TOBE/Inside The Grassy Knoll

Thus, when the modern revolutionary tangibly enacts his Utopian vision, it automatically qualifies as a dystopian nightmare for others. Promises of unlimited freedom begin to fade as the apotheosized State confiscates the citizenry’s wealth in the name of socioeconomic egalitarianism and imprisons dissidents. In the name of facilitating evolution, a theory that the orthodoxy of science has deemed infallible, those members of the human species who fail to meet the arbitrarily established standards of biological and genetic purity are expunged through eugenical regimentation. Fanatical as they are in their scientism, modern revolutionaries view man himself as a quantifiable entity. The irreducible complexity of humanity is overlooked as man is gradually transformed into a paint-by-numbers schematic. Society, by extension, is also considered a quantifiable entity. Thus, modern revolutionaries work to install their own bowdlerized form of democracy: the democracy of “experts.” By virtue of their own purported scientific and technical expertise, these policy professionals calculate and systematize the motivations of the populace and develop economic and technological stimuli that can produce the desired patterns of mass behavior.

The final and most tragic casualty of this form of governance is not the political dissident or the marginalized dysgenic. Ultimately, the final victim of scientific totalitarianism is the human soul. Man, from the scientistic vantage point, is little more than amalgam of behavioral repertoires. He is a tabula rasa whose value depends entirely upon final portrait rendered by the brush strokes of his “enlightened” conditioners. If he cannot or does not conform to the paint-by-numbers template of the experts, he is deemed a product of retrograde evolution. Because man’s soul defies quantification, the content of his character is appropriated absolutely no currency in the scientistic Weltanschauung. Again, it is indeed ironic that, in their hopes of apotheosizing the human species, modern revolutionaries devalue man. This is the Faustian face of modern science: the inhuman human race.

Sources Cited

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Secular Gnosticism has manifested itself throughout the 20th and 21st century in a myriad of forms. Of course, the two most prominent examples are the ideological kissing cousins of communism and fascism. Other variants include neoconservativism, neo-liberalism, secular progressivism, and technoprogressivism. While many of these secular Gnostic permutations have superficially feuded with each other over the years, they all have shared a core dialectical commonality: the Utopian vision of "heaven on earth." In turn, this vision is couched in the anthropocentric dictum of Protagoras: "Man is the measure of all things." This dictum echoes the promise of the serpent in Eden:

". . . ye shall be as gods." In The Hypostasis of the Archons, an Egyptian Gnostic text, the serpent in Eden is portrayed as humanity's benevolent "Instructor" and "incognito savior" (Raschke 27). Meanwhile, the Hypostasis caricatures Jehovah as "the archon of arrogance" (27).

Gnosticism's veneration of the serpent and misotheistic view of Jehovah bespeaks the perennial ambition to usurp the throne of God. The aspiration to achieve apotheosis was a defining feature of the Mystery cults of pagan antiquity. It is also lies at the heart of Gnosticism. While Gnosticism's origins with the Ancient Mystery cults remains a source of contention amongst scholars, its promise of liberation from humanity's material side is strongly akin to the old pagan Mystery's variety of "psychic therapy" (28). In addition, the Ancient Mystery religion promised the "opportunity to erase the curse of mortality by direct encounter with the patron deity, or in many instances by actually undergoing an apotheosis, a transfiguration of human into divine" (28).

It is interesting to recall Billington's observation that the young Marx venerated Prometheus as the allegorical embodiment of science (6). Science, according to the Promethean faith, was the new lantern of salvation that would "lead men out of darkness into light" (6). Given this Promethean reverence for science, it is interesting to recall that Engels described Marx's theory as "scientific socialism" ("Scientific socialism," Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia). Again, Engels' selection of this appellation was predicated upon the common epistemological foundations of Marxism and modern science: radical empiricism. Saint-Simon's functional class analysis, which "prepared the way for Marx, "stemmed from the extension of "radical empiricism into the altogether new field of social relations" (Billington 212-13). Herein is the epistemological foundation for all modern totalitarianism. In turn, that epistemological foundation stems from the Gnostic rejection of pistis. Thus, Gnostic occultism constitutes the epistemological heritage of almost all modern socialist totalitarian regimes.

Returning to Marx's preoccupation with Prometheus, it is interesting to recall that the mythic figure's name shares the same meaning with the term Lucifer, as translated by St. Jerome from the original Hebrew Helel ("Lucifer"). Marx's possible flirtation with Satanism is an often overlooked, yet controversial topic. It is not this researcher's contention that Marx was a Satanist in the traditional sense. In all likelihood, Marx probably denied the existence of Satan as a literal metaphysical entity. Yet, it is important to remember that the Luciferian conception of Satan is premised upon the same existential contention. From Marx's neo-Gnostic vantage point, Lucifer or Prometheus was probably rendered immanent by the cognitive powers of man. Ultimately, whether or not Marx was a Satanist is irrelevant. Ultimately, one needn't accept the existence of Satan if one accepts the principles embodied by the Fallen One. In his poem "Human Pride," Marx expressed the Luciferian aspiration to achieve apotheosis:

All denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind and the modern skeptic doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it. Thus he writes one book complaining that imperial oppression insults the purity of women, and then writes another book, a novel in which he insults it himself. As a politician he will cry out that war is a waste of life, and then as a philosopher that all of life is a waste of time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself. A man denounces marriage as a lie and then denounces aristocratic profligates for treating it as a lie.

The man of this school goes first to a political meeting where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts. Then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes to a scientific meeting where he proves that they practically are beasts. In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite skeptic, is forever engaged in undermining his own mines. In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality; in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men. Therefore the modern man in revolt becomes practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything. (41)