pynchon a gnostic? II

[jbor]

on 27/2/03 5:10 AM, prozak at anus.com at prozak at anus.com wrote:

> 
> Gnosticism is a concept of spiritual experience which has its roots
> in many religious practices and is not restricted to Christianity. It
> is also found in the Kabbalah of Judaism, the philosophy of
> NeoPlatonism, and in modern Iraq a small sect of peasants called
> Mandaeans (their word for 'knowers') still survives today.

I believe that there are at least two sects amongst the Mandaeans, perhaps
more. John the Baptist is their guy.

I think the general argument prozak makes boils down to an opposition
between those religions/philosophical systems which constitute themselves as
manifestations of an ultimate or universal "truth", thus rendering all other
religions/philosophical systems as heretic and broken, and those which don't
do this. So, he sets Judaism and Christianity at the negative end of this
scale, and Hinduism, Buddhism, gnosticism, Nietzscheanism etc at the other.
I'm not sure that this binary formulation is relevant except in the airy
realms of dogma and fundamentalism. And even there I think there's a
propensity within the formalisation and bureaucratisation of belief systems
of whatever stripe to devolve into rituals and social practices which are
both totalising and oppressive.

I think you'll find that the majority of people who embrace just about any
religious or philosophical system of belief are actively tolerant (if only
through ignorance, xenophobia etc) of other points of view, other systems of
belief, and clear-headed enough not to use their personal faith as a pretext
for suprematism, persecution or genocide. It's those who aren't, and those
who manipulate the impressionable and the suffering, who are most dangerous.
Missionaries, for example, cop a bad rap in _GR_, much more so than do
soldiers and civil servants.

Of course, revenge and retaliation, greed, powerlust etc are other
motivating forces driving human conflict.

best