An Analysis of Eric Voegelin’s 4th and 5th Gnostic Traits Show notes here ..read more

Did you take a sociology class in high school or college? Did you know sociology’s founder, August Comte (1798-1857), was kind of a dick? The Encyclopedia Britannica says he was “ungrateful,” “self-centered,” and “egocentric.” If those aren’t bad enough, other biographers say he was a megalomaniac, cruel, and downright nuts. Comte, on the other hand, considered himself a relevant man, to put it modestly. He was born at the end of the Enlightenment and fully embraced its ideals,[1]which Isaiah Berlin summarized as: 1.            Every genuine question can be answer ..read more

This is a podcast episode from “Outside the Modern Limits,” a newsletter geared to help people understand and thrive in modernity. You can subscribe and find the show notes here ..read more

“Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.” Rousseau Rousseau’s passage from the beginning of The Social Contract contends for the most famous in philosophy. Rousseau’s point was simple: Humans are good, but there’s a lot of suffering, so social institutions must be corrupting everything. Significantly, Rousseau didn’t see any problems with himself. He was arguably the most self-centered philosopher of all time. He was so self-centered, biographers wonder if he was even capable of love. Show notes here. For notes regarding the first trait, click here ..read more

A Diagnostic of the Gnostic Eric Voegelin was to modern gnosticism what Knute Rockne was to Notre Dame football. Rockne didn’t start the ND football program and Voegelin didn’t discover modern gnosticism, but they took their subjects to much higher levels. The Swiss theologian, Hans urs Von Balthasar was supposedly the first person to draw parallels between the ancient gnostic heresy and modern theories in Prometheus (1937), which examined modern German thought. Albert Camus did a similar thing with modern French thought in The Rebel (1951).[1] But Voegelin took the strain of thought much furt ..read more

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For the fortunate few, that router is hard-wired with fiber optic. Most of us only get a wireless connection, and a wobbly one at that. Show notes here ..read more

If you want to understand how gnosticism flourishes in our modern world, you need to understand why it developed in the ancient world. Show notes here ..read more

Solon opened Athens to true order: the transformative order found through the Tao. Show notes here ..read more

A 50-year-old man had ritual sex with a 12-year-old girl while adult women assisted.  And everyone was cool with it.  That’s just part of the bizarre story told in Netflix’s Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey and the exploits of its prophet, Warren Jeffs.  Show notes here ..read more