highest value, and therefore, the Guardians, whose knowledge is the "purest", are the highest caste. (19) Plato's Guardians are equivalent in almost every respect to the Hindu Brahmin caste. Next come the Warriors, whose function is to defend, expand and control the domain of the highest caste. Then there are the Merchants, Craftsman or workers, and the outcastes, (which correspond to the Khshatriyah, the Viasha, Shudra and chandala in the Hindu system.) The fact that the Brahmins, or Guardians have control over the religious rites, and hence access to the highest reaches of the knowledge system through the contemplation of the "pure" forms, gives them supremacy over all other castes. There is of course no awareness by either Plato’s guardians or the Brahmins of India that the “pure forms” of the elite religions are basically narcissistic symbols, a kind of self contemplating or self mirroring of their own escapist and elite consciousness. In any case, this concern for purity is simultaneously a concern for intellectual and hereditary purity. Both Plato and the Hindu system advocate or practice some form of selective breeding, and evidently, the effort to preserve the purity of the race is closely related to the effort to preserve the social power of those who claim to know. Those who know have power, and the power over sexual relations is an effort to preserve and exercise a power over history and time. This is true not only in the Hindu and Platonic systems, but in European society as well where the system of class was often a system of caste that was meant to preserve the power of an elite, in order to effect social control over generations. Thus the British sent members of the upper classes to colonies, like India, to expand and control British interests, and thus Hitler tried to breed a caste of "Aryans" sympathetic to the building of the thousand year Reich. The result of the concept of "purity" being associated with the highest conceptions of knowledge is that all that is considered "impure" becomes anathematized, outcaste, subservient, and degraded in the eyes of the righteous. The claim to represent what is inviolate and pure becomes a means of excusing the violation or oppression of others. One of the principle attractions of gnostic systems is the manner in which they deflect responsibility for the effect of one's actions, at the same time as they promote license. To illustrate this with some examples--- Since Alexander made himself a god, he need not be responsible for the trail of death and destruction he left in his conquering wake. Robespierre believed he represented the "truth" and therefore, like Hitler or Stalin, he could excuse himself for killing all the impure reprobates who stood in the way of the Revolution. The concept of Revolution is the secular equivalent of the religious concept of Apocalypse. Thus, just as Marx can envision a revolution that uses murder and violence as a means of creating a new world where the state has "withered away", so Christ, at the end of time is supposed to return to create "a new heaven and a new earth" at the cost of the destruction of this world and the ruthless torture of the impure and the unworthy, in hell for the rest of eternity. God, or Christ is believed to be beyond reproach, no matter what atrocities he commits because, it is thought, Christ or God have achieved true and total knowledge. Marx thought that "man is god for man" and therefore Stalin and Lenin thought they had the same practically divine prerogatives that the Catholic Church had claimed in their imitation of Christ. So likewise, the Brahmins thought themselves pure and therefore they need not even notice that the castes beneath them suffered for the inequity. The Brahmins of today's scientific world likewise concern themselves little or not at all with the consequences of their devotion to the discover of "pure truth" tough "pure science".(20) In a similar way, Plato's ideal forms, such as the Archetype of Justice, are part of a social system Plato created in the Republic which is one of the most unjust political systems imaginable. " The Furher is always right" was an oft repeated slogan in Hitler's Germany. "To the pure all things are pure" is a convenient formula to whitewash all morally reprehensible actions. As long as one conducts Inquisitions, Crusades and wars in the name of God it is all right. Savages are only savages after all and one cannot stop "Manifest Destiny". The Chandalas are not properly speaking people, and since God has ordained that some are superior to others, oppression and exploitation are permissible. Such is the logic of gnostic amoralists. Because gnostic totalism is a conjunction of knowledge and
power it produces stratification and injustices; not accidentally, but as a
consequence of its nature. In the Christian Constantinian state, the
Emperor was both King and representative of Christ, and this dual role was
justified by the doctrine of the "two natures ,enunciated at Chalcedon and
Nicea. The belief in the divinity of the person of Christ fit logically and
appropriately with the notion of the divine right of the Roman Emperor. This
doctrine eventually led to a system of castes in feudal society that was as
rigid as anything imagined by Plato or practiced in India, indeed, this
caste system was probably distantly influenced by Platonic and Aryan ideas.
Christianity enforced totalitarian thought and behavior controls wherever it
predominated. It used the power of the military behind, threatening torture
and death for any dissent. This is largely denied by modern day Christians
who have little understating of history and in many cases deny the value of
history. Indeed, religions in general claim to be a-historical. This in
itself is part of why religions can be so harmful and destructive. Since
claiming to be beyond history is a claim to total power and empire. Hitler's Reich is another example of a gnostic theory of knowledge and social action resulting in a totalitarian caste system, or rather an attempt to create a caste system. Like 16 Plato, Hitler advocated selective breeding jn order to sustain a totalitarian state, and also like Plato, Hitler derived his idea partially from "Aryan" sources, that is from ideas deriving ultimately from India. Hitler's idea about caste and race derive from German Romanticism as well. The German romantic philosophers, from Schelling to Schopenhauer, had been influenced by Hindu and Buddhist ideas. This combined readily with a strain of Christian gnosticism which can be seen in such writers as Boehme. These two tendencies combined with a crude social Darwinism of the time, with its notion of the survival of the fittest. AllI three of these influences can be seen in the thought of Lanz von Liebenfels, who was a gnostic and occultist who had some influence upon the young Hitler. A story from Himmier's biography might illustrate how close the connection is between Hinduism and the gnostic effort of the Nazi's to create a millennial empire. Himmler sometimes would read the Bhagavad Gita before going to visit the death camps that he oversaw, in order that he could harden himself by training himself to watch people be killed, gassed and starved to death with an attitude of detachment and impersonality, such as Krishna trains Arjuna to adopt in the Gita, instructing him to be indifferent to those he kills, even if they are close relatives, since he kills for god and thus “impersonally”..23 Both the Gita and the German Romantic advocate a transcendentalist idea of human consciousness, which originates all useful action in the value of intellectual and contemplative non-action. Hitler wanted to create a new heaven and a new earth, and this apocalyptic motive was in many ways the fulfillment of the will to power through knowledge which had been of central concern to German philosophy.24 The gnostic system of Marx does not eliminate the injustices of caste consciousness either. Marxism merely associates justice with the dictatorship of one caste, the proletariat. Marxism inverts the traditional hierarchy of castes, but it is not merely a deformation of Christianity, as some have maintained. The model for the Marxist effort to overturn the social order is the apocalyptic model developed by the early Christians, which is combined by Marx with an economic and scientific theory of knowledge which seeks to remake the world through violence if necessary. Marxism, like Christianity, begins in claims to victimization and injustice. Like Christianity, Marxism tends to produce a constant awareness of victimization, at the same time as it generates a drive for justice that is so fill of hatred for the world that it often ends by becoming a victimizer in its turn. After Auschwitz, Hiroshima, Vietnam, Stalin, Mao and the environmental atrocities of the last two centuries, it is no longer possible to believe in the possibility of generating power through the exercise of pure knowledge. Nothing is pure and no one is infallible. There is no apocalypse but that which results from men's fantasies and ideologies and religions projected upon the actual world. The apocalyptic fantasy is merely man's own brutality projected onto an imaginary heaven, and thus abstracted and sublimated real brutality is perpetuated in fact. There is no hypothetical gnostic beyond to justify human cruelty anymore. It has become clear that the apocalyptic myth is itself a contributing factor in most of the events of mass murder and colonial and environmental destruction in the last two centuries. In knowledge systems which enshrine a will to power the Intellect, Reason, class consciousness, objectivity, or some other faculty of knowledge is made to stand above life, people, the world or the environment in a presumed state of transcendent superiority. Since this presumed supremacy is not real, but merely convenient, this supremacy must be imposed by force, by systems of mind control, or promises of ultimate rewards and threats of punishment. These threats, bribes, promises and forces must be constantly reiterated in order that the representatives of the knowledge system in question can preserve their power. This is why gnostic systems inevitably result in injustices, and why, ultimately, gnostic systems cannot form the basis of a viable theory of knowledge or a theory of society. The argument put forward by both religionists and scientists that neither religion nor science "as such",i.e.-in themselves, or considered in their "pure form", are guilty of anything, or in any way questionable or in need of accounting is an argument that does not correspond to the facts of history. There is no knowledge Beyond the world; Nor does knowledge exist in some mental or symbolic hyper space to which only saints, avataras, angels, scientists, artists or leaders of states have access. Knowledge is part of the world, like anything else, and should confer no special rights, nor license to kill, exploit or oppress.
PLATO, HOMER, CHRIST; KNOWLEDGE, POWER AND VIOLENCE
Homer presents a myth. A myth is a story meant to orchestrate reality for its hearers such that a culturally desirable behaviors will be encouraged consistent with the over riding will of a society, or of the elite of that society. In Homer one finds an undifferentiated and largely shamanistic world view. The transition from Homer to Plato involves a movement from an undifferentiated mythology to a differentiated philosophy or metaphysic. In Homer the reality of symbols, and the reality of the actual world are undifferentiated, such that human and divine realities are indistinguishable. What happens to Homer's characters effects Homer's Gods and Homer's Gods effect the characters. Human motives are projected onto the Gods in such a way that even the characters themselves are unaware of whether the motivation of actions are determined by the Gods or result from the volition's of the characters themselves. By the time of Plato, however, the mythological and confused symbolism of the world of Homer has become differentiated; the symbols become concepts; the anthropomorphic images become symbolic generalizations lacking in concrete reference. From the time of Homer to Plato there is an increased reliance on abstract concepts. There is no longer the specific will of Zeus, such as one finds in Homer, there is the abstract concept "Justice", which is a generalization that has no meaning unless it is applied to a concrete example. This process of demythologizing anthropomorphic deities by reducing them to abstract generalizations, or meta-symbols, creates an even greater potential for the orchestration of reality by a centralized elite. Plato was not only aware of
this but it is his principle reason for attacking Homer in the Republic. In
Book 2 and 3 of the Republic, Plato criticizes Homer for attributing evil to
the Gods and for showing them in a frivolous and undignified manner. In
these criticisms it is clear that Plato is motivated by a knowledge that the
control of doctrines concerning God is the control of peoples minds and
through their minds the control of behavior and actions. The mythological
symbolisms of Homer are too diffuse for Plato's need to control all aspects
of the state and through the state to control all aspects of society. Plato
is much more concerned with totalistic control that Homer was. Therefore,
Plato wishes to banish such poets as Homer, at the same time as he wishes to
safe guard reactionary and oppressive religious doctrines against questions
and criticisms by refusing any possible criticism of his metaphysical
presuppositions. IN Plato’s world, God is the greatest Good, and anyone who
will not admit this must be banished or eliminated. "But God and everything
that belongs to God is in everyway the best state" Plato asserts. (25) This
claim to what amounts to a doctrine of the infallibility of the state,
results in a system of total control of expression, free speech, the arts
and all the behavior of the citizens of the state. Plato wanted to strip Greek mythology of its local color, of its background in the tribal city-states with their shamanistic values, and to replace the religion of Greece with a universal set of concepts that could apply to anyone, anywhere. The process of turning the symbolic and mythological concerns of Homer into ideological and increasingly sublimated, rationalistic, metaphysical and political explanations in Plato is a process that enormously extends the scope and ambition of Greece. Plato's abstract conceptions can be applied to society more concretely and uniformly than the local mythology of Homer and this allows of a greater degree of precision and control. This tendency to generalized concepts applied to all areas of interest is furthered by Aristotle, with his tendency to rationalistic catalogue. Both the Empire of Alexander who was Aristotle's student, and the more distant Roman Empire, which founded itself on the Greek model, are the result of the Platonic and Aristotelian liberation of the Greek will to power through knowledge. Plato's idea that total knowledge could be "recollected" within man himself, and that the knowledge thus gained could be used to generate a total state, was an idea that had precedents, but which had never been expressed so boldly and without reference to local orders of society. Plato's admiration for the state of Egypt arose because he preferred the totalitarian model of the Egyptian state, which was static and based on a permanent hierarchy, to the more flexible Greek state, which, in Plato's opinion, tended to degenerate into something Plato hated: democracy. This hatred of democracy is common to all theocratic knowledge systems of the ancient world. The origin of such theocratic systems and their outgrowth from more ancient shamanistic systems is a subject which ought to be studied further. I'll only make a few comments about this here. The transition from shamanistic societies to centralized theocracies, which parallel the transition from Homer to Plato can be traced in Tibetan, Chinese and Japanese societies. In Tibet a centralized state was developed out of a combination of Siberian and Himalayan forms of shamanism that combined with Indo-European ideologies of caste and hierarchy. This process is repeated in China, and to a certain degree in Japan. In any case, what is missing in these societies is the Platonic tendency to reduce symbols to abstract conceptions which can be applied universally. In Lao Tzu for instance, one sees the basic gnostic process of universalizing the self, and thereby creating the image of a total "man" or "Sage", who embodies the virtues of a totalistic state. But this tendency is still in nascent form as a poetic and half mythological theory that has not been entirely sublimated into a rationalistic strategy to systematically gain control of the world and all the things in it. When Plato's and Aristotle's philosophies finally joined with a Christian state, whose missionary and colonial exclusivity demanded the exporting of Greek and Christian culture around the globe, the east could hardly resist the imposition, and eventually succumbed to domination by the west.
Knowledge and Violence
To explain the danger bf violence implicit in the knowledge that breeds power and how different societies express this violence in different ways, a sentence from Plato may be usefully be considered. Plato says of the Philosopher Kings that "in the magnificence of their contemplation the life of man means nothing to them" Since the life of man means nothing to Plato because of the sublimity of his knowledge, he can justify selective breeding, the elimination of the family, the elimination of all freedoms, the imposition of a rigorous caste system and the total control of the physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual life of the citizens of his state. He breeds man like animals and teaches them to be fearless and merciless in battle. Plato's Utopia describes a totalistic cult and fulfills all the criteria by which a cult can be distinguislied (26) Because the "life of man is nothing", the philosopher king gives himself the freedom to act as he wishes, in accord with his ideal of the radical restructuring of the world according to his spiritual "vision". This gnostic devaluation of the world accompanied by delusions of missionary supremacy provides a key for understanding the Illiad. Homer separates the world of the Gods from the world of men. Plato demythologizes the separation of the world of the Gods from the world of men and rewrites this same dualism in philosophical rather than mythological language. Homer's world of the Gods becomes Plato's world of the Ideas, which alone are real, and this world is mere shadows of the real world beyond. Homer's primary concern in the Illiad is to express the power and divinity of the will of Zeus, and to show the suffering and bloodshed that result from the slightest indiscretion against the authority and power of the Gods. Plato is likewise concerned with the will of God, but in Plato the gulf between man and God has diminished, and the elite in Plato's society rule aver other men in a way not dissimilar to the way that Homer's Gods rule over men. God "is the best state", Plato says in the Republic, and in accord with their high spiritual station the Guardians of the Platonic state have nearly total power over their society and its destiny and organization. The unrelenting and obsessive cruelty and violence of the Illiad can be explained by the fact that "the life of man is nothing". The separation of the world of the Gods from that of men is intended to demonstrate the superiority of the Gods. "Let no male or female God frustrate my stated will.....or I will throw him into the deepest abyss below the earth", Zeus threatens. (27) Homer depicts the Gods as laying waste to cities, turning men against each other in war, plotting disasters and cruel strategies and covering battlefields with blood and hacked corpses. Men are puppets of the Gods, and they "kill us for their sport" as Shakespeare observed. But Shakespeare's comment assumes the reality of these Gods, when in fact the deeper question is, who is the Puppeteer, and who is doing the killing. (28 ) The Gods are the psychological propensities of the Greeks themselves. NO god is real or actual. Gods are merely propensities, generalizations, projections, fictions. The killer in both the Illiad and the Republic is Homer's and Plato's own will to power through knowledge. Both writers see the Gods as the controllers of men. Plato, in his parable of the Cave, pictures men as chained to their delusions, watching the empty shadows of things projected on a wall. Both writers see men as puppets and shadows, who are incapable of independence and who are best suited to submission to those more powerful than themselves. Homer's Gods, like Plato’s Philosopher Kings are alone free in their actions, and alone are able to make decisions regarding rewards and punishments, and thus they alone are powerful. To analyze the hierarchical symbolism of Homer and Plato and how their works imply a theory of violent imposition of a social system it will be necessary to analyze their texts a little closer.------ The purpose of Homer's Gods and Plato's ideal King is to teach man submission to a higher will. The Gods, like Plato’s Ideal King are not real, but creations of a gnostic imagination that generalizes human purposes and motives into symbols of knowledge and power. The only thingthat is real in the gnostic symbolization process are the human motives and desires themselves. The world of the Ideas or the Gods are symbolic screens on which the motives of the Homeric and Platonic societies are projected. In other words the truth about Plato's parable of the Cave is that neither the transcendent Hero who escapes the Cave, nor the delusional men in the cave worshipping shadows are real. In fact, the man escapes from the Cave into the realm of "pure" knowledge is the cause of the enslavement of the men below. Plato shows us in his parable of the cave how Plato’s own system of knowledge enslaves men in a world of darkness and suffering. Gnosticism involves a paradox. It creates a desire to transcend and to gain total power, but in the process this greed for the beyond creates harm and destruction on earth. Or, in Homer, the tragedy of the Illiad is not what Homer would have us believe. The real tragedy is that the will to power of the Greeks and their desire to worship the Gods of their own false honor and greed of glory; their will to conform to the will of a bloody minded Zeus was in fact their own will, and the consequent ravagement and dismembering of human flesh on endless battlefields is the result of the Greek's and Trojan's own will to power. To try to make the perverse and paradoxical nature of the knowledge/power relationship clearer it may be useful to consider how, in the Illiad, Hector’s "Body shone with the lightning of Father Zeus" as he killed in battle. (29 ) The god possess the killer as he kills. This glorification of killing is never questioned in the Illiad. This shining with lightning describes the apocalyptic Christ as well as the Dance of Shiva in Hindu mythology as he destroys the world. The symbolism of lightning here, like the symbolism of the trident, which is the symbol of both Zeus and Shiva, or the similar Vajra, used in Tibetan and Japanese Buddhism as the symbol of total knowledge and state power,-the symbol of lightning then,-- is the symbol of knowledge as that which divides and destroys; a knowledge that cuts like a knife made of diamond, like a light that kills. Or one could consider how "bright eyed Athena began breathing life into Diomedes and he began killing all around him"(30). Here the inner motivation of the will to murder is personified in Athena, and the will to murder in Diomedes is magnified by the direct involvement of the self reflecting symbol of his own motive. This self reflective magnification of a human motive by a God or symbol of this motive, is to a large extent the purpose of myths and symbols. Symbols or gods magnify, enlarge and transcendentalize purposes. To use the example of Athena to illustrate this: Athena was the Patroness of all Athens and she was both a goddess and a warrior. In the Illiad, as elsewhere in Greek myth, Athena is both the inspiration of warriors in war and the embodiment of the warrior. That is, she wears armor, and represents the warrior who worships her and at the same time she is a woman, and men are inspired to greater effort of ruthlessness in battle by the thought of fighting for women. This dual purpose of the image of Athena as the beautiful embodiment of the desire to kill is a synthesis of Greek hegemonic and imperial ambitions in general, and this is the principle reason why Athena was housed as a statue in the Parthenon at the center of Athens. The other aspect of Athena as the goddess of wisdom illustrates the combination of ruthlessness and knowledge that was at the center of Greek culture.(31) The Virgin Mary served a roughly analogous function Christianity, as the Magnificat indicates. The Virgin Mary does not only embody mercy but also ruthlessness toward the enemy. This is why her Icon, such as the Virgin of Vladimir, was carried into battle in front of the army, and why Columbus and Cortez went to conquer and destroy the "heathen" in the New World" under the protection of the Virgin. The fact that millions of people died in these brutally violent expeditions seems to have bothered very few until recently. So far as I know there is no study of the role that both Christ and Mary played in injustices and atrocities committed by European upper classes. But, in the “New World” one does not have to look far for the horrendous uses to which the inflated symbolism of the divine woman has been put. For instance, justification of the Manifest Destiny of the colonial founding of the New World was symbolized by the figure of the New Jerusalem, of whom the Virgin Mary is a hypostasis. Millions of native Americans, both in North and South America were absurd and killed off by Christians spreading the gospel of Christian capitalism. Vestiges of this colonialistic symbolism continue to inspire American foreign policy decisions to this day. The belief in America as the New Jerusalem goes back to Francis Bacon, who imagined a Utopia rising up in this country that would bring about the millennium and unite in itself all knowledge an all power. The tragic result of these mythical ideas is that practices are developed out them, and atrocities like the Vietnam War, which was fought under the millenary purpose of spreading democracy around the globe, actually only managed to result in the deaths of some 3 million Indochinese. The process of self reflective magnification of motives in religion occurs through the activity of prayer, rites, art, theology, meditation, contemplation, fasting, bodily exposure, extreme solitude and other forms of persistent physical and mental fixation. All this is done in order to conform oneself, or one's will to the directives of a knowledge system.32 The effort to transcend this world and enter the "other world" where God, Athena and all the other Gods of the Real world are supposed to exist is an effort that requires exertion, because it is against nature or the natural tendencies of the body and the mind. The ancient practice of shamanistic trances involve considerable physical and mental effort which amounts to reproducing psychotic states. In order to attain to "oneness of mind" the mind must fix itself upon itself in a strenuous act of reaching for everything and nothing, for the "immanent within the transcendent". This effort creates of powerful tension between the symbol reality that one concentrates on and the actual reality in which one lives. The actual world is inevitably the victim in this contest between the imaginative creation of gnostic and transcendental symbolisms and the actual world. An example of this is the Dances of the Bacchae of Dionysius, which involved violent, sometimes sexual feasts that involved the sacrifice of animals. A modern attempt to reproduce these states of excess can be found in Nietzsche's Zarathustra, in which Nietzsche's consciousness is turned in on itself in a violent manner, and which results in a violent and creative feast of self sacrificial psychosis, exalting in the will to power. Similar examples abound in all the worlds religions. Tibetan art is fill of hallucinatory scenes of transcendent deities violently ripping down the veil that separates this world from the mythical transcendent world. The Sun Dance of the plains tribes is another example of the violent effort to achieve transcendence into the world beyond by allowing oneself to be hung from a tree by claws that pierce under one's chest muscles. Likewise the atom bomb is the result of the fixation Einstein and others upon the world of mathematical perfection that they felt transcended this world. (33) Religions and symbol-systems that orchestrate social means to magnify the power of those that profit form the system. Violence is a function of the effort to achieve power, and power is what “transcendence” is all about. No one actually “transcends” anything. The whole mythos of relgion is to convince people that transcendence is real. The most famous example of the imposition of a symbolic other-world by force upon this world is the crucifixion of Christ. The purpose of this act being to magnify and exalt the world beyond, and at the same time to prove the inadequate powerlessness of the world below. The crucifixion is a mythological mechanism for justifying institutional power and exploitation. It is an elaborate form of social and psychological blackmail.
Socrates and Christ The analogy of Christ's martyrdom to that of Socrates has often been made. Indeed, the martyrdoms are very similar. In both cases, death was actually unnecessary and could have been avoided. Both men had prior knowledge of their death and could have escaped it if they had wished. This means that in neither case was there an actual murder, but rather a form of suicide. It is not suicide in the ordinary sense but the destruction of the body in order to achieve a higher, spiritual purpose. In both cases, the suicide is meant to draw attention to a cause or principle, rather as Seppaku in Feudal Japan was meant to restore honor and at the same time, to repay a debt. There is more historical evidence for the existence of Socrates than there is for Christ. But in both cases, it is clear that the death of these men, whether it was fictional or real, was soon seized on by Plato and the early Christians as a political rallying point. In the case of Socrates the principle that Socrates martyred himself for in a suicidal act was the ideal of the State, which Plato would later develop into his Utopia. Socrates claims that he feels that his death is a "blessing", but yet he is not so happy about it as to be able to restrain his anger from fulminating into the following statement: "as soon as I am dead, vengeance will fall upon you with a punishment far more painful than your killing of me" (34) Christ, like Socrates, will also make statements about the terrible things that will happen to the world for their not listening to him and following his teachings. Both men feel they have been visited with a divine mission; both feel that they do not act on their own behalf but that it is God that acts through them. Both men seek with a desire for revenge. Socrates claims to act in "obedience to God's commands given in oracles and dreams", and Christ claims to do only "the will of him who sent me". The inner "daimon" of Socrates is roughly equivalent to the voice of God in Christ or the “word” of St. John. Marcus Aurelius also uses the term Daimon to describe his intellect. The ideology of the Daimon, or intellect is above all a political idea, based in exalted knowledge and meant to justify empire. The inner voice or Diamon of both men tell them that they must accept their own death rather than question the divinity of their principle.(35) Both men condemn those who kill them, when in fact neither man had to die, and could have escaped their fate, and both men imply the destruction of their enemies, the democrats of Athens in the case of Socrates and the Jews and Romans in the ease of Christ. Both men die in the interest of an imaginary otherworldly principle which will establish itself as the principle power in the world after their deaths, and both men say things which indicate not only that they know that this will happen, but that it must happen and they are dying precisely because they want it to happen. These are therefore not selfless deaths, but are entered into with an ulterior motive, and therefore neither man is actually a victim, except perhaps a victim of their own ambition to identify total knowledge with their own person and to die from this knowledge as a result. It appears that both Socrates and Christ are to some degree later fictional creations of Plato, Paul and other writers. The purpose of the fiction was largely political, to justify the drive for empire. Christ and Socrates are basically advertisements for totalitarian movements or states. Christ's rejection of the "kingdom of the world", which Satan offers him in the myth of the Temptations of Christ, indicates that Christ was not seeking power in this world, but another kind of power. He claims to have "overcome the world" and this overcoming puts him beyond the cosmos itself, as the controller of men's ultimate destinies and the ultimate destiny of the world. The offer of total world power could hardly be a temptation to one who has power over the entire cosmos and consequently, the rejection of the satanic offering of power over all the world is hardly out of humility, but because he has a much greater ambition in view. Moreover, the temptation of Christ carries no moral lesson, because if Christ is the Logos who created the world, it is hardly necessary that he be given lordship over something that was his at the beginning and will be his in the end. These gospel tales are fairy tales. In the case of Socrates, Plato would continue his work, and if the Republic, accurately reflects Socrates' view of the state, then Socrates died in order that Plato might be able to create one of the most totalitarian visions of knowledge and centralized power ever produced. The identification of Christ and the Cosmos is a variation on the Hindu concept of the Purusha, the Divine Man who was dismembered and whose body parts make up the substance of the world. The dismemberment of Osirus, is an Egyptian version of the same myth. In any case the function of these myths is to communicate the gnostic idea that the world is a place of violence and exile and that the return to wholeness requires that the pieces or fragmented parts or sparks of the "Primordial" or "Celestial Man” be gathered together and returned or "transfigured" back into the celestial body of the world beyond. In other words, the world is a fall from the state of perfect knowledge, and the death of Christ or Socrates is the death of two men who had access to this lost perfection of knowledge. Just as the Purusha had to fall and be dismembered so that the earth could come into existence, so Christ must be tortured and crucified in order that the Total Universal Man can be restored to wholeness. The victim who is crucified becomes the victimizer who crucifies and destroys the world that crucified him.(36) The Christ who did not have to go to the Cross, nevertheless did so, and now exists in the world beyond, as the embodiment of total knowledge and total power, who is biding time before he ravages, dismembers, bums and destroys, not only the world, but the entire cosmos, space and time. On a seemingly smaller scale, Socrates dies in order to affirm his ideal state, and though this state does not come in exactly the form he might wish. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle together produced Alexander, since Alexander was Aristotle’s student, just as Aristotle was closely associated with Plato. Alexander was a ruthless killer whose effort to make himself both god and world dictator grows directly out of the Platonic ideals. The Roman Empire is a later development of the possibilities of the Alexandrian empire. Finally, after the Roman Empire, the entire west becomes the province of Christian Platonism. The notion of the divine right of Kings derives from Alexander, Plato and Christ, and one sees vestiges of this even in a Napoleon, who said "France is me, and I am France". The symbolic self
magnification of the gnostic will to power results in this sort of excess.
The saying of the Sufi Al Hallaj, that "I am the truth" , or Christ's that
"I and the Father are one" are virtually identical to Napoleon claiming to
be France. These are complex statements that on the one hand are statements
made by a paranoids with delusions of grandeur. But on the other hand, these
are statements which are literally false but which expresses a complex of
symbols, which associates man, or one unique man, with the totality of the
knowledge, a country or the universe. These are statement that are all about
the relation of knowledge and power. These symbolic men, fictionalized over
centuries were created into images of the Church or the state. Socrates and
Christ become exemplars of knowledge. Christ especially becomes the image of
Universal Man who is both victim and victimizer. This image was enormously
successful in providing a pattern or paradigm of Universal power, order and
control of men's souls. It also was a source of huge suffering and death.
Of all images and symbols created in world history to justify power, the
image of Christ is probably the most destructive.
(37)
Footnotes
1.Great Books are not Icons,
though they are treated as such by partisans of traditional knowledge
systems. Most of the great books are milestones in empire and dictatorships.
On the other hand, an iconoclastic antinomialism, such as one finds in
Nagarjuna, Socrates, Dionysius the Areopagite, Niffari and Lao Tzu merely
surrounds the knowledge/power relation in theophanic veils. These mystics of
the great ‘unknowing’ go even farther than is usual to reinforce cruel
hierarchy with thick curtains. Socrates said that "the unexamined life is
not worth living", which I accept, and to ask questions of the great books
is my primary reason for reading them. But Socrates' takes his stand on an
"ignorance" that he imagines to be imposed on him by a divine mandate, and
this very curious and perverse contradiction leads him to endorse a
totalitarian theocratic state. A similar contradiction is seen in the
Tao Te Ching. As well as in the "enlightened ignorance" of scientific
mentalities. A professed ignorance that veils a will to power is hardly
admirable; a "nothing” or a “humility” that turns around and really wants
"everything" is a gnostic strategy as sophisticated as it is opaque. The
inquiry in this essay concerns those who use knowledge for power, and but
for space it would also concern those who use ignorance for power.
4. The economic allusions in Christian symbolic
statements are legion. Redeem means to buy back, as if the world were a
temporary pawn shop from which man had to be bought back. Even being ”Saved"
has its economic meaning. One does not need Marxist hermeneutics to explain
this. Coins or bills are symbols and tokens, not actualities, and spiritual
symbols are also not actualities; the Puritan, Calvinist or Catholic who
buys or sells his soul merely exchanges one symbolism for another .The
Puritan is of the "elect" and the elect deserve to be well rewarded for
their virtue and hard work—so they themselves believe. The elite of Christ
easily became the corporate and business elite: Boston Brahmins with leaning
toward fascism, for instance. Indeed, in the Italy of the Medici, the Church
and the Medici bank were closely allied and the profits of the one served
the profits of the other, and salvation meant one obeyed both the church and
the Medici. The Medici profited from the sale of phony indulgences like a
Mafia. The ethic of salvation is unfortunately present in capitalism,
Marxism and Science to a lesser degree. The skyscrapers of New York are like
the glass and metal city in New Jerusalem of St. John. These economic
metaphors are also part of communism; The meek shall inherit the earth.
Weber's thesis that capitalism is a Christian creation seems partially
correct. But capitalism is not a "deformation" or parody of Christ. History
is not a hierarchy, and Christianity is no more pure than capitalism.
Indeed, in America, capitalism and Christianity are part of the same system
of ideology, symbolism and practice and both have created enormous suffering
and bloodshed. Both are systems of knowledge as well as theories of action
and should be assessed equally. Correlatively, there is no alternative
between tradition and modernity. These distinctions are artificial and hide
agendas. 8As, for instance, in the Liberation theology movements in Central and South Amnerica.
12 This is the reason for the extreme number of saints in the Tibetan and Catholic religions, for instance. The smothering excess of Saints, Yidams, Herukas, Mahakalas and the like indicates a need of proof that falls far short of being "beyond a reasonable doubt". A guilty man "protests too much" his innocence; a man that doubts exerts in excess his certainty. The Catholic phrase, the "deposit of the faith" refers to the Church as a kind of bank that lends insurance against the doubtful and the uncertain. The excess of saints is a kind of advertising.
13Republic, Book 5, 473-d
14 God's self immolation in the human form of Christ on the Cross is a strategy for creating obedience. Nietzsche's proclamation of the "death of God" is an ironic reversal of the crucifixion, such that Nietzsche made of himself an ironic Dionysius crucified. Whether god killed himself or man killed god is actually a moot question, because one is dealing with symbols, not realities. In both Christianity and Nietzsche the primary motive of the symbols is the will to power through transcendental knowledge. Whether god creates man or man creates god matters little if the underlying motivation is questionable. Nietzsche, like Marx is a Christian in disguise, just as Christ is a Marxist who doesn’t know it--- if one may put it this way without being too indirect. In all these cases the essential thing is to resist giving symbols any transcendent significance and thereby resist the will to power through symbol manipulation. The "God is dead" movements are actually a
logical development of Christian metaphysical strategies. Christianity
stretched the resilience of gnostic symbolism to a breaking point, and the
philosophy of existential absurdity draws this conclusion, since
Christianity could not maintain its absurd belief system forever. The
"absurd" in 20th century art and literature is merely the
reaction to the ridiculous excess of the symbols used in Christian
explanations of the meaning of life; life itself is not absurd, but it seems
so when one lives in symbol-realities which are on the verge of breakdown.
One wakes up from the delusions that religion created in one’s head and for
awhile life seems absurd. Life goes on beyond these arcane systems of
belief. The Church pushed and exaggerated myth beyond the limits of
believability, and eventually provoked a reaction against the absurd dogmas
and beliefs that supported medieval powers. In the end the Immaculate
Conceptions, Sons of God, the Apocalypse and Virgin Births were too absurd
and ridiculous, too kitsch.
15. Most of the religions have threats of the terrible things that will happen to those who question the motivations that form the basis of their mythologies and metaphysical constructions. The "sin against the holy Ghost" is this questioning of the basic axioms of the Christian knowledge systems and exacts the very worst of punishments. In Islam one is supposed to be killed for leaving the religion. Homer mentions frequently the terrible things that will happen to those who question the "will of the Gods". Plato mentions that the worst crime against his ideal state is to question the basic metaphysical notions upon which it is grounded. It is interesting in this connection that the "guardians" of the Tibetan Buddhist teachings are conquered Shamanistic deities, and are pictured in the some of the most gruesome and terrifying art work in the world. Such deities, like the gargoyles of Notre Dame represent the terrors that await those who oppose the system of knowledge and its power. Hell represents this in Christianity. These are all, of course, vile forms of blackmail. People have the right to enter of leave any systems of thought or belief that they swish to entertain or deny. To threaten them with death of hell for leaving a religion is a gross violation of human rights.
16This was pointed out by Locke. Indeed, the power of coordinate mathematical systems and their ability to explain change, as well as the Newtonian systems of mechanics is central to the power of the scientific paradigm.
17Quotcd in Karl Deutsch, Politics and Government, 3rd ed. Houghton Muffin, 1980,pg.26
18 Einstein’s dual role as both a seeker after the Holy Grail of the Unified Field Theory and a political advocate for the state of Israel is significant in this regard. In a similar regard, the importance of Newton's scientific work to the purposes of British expansionism, as well as the tacit social assumptions of Darwin's theory should not be overlooked. This is not to deny that F=ma, but that the interest in problems of force, moti9n, work and rates of change indicates a tendency in English science to select facts in accord with social agendas, and to interpret these facts in accord with these agendas. Scientific theories grow from and result in social practices; the new knowledge generates new arenas of the exercise of power. The Purity of research is anything but pure just as the freedom of the market that is served by research is anything but free.
20Robert Oppenheimer, who directed the building of the atom bomb, said that, "we cannot hold back progress for fear of what the world will do with our discoveries". Oppenheimer assumes that "progress exists in some pure abstract space beyond the world. Oppenheimer was caught in the basic gnostic contradiction. The pure moral vacuum of disinterested truth does not exist; ideas exist in the world like anything else and have consequences, Oppenheimer only partially realized this contradiction after the deaths of hundreds of thousands in Hiroshima. But nevertheless the contradiction haunted him till his death. Einstein seems to have also be haunted by it and even admitted that "we the scientists are guilty" (Kroeling, Richard, A Einstein, As I See the World. PBS Home Video.)
21. Christ said "I have overcome the world". This and
like statements are the basis of the Christian concept of purity. This world
is impure, and through Baptism and participation in the Eucharistic rite, a
Christian seeks the purity modeled by Christ. By eating and drinking
Christ's body and blood, one is supposed to be absolved of the sin of
existence or the "stain" of contingency. This denigration of existence, of
the living and the actual world results in a devaluation of the cosmos, and
a reduction of the world to a lesser reality. Chrstianity lies about the
world.
24 See Goodrick-Clark, Nicolas, The Occult Roots of Nazism, N.Y.U Press, 1992 which is a scholarly inquiry into of the origin of some of the ideas behind Nazism. See also Himmler, check ref and Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism, also Godwin, Joscelyn, Arktos check ref
25 Republic,381-382
26 There has been some valuable work done on the nature of totalistic cults. Steven Hassan's books develop a criteriolgy of cults out of the work that Robert Jay Lifton did on the technique that the Chinese Communists used to exercise brutal mind control techniques on prisoners of war Madeline Tobias has written a very interesting book that describes 19 criteria of the psychological make up of the cult leader. This essay is called the "Psychological Profile of the Cult leader".
27 The Illiad, book 8, pg,153 281n the Laws, Plato
calls God the "Puppet_Player" 29 Illiad book 8, pg.192
30 Ibid
311t may be of some interest to note that the revisionist use of mythological female figures such as Athena, by authors in the feminist schools of psychology and comparitive mythology, results in the curious effort to identify themselves with images, such as Athena, who, in fact embodies the very form of patriarchal violence which they claim to hate. This ironic and contradictory aspect of feminism is partly due to the influence of gnostic ideas upon it, of Marxist or Jungian origin. Feminism tends to advocate a powerful state even as it advocates liberty. This results from the tendency to portray themselves as victims who need a powerful state to grant them the liberties they desire. Also, the need to compete with men makes them want to be like them, and this results sometimes in a self destructive view of their own bodies and the issue of their bodies at the same time as the want to affirm their own femininity. I do not say this because I ant opposed to human rights for women, on the contrary, but because the will to power and basic rights are not the same thing. The first is questionable at best, whereas the second is just. ~
32. The self reflective magnification of motives in a
gnostic system is not restricted only to religious phenomena. One finds the
same idea in political and scientific systems of knowledge. In politics, one
sees it in the tendency of states to cease to represent their own people and
to become abstracted, self serving institutions which follow rules of their
own, becoming arbitrary dictatorships or serving big business instead of the
ordinary population. The process of abstraction results in alienation from
the electorate and alienation brings about self serving behaviors, and this
in turn encourages the will to want to seize even greater power.
33. Einstein made repeated comments about his disaffection with this lower world of ordinary people and things, and his preference for the world of mathematical physics, musical beauty and the world of his thinking. This need to escape the ordinary is the basic gnostic desire
34. Apology, 39,c-d 35 The Daimon of Socrates is equivalent to the Daimon of Alexander. Alexander had himself declared a god in Persia, and then, in Egypt, Plutarch relates that a priest of the great temple greets Alexander and calls him the Son of God. (Life of Alexander, chapt.27) The Daimon or Intellect is the gnostic faculty, par excellance, and this self proclamation of godlike status is common in the ancient world. The daimon is a political faculty, above all, though it claims to be a contemplative faculty. Alexander sought to be god over then entire known world and even went beyond the known world, and this is why, even today, some Moslems worship him as a prophet and precursor to Muhammed. The use of the word Daimon in the writings of Aurelius adds even to an understanding of the Imperial nature of the gnostic faculty. Aurelius uses the world in conjunction with the importance of the co |