The Gnostic Roots of Communism

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[rift]

A lot of people seem to forget that you can still be opinionated outside of ignorance. Everyone seems to believe “well if you knew what I knew you’d agree”

[amra]

Does this mean that One Piece fandom also has its roots in Gnosticism? Fans of One Piece will yell you that you just need to read one hundred chapters to start understanding it, and if you don't like it is because you need to read more.

[Ballstavius]

How did we associate gnostic beliefs with communism?

[kohrenhund]

Chief woke up and went, "yeah, fuck communism, " godspeed.

[lorenzomizushal]

In gnosticism man is not a god man is a divine essence, a spark of divinity but itself not divinity. Not all sects see OT god as the devil, most just see him as an imperfect creator trying to imitate perfection.

[stefanodadamo]

You understood Gnosticism even less than Communism - that's something

[Diamondbacc]

How is the next video coming along? No rush of course. 😊

[thegreatmoustachio]

Gnosticism isn’t a sect of Christianity. It is a family of loosely related sects of Christianity that existed over more than a thousand years of history. Some of them held beliefs similar to those you describe in this short, but even those would probably vehemently disagree with your take on their beliefs.
With all of that said, while there may be very loose surface level similarities between some Gnostic sects and Communist ideology, I don’t see any historical link between these two wildly different faiths. Frankly, the ideas you present in this short could probably be applied to any religion. “You aren’t a (insert religious faith) only because you haven’t read enough of our holy book” is a very common argument amongst faithful people. While I may agree that Communism could be classified as a religion (depending on the definition used for “religion”), I don’t see any reason to draw parallels between Communism and a specific sect of any one religion.

[matty_muerte]

Bro...what are you even saying? Im legit baffled at how you're trying to draw connections through two completely unrelated items.

[juanmanuelgarzon]

Make a vid on gnosticism and it's root in modern ideologies

[rolandrush]

I tell this to people and they seem to fail to comprehend

[kevinwilde]

WhatIfAltHist literally said "I've read thousands of pages of critics misunderstanding communism, yet every time I confront an actual communist, they say that's not what communism is."

[coloneljjhawkins]

I think its fair to analyze that Marxism is highly dualistic, and most dualistic systems in Western Philosophy have been influenced by the dualism of Gnosticism--but I think the idea about hidden knowledge is debatable. Marxist thought is literally meant to be easily understandable and digested--Marx wrote the Manifesto so it could be read by peasants. There is not element of "hidden knowledge" in original Marxism.

[gabrielethier]

Isn't Gnosticism a purely spiritualist ideology and Marxism a pure materialist ideology?

[Null-Red-Blue]

Neither of these ideologies is inherently related to Gnosticism or the pursuit of hidden knowledge and spiritual purity.

Gnosticism is an ancient religious and philosophical movement that emerged in the early Christian era. It focuses on the pursuit of mystical knowledge and the belief in a divine spark within each individual that can be awakened through spiritual practice. Not some class-struggle totalitarianism shit In cultural absolutism.

[antonlefevre]

This is ridiculous.
When debating anyone who disagrees about the fundamentals of your beliefs, it's common that they assume you just don't know what you're talking about. This is not a fundamentally gnostic notion.
In fact, in this video, you misrepresent both communism and gnosticism. Communism is an exoteric system, not an esoteric one. And there are no historical ties between gnosticism and communism. In fact, there are actually several ideological ties between mainline Christianity and Marxism.
This theory comes close to the Christian superstitious belief that all heresies must stem from the same source. This is not true.

[LoganLS]

Study history long enough and you become James Lindsay.

[rayres]

This is just vastly incorrect.

First, there's no unified "Gnosticism". It's just a bad umbrella term for a Christian way of thinking that has a few things in common, such as the theme of learning the hidden truth/knowledge ("gnosis"), the idea of a material, lesser God and the true, immaterial, intangible force that is the real God, among other things.

First, the lesser god who created the material world is NOT the Devil, Satan, Lucifer or whatever. He's just that, a lesser god, who is sometimes portrayed as evil (Sethians, Mandeans, Manicheists), other times, as just plain ignorant of his insignificance (Valentinians). And he had no intentions with mankind when he created the material world - he just created it because "why the fuck not".

Also, man is NOT "God". Some sects believe that a select portion of mankind has a "sprinkle" of divinity imbued in us (Mandeanists, Valentinians), whereas other interpretations don't talk about this at all (Sethians).

The only thing you got right is the concept that Gnostics believed they possessed a knowledge seldom discussed about, "secret" knowledge even, in Greek, "gnosis", or knowledge. They, however, called themselves Christians, because that's what they were - Christians. They were not "Gnostics", they were not Valentinians, Sethians or whatever, they were merely Christians who had a very different cosmological and christological interpretation of the whole thing.

For those interested in learning more, I highly recommend ReligionForBreakfast and LetsTalkReligion.

How disappointing and vain was this comparison. Holy shit. It leaves me wondering - is the remainder of your content equally shallow, poorly researched, and plain wrong?

[houragents]

Oh, it sounds like you got this straight from James Lindsay. A whole video on the Gnostics (especially the early Christian ones) would be very cool.

[saelkey]

“But wait, there’s more”
- Gnosticism