Posted on 01/05/2014 7:19:21 AM PST by markomalley
Much of the political history of the extended twentieth century is that of massive extinctions of citizenries by their dictatorial governments. Take the engineered mass starvations, torture chambers, firing squads, and gulags of Lenin and Stalin; Nazi gas chambers; Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge killing fields; the genocides of Mao's "Great Leap Forward"; and the tyrannical North Korean Sung dynasty, and one will find that over one hundred million people have been slaughtered.
Systematically murdering millions to create an imagined earthly Eden is clearly irrational. In this sense, leftist ideology has the look of a religious inquisition.
In his introduction to Eric Voegelin's The New Science of Politics (1), Dante Germino neatly captured Voegelin's thesis of the left as an atheistic "religion":
[M[odern Gnosticism has been dedicated to the hubristic attempt to overcome the anxieties and uncertainties of human life by building a terrestrial paradise. However well-intentioned, even the 'moderate proponents of the 'progressive' program bear a heavy responsibility for the disasters of humanity.
Others have alluded to this secular religious characterization of leftist ideology:
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
People want power and wealth. If you have wealth, you can BUY power. If you have power, you can TAKE wealth.
"[T]o the religious gnostic, reality is a delusion, a creation of false consciousness. The religious revolutionary believes humanity creates its own reality."Yep. Called "second realities." But they are founded on nothing substantial; they are simply dream projections. Thus, they cannot in principle be realized. But a narcissistic personality entrapped by gnostic thinking will not be discouraged by this.
Thanks for the great post, markomalley!
“In this sense, leftist ideology has the look of a religious inquisition.”
In every sense. There is a religious furor over their moral standards from the sacrament of abortion to the demand to respect homosexual behavior as normative.
We have allowed the left to get away with using government to establish their religion to the exclusion of true religion and morality. Caring for the poor, the sick, the orphans and widows are religious duties which have been taken over by a leftist government.
It is no different than the murdering churches which the earlier settlers in America came here to flee. It is no different than the murdering Islamists trying to establish their theocratic rule. We have returned to an era of government established religion, a treacherous tyranny which must be overturned.
Knowing the above, I'm not giving up my guns to anybody.
One of the best articles on Leftism I’ve ever read.
To take the religious aspect further. .classic liberalism. .what we now call conservative libertarian, is a goverment parallel to the Protestant Reformation and the fundamental tenets from it..
http://patriotsandliberty.com/lindas-latest/2013/11/22/orwells-big-brother-gnostic-pagan-magician
Thought crime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while...but sooner or later they were bound to get you." George Orwell, 1984
In the modern Gnostic-Hindu/pantheist worldview of Marxist Communism, it is not the personal Triune God who has created the world. No, it is each man-god who creates his own world and meaning in every living moment out of his own consciousness. In other words, since the divine substance of God is distributed throughout all of the cosmos (pantheism), including the consciousness of man, then by means of self-induced trance states, brain-altering drugs, transcendental meditation and other ways of attaining higher consciousness, man can become a little god who controls matter because he controls mind. The physical world then, is an illusion because reality is inside the divine mind.
This way of thinking is captured by Orwell in his book, “Nineteen Eighty-Four” in which negation of the physical world is an integral part of the social and political philosophy of Big Brother and his despotic Party. At one stage in the book, Winston stumbles upon the shocking realization that,
“…in the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later; the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy.” (Orwell, “The New Spirituality and its Hallmarks, Alan Morrison, SCP Journal, Vol. 30:4-31:1, 2007, p. 19)
When the Thought Police agent O’Brien tortures Winston for “wrong thought” he states,
“We control matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside the skull. You will learn by degrees, Winston. There is nothing that we could not do. Invisibility, levitation---anything. I could float off this floor like a soap bubble if I wish to….You must get rid of these nineteenth-century ideas about the laws of Nature. We make the laws of Nature.”
Big Brother is a modern Gnostic pagan magician in a long line of pagan magicians going back to Ham, Nimrod and the ancient Egyptian magus Hermes Trismegistus, the more recent Simon Magus, the Gnostic Valentinus, Eastern Tantric sages, Yogis, and god-men on through to Renaissance magicians such as Agrippa, and Paracelsus.
Like all nature systems, Big Brother holds to the oneness of existence. This means that bodies (physical matter) and elements are mutually transmutable. This was announced as the Grand Principle of Hermes Trismegistus and found expression in the teaching that,
…“everything that is high is equal to what is low, and everything low is equal to what is high.” (God and the Knowledge of Reality, Thomas Molnar, p. 82)
Hermes formula means there is an absolute although hidden unity, a Great Chain of Being, between the lower world of physical matter and the higher astral realm of the impersonal world soul, the key of which lends to the magician incalculable powers when learns how to acquire divine intellect.
-------------------break--------------- In the work of the magus physical matter is said to undergo passion, death, and resurrection, the final result of the transmutation resulting in its' spiritualization and divinization. The magus performs these acts as a means of reconciling what has been separated so as to achieve oneness: Lucifer with man (in the case of Theosophists and Masons), the human and the astral, man’s soul with the world-soul, darkness with light, natural with supernatural, male with female, good with evil, truth with lie.
Another objective of the magus is to rid himself of false consciousness (knowledge) and to attain ‘true knowledge’ (self-knowledge) by way of his unity with the world-soul.
The Gnostics for example, held that in its unredeemed state pneuma (spirit) is unconscious of itself, intoxicated by the poison and false consciousness of the material world. Its ignorance is cured as it awakens from the darkness of physical nature to the light of self-knowledge.
Eric Voegelin (1901-85), one of the most influential political philosophers of the last century argues that Marxist Communism, together with many other modern movements such as the ‘God is dead school,’ is a modern form of Gnostic paganism.
Marxist Communists, Luciferian Theosophists, New Age spiritual pantheists and the New Physics assert that matter is a form of energy or particles emanating off of the Void, a concept that is similar to some Buddhist and Hindu thinking holding that the physical world is an illusion, that people have no bona fide existence since they are aspects of human consciousness. In other words, as the Thought Police O’Brien, a Gnostic adept or magician put it,
“…nothing exists except through human consciousness...”
This ought to be posted in the religion section since that is what leftism is indeed.
So very true. Thank you for sharing your insights, dearest sister in Christ!
“…nothing exists except through human consciousness….”There seems to be strange analogy to contemporary theoretical physics in the above excerpt from your last, dear sister in Christ. The New Physics does seem to assert “that matter is a form of energy or particles emanating off of the Void,” and this, as a concept, is similar to some Buddhist and Hindu thinking holding that “the physical world is an illusion.” Indeed, the great visionary quantum theorist Edwin Schrödinger tells of his own strong affinity with Advaita-Vedanta cosmology. My friend the astrophysicist is likewise so inclined. Many other professional scientists are as well, I gather.
The New Agers are thoroughly fixated on “physical energy,” because they have been taught to believe that they themselves are each reducible solely to the interactions of Seven Cosmic Rays, associated with seven bodily centers in the human being. So the first order of business for an initiate is to “figure out what your rays are.” For evidently, “you are only whatever they are.” Talk about the ultimate reduction of the human person! Talk about wiping out the human mind in one swell foop! The irony (genius?) is the appeal to “mind” — for help in wiping out mind….
[Ed. Note: I have a great deal of direct experience with the New Age “movement,” and it’s pretty well-reflected by now, after some 25+ years. I’d love to say more. But thinking most people reading this would find such matters boring, I’ll put a sock in it for now. ]
All of which is perfectly summarized by O’Brien — who is, dear spirited, definitely a “black magician” or sorcerer of the (ahem, relentlessly gnostic) Nietzschean, Marxian, Hegelian type — in his statement to the long-suffering Winston:
“…nothing exists except through human consciousness….”The statement would be correct, if it could be restated as:
“…nothing exists except through divine consciousness….”But O’Brien — a fictional epigone of the above-named magical miscreants — WOULD RATHER DIE THAN GIVE GLORY TO GOD. [What he thinks he “dies into” is beyond my comprehension.] He has closed his soul, his heart, his mind to God. The deep, dark “secret” is that he would be God himself [Hegel] — or at the very least, an Ubermensch [Nietzsche]. In consequence, for him, God is that which must be got rid of, in order for man to “be free.”
But free to be or do what?
Certainly Winston was not free of O’Briens’s desire to re-experience his torturous ecstasies from acts of libido dominandi on Winston's suffering person….
If we let the historical record speak to us, it will note that some absolutely horrific consequences have occurred in the human past that were set off by “mental cases” who managed to seize power and dominion; i.e., were not resisted timely by a more-or-less culturally unified, attentive populace devoted to the principles of Western civilizational success.
So, the O'Briens of this world don’t just have to “Kill God”; they also have to “End History.”
Plato noticed that the demos — the “people” — has a nasty habit of degenerating into the ochlos — the “MOB” — given enough time for the forces of cultural destruction to work on the protective institutions of civil liberty in the context of the well-being of society….
Thus man is left doubly defenseless: There is no divine order of Being, Truth, Goodness, Beauty, Justice upon which to rely, and human historical experience doesn’t count as “knowledge.”
What I wonder is: Where was “Winston” when his resistance against the total inversion of Reality by “mental cases” might have made a difference, so that the latter could not have made their insanity not only “politically effective,” but absolutely obligatory for the rest of us?
I’d better leave off for now – though I must tell you I really wanted to get into the New Physics aspect of our subject. Not to mention how Darwin’s theory fits into the picture of a psychological and intellectual revolt against Reality. But I think I’ve already taken up a lot of the reader’s time by now.
Dear spirited, my sister in Christ — thank you so very much for your (as ever) thought-provoking essay/post!
Interesting convo.... my take away is..
Is earth Paradise or HELL?.... -or- some other realm in between?..
Seems “it” got all started with that damned “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil”...
Warned... to say away from that damned thing, “they didn’t”...
Is that story merely a metaphor or an actually happening?..
I think (who cares) it’s the meme that counts..
What’s good or evil (in degrees) is what takes all the air out of the room about most things “human”..
And is the elephant in the room..
Some are looking to create paradise on earth or think it is already here...
Others try to deal with the HELL they think earth already IS.. or is becoming..
Gnostic smothistic... most have never heard of gnostics....
It’s results of that damned Tree I tell ya!...
Real or imagined... it’s a real meme...
Most want to become smarter than everyone else...
The best religion being people smarter than the others..
The best government being the smartest one...
A planet of smart alecks...
Pretty smart of someone to place the Tree of the Knowledge Good and Evil -AND- The Tree of Life at the very beginning of the bible..
How dumb many are to overlook the lessons contained therein..
The question remains.. NOT how smart are you.?. BUT How smart do you think you are.?.
Can YOU determine GOOD from EVIL?....
Might take a GOD to make that qualification..
HUGS!!!
Thank you, dear "poet!" (Somehow, you remind me of William Blake....)
Liberal ideology = Morons wearing intellectual masks, in moral vestments(with designer sneakers),
displaying a compassionate comb-over, hidden by an official Hat, sporting a blind man’’s glasses...
Blind to reality, numb to heart ache for the unfortunate, aggressive to the meek, proud of ignorance,
stinking with the fragrance of regression, growling always growling, showing the teeth of threat...
The liberal is a monster... it could be your mother, grand mother, or your best friend..
Kicking them to the curb could redeem any honor you have left..
betty: “…nothing exists except through human consciousness….” The statement would be correct, if it could be restated as: “…nothing exists except through divine consciousness….”
Spirited: Your observation is itself “correct.” Though implied, Big Brother really is making the claim of divine consciousness.
Though BB is a dialectical materialist marching under the banner of scientific socialism (which is really a neo-pagan nature and Mystery Religion dressed up as politics, empiricism, natural science, etc.) BB’s consciousness is divine because miracle-producing powers and ability to self-perfect have been consigned by theoreticians to “matter” that is dialectical, which means “thinks.”
If we’re to make sense of this obvious superstition we must begin with Darwin. As Stephen Gould argues, Darwin applied a “consistent philosophy of materialism to his interpretation of nature” and “the ground of all existence; mind, spirit, and God (are reduced to) neural complexity.” (Darwin Day in America, John G. West, p. 41)
In other words, mind, spirit and God have been subsumed into brute matter, or the neural complexity within the brain. From this it logically follows that Darwinism has,
“…substituted the conception of natural causality for the conception of miracles and divinity….I add that not only is Darwinism not contrary to socialism, but that it forms one of its fundamental scientific premises. As Virchow justly remarked, socialism is nothing else than the logical and vital outcome partly of Darwinism and partly of Spencerian evolution.” (Enrico Ferri {1856-1926}, Socialism and Religious Beliefs, marxists.org)
Spontaneously generated dialectical matter:
“….continually attains to higher perfection under its own power, thanks to indwelling dialectic…the dialectical materialists attribution of ‘dialectic’ to matter confers on it, not mental attributes only, but even divine ones.” (Dialectical Materialism, Gustav Wetter, 1977, p. 58)
Since powers of mind, spirit, miracles and God are reduced to the neural complexity (New Physics fermion or physical matter) of BB’s brain (fermions) then reality is within BB’s skull because divine consciousness (boson or psychic matter) operates within the neural complexity of his brain.
Dialectical materialism turns out to be a stealth-form of Hermetic magic and quasi-Hindu evolutionary pantheism.
Profound.
it is amazing how many ways magic thinking can be disguised by those diligent to reject God’s Grace.
“it is amazing how many ways magic thinking can be disguised by those diligent to reject God’s Grace.”
Spirited: What’s more, it’s horrifying that so very many unthinking, gullible souls are drawn to them like hapless moths to a flame.
Of course he is! That's the entire point, dear spirited. In Voegelinian terms, Big Brother is in "egophanic revolt" against divine Being, because he would, by his own will, his libido dominandi, become "the god" himself. Thus TO RULE.
Of course, there's nothing "divine" about a "consciousness" like that.
The thought has occurred to me that George Orwell's model for Big Brother was no less an eminence than Hegel himself — who was at once a magisterial philosopher and self-admitted adept of Magic [e.g., a gnostic thinker]. I imagine 1984 may have been Orwell's speculation regarding the social and cultural fallout to be expected from any popular success of Hegel's ideas, which were subsequently taken up by Marx....
Orwell was a great secular prophet. Where he stood on Darwin's theory, I don't know much about in the details. But I think I can "stand in Orwell's shoes" and see/say something like the following:
A Little List of Things I Love to Hate about Darwin's Theory: A Litany of Complaints FWIW
Where to begin.
I propose that the "internalization" of Darwin's Theory into the Zeitgeist a/k/a the public mind — whether consciously or unconsciously — has had profoundly negative effects on the liberty and well-being of individuals and the societies they compose. As far back as the 1930s, Ludwig von Bertalanffy, the great pioneer of complex systems theory, was worrying out loud about the potentially corrosive effects of Darwinism on all the then-prevailing concepts of the social order of human beings.
IMHO, Darwin's Theory is objectively "wrong" on two fronts: (1) the ontological; and (2) the scientific.
RE: (1) — I'll be as brief as possible. Ontology is a philosophical discipline/inquiry into Being, or Life itself, with particular attention to the problem of how Being (the universal) translates into the existence of (particular) living forms. Although this is not directly a problem for the natural sciences, I daresay there is not a single living natural scientist who does not hold — consciously or unconsciously — to some idea, some opinion, of "ontology," summed up as a particular worldview.
The currently prevailing scientific worldview holds that "everything supervenes on the physical"; that everything that exists in Nature and the Universe is made up of "particulate" matter in its motions, according to the physico/mechanical laws so brilliantly described by Sir Isaac Newton.
While Newton's laws may hold to an extraordinarily high degree of predictive accuracy within the proper domain of their application [in general, that of normal 4D human observational experience], other domains of scientific inquiry opened up for the first time in the early 20th century, and both were revolutionary and radical, and resist integration: Relativity and Quantum Theory.
Which brings us to point (2): The scientific grounds of Darwin's theory.
It is clear he is a Newtonian. He views biology under the lens of matter in motion, the "motion" being produced under the aspect of direct, local causes, on a linear timeline.
To put it another way, Darwin rejects two of Aristotle's four causes. "First" and "Final" are expunged from the get-go; only the "Material" and "Efficient" survive.
Aslo, Newton could not have known anything about the matter of nonlocal causality, which has been so successfully validated by quantum experiments. [Thus quite possibly dragging Aristotle's First and Final causes back into the picture....]
In the end, what Darwin's theory does for us is to say that Nature has nothing to do with God; that human history is meaningless; that man himself is essentially meaningless — because he does not have a "Nature" as a man, as such.
Whatever "nature" Man has cannot be ascertained in advance, because it is always a product "in progress."
But without God, without human history to refresh our memory as human beings living today, we can't even be "works in progress."
Guess I'll just leave it there for now. Thank you so very much, dear sister in Christ, for writing!
This is an excellent article.
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