pynchon a gnostic? II

[prozak at anus.com]

> 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.

Respectfully, I disagree.

I find some religions abuse categorical thinking in a form called 
"dualism"; gnosticism seems to me, as something derived from an older 
religion in which such artificial abstractions did not exist, an 
intermediate step and one that is less destructive.

There is an ultimate or universal "truth" in the sense that logic 
requires; if a man fires a gun at another, the other will find out 
how much of the shared perception of events is real. The question of 
this truth - which comes in varied forms from "5.7% of Amazon 
rainfall makes it to the forest floor" to "the blockage in the aorta 
initiated the chaotic fibrilation before death" to "2+2=4," is not so 
much "do we share an environment in which events are absolute?" but 
"are our perceptions of events coloring our view of truth?"

Judaism, Christianity, Reaganomics, and most forms of American 
politics all rely on a schizophrenic thought system, in my opinion 
derived from the same impulse that produced "Platonism" as we 
understand it today. This is broken intellect.

I know it's not fashionable, in "educated" and "prosperous" circles, 
to say that one viewpoint is broken over another. But some things are 
not true, and some things are incorrect, and all dogmas are viruses, 
something W.S. Burroughs and F.W. Nietzsche explain at opposite ends 
of the scale (and of the human beings involved!). If you receive 
mental programming from a religion or political dogma, in accepting 
it you begin acting it out, or vice-versa. But groups inculcated in a 
dogma retain that dogma by acting it out, or are assimilated.

> 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.

Emotionally, I like this worldview more than mine, but I don't think 
it's as accurate. Yes, people are "individuals" in the sense that 
they act independently; however, most do not reinterpret wholly their 
belief systems.

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

And technology applies equally to greed/power games and religion as a 
motivational behind-the-scenes impetus.

Great post; thanks!

-- 
Backup Rider of the Apocalypse
www.anus.com/metal/
DEATH AND BLACK METAL