A
Better World is Possible
An
essential and honored part of the acknowledged heritage of the CHURCH OF GNOSTIC LUMINISM
will be the many individuals and groups throughout history, and at the present time, who
have put, or are putting, their “lives, fortune, and sacred honor” on the line
to aid in the creation of a truly civilized society, as we have defined the term above, on
Earth.
These
movements have had widely varying beliefs, from devout religion to atheism; but they have
shared an essential vision: the possibility, and the necessity, of a worldwide
voluntary-cooperative society on Earth, and a worldwide economy based on mutual aid rather
than competition.
In
many cases, these views have placed these movements at odds with State and Church, and
there have been bitter centuries of cruel persecutions, which continue to this day.
In
some periods, there has been actual warfare and genocide perpetrated against the
Libertarian Visionaries; and this, also, to our sorrow, continues today.
Some
of the major elements of this movement have been the following:
The
vision of a society based on cooperation and liberty was elaborated in the writings of
Lao
Tzu
(612-531 BC), the Chinese founder of Taoism; and by
Aristippus
(c. 400 BC) and
Zeno
of Citium (334-262 BC), representatives
of the Greek Cynic and Stoic philosophies respectively.
Pythagoras
(572-479 BC) put many similar ideas into practice at his school in Crotona, as did the
Essenes of Palestine in the first
century BC.
The
Christ
of the New Testament portrays the essential anarchist vision in many of his
teachings, particularly the Sermon on the
Mount, the parable of the judgment in Matthew
25: 31-46, and the tales of the woman taken in adultery
and the
Good Samaritan.
The
Gnostic-influenced Alexandrian philosopher
Carpocrates
founded a communitarian
society in the second century CE.
In
the medieval period in Europe, the utopian vision was kept alive as a secret tradition by
the Knights Templar.
The
renaissance period saw the emergence of the
Levellers
and the
Diggers, proto-anarchist movements, as well
as many communitarian religious movements.
The
Illuminati of Bavaria,
founded in the 18th century, preserved the vision of a social system based on liberty,
equality and fraternity, and pledged to work toward its establishment on Earth.
In
19th century Europe and America there was a widespread and popular utopian movement.
Religious
communists like the
Shakers,
Amish,
Mennonites,
Doukhobors,
Bruderhof, and many others, fled repression on the
Continent and established colonies in the New World.
The
religious communist movement reached its pinnacle with the Perfectionists and
John Humphrey Noyes
(1811-1886), founder of the
Oneida
Community
in New York.
There
was also a secular communitarian movement, built largely around the ideas of
Claude Saint-Simon
(1760-1825),
Robert Owen
(1771-1858), and
Charles Fourier
(1772-1837).
Another
strand in the 19th century tapestry was the transcendentalist movement, including
Ralph Waldo Emerson
(1803-1882),
Henry David Thoreau
(1817-1862), and
Walt Whitman
(1819-1892).
The
word “anarchy” comes from the Greek an, indicating negation, and archos,
meaning rule or coercion. The anarchist vision is of a society based on
voluntary cooperation rather than order imposed by the threat of force.
The
philosophy of anarchism is expressed in the words of
Emma Goldman:
“...all forms of government rest on violence, and are therefore wrong and harmful,
as well as unnecessary.”
Proudhon
says:
“To be governed is to be at every move,
at every operation,
at every transaction,
noted, registered, enrolled,
taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, forbidden,
reformed, corrected, punished. It
is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed
under contribution, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized, extorted, squeezed,
mystified, robbed;
then, at the slightest resistance,
the first word of complaint,
to be repressed, fined, despised,
harassed, tracked, abused,
clubbed, choked, imprisoned, shot, machine-gunned, judged, condemned, deported,
sacrificed, sold, betrayed;
and, to crown all,
mocked, ridiculed, outraged, dishonored. That
is government;
that is its justice;
that is its morality.”
Anarchism
has developed into several distinct schools, as roughly outlined below.
The
proponents of these traditions will all be respected by the Church of Gnostic Luminism as
our spiritual forebears, one branch of the Revolutionary Luminist family tree.
Despite
continued persecution, the anarchist movement remains alive today; and the Church of
Gnostic Luminism will attempt to support, nurture, and network with it in every possible
way.
Revolutionary
anarchism was expounded by
More
recent names include
Paul Goodman
and
Murray Bookchin
and
Noam
Chomsky.
Individualist
anarchism was propounded by
Josiah Warren
(1798-1874),
Max Stirner
(1806-1856),
Lysander Spooner
(1808-1887),
Stephen Pearl
Andrews
(1812-1886),
William
B. Greene
(1819-1878).
Ezra
Heywood
(1829-1893), and
Benjamin Tucker
(1854-1939).
Modern
libertarians who acknowledge this tradition include
Thomas Szasz
and
David Freidman.
Labor
movement anarchism is represented by the anarcho-syndicalists, and was elaborated by
Mary “Mother” Jones
(1830-1930),
William
D. “Big Bill” Haywood
(1869-1928),
Joe Hill
(1879-1914),
the Haymarket Martyrs, and
Sacco & Vanzetti.
Religious
anarchism was preached by
John Humphrey Noyes
(1811-1886) and
William Lloyd Garrison
(1805-1879).
The
20th century anarcho-pacifist movement has roots in religious anarchist thought as well as
the transcendentalism of Thoreau and Emerson; major names in this area include
Leo Tolstoy
(1828-1910),
Mahatma Mohandas Gandhi
(1869-1948),
Dorothy Day
(1897-1980), and
the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
(1929-1968).
The
spontaneous emergence in the American Empire of a massive and overwhelming spiritual
awakening of a visionary-libertarian nature was the primary event of historical
significance in the 1960s.
Indeed,
in the view of the Church of Gnostic Luminism, it was of comparable importance to the
advents of Buddha and Christ in previous generations, or to the discoveries of Copernicus
and Galileo.
Often
called “the psychedelic revolution,” this movement was a culturally shared
experience of expanded consciousness,
and a glimpse attained by millions of a higher, truer reality than that admitted by the
dominant paradigm.
Important
voices that gave utterance to the ideals of this movement included:
Aldous Huxley,
Timothy Leary,
Stephen Gaskin,
Abbie Hoffman,
Jerry Rubin,
John Sinclair,
Allen Ginsburg,
and
Jerry Garcia.
As
is often the case with radical spiritual movements on Earth, the Rainbow Tribes were
subjected to immediate reaction and persecution from the civil and ecclesiastical powers
of the day.
The
psychedelic counterculture that sprang from the revelations of the 1960s was, and is still
being fought by the Empire in a ruthless campaign of violent suppression amounting to
virtual cultural genocide.
Yet
vital remnants of the Rainbow Tribes survive underground today, as did the early
Christians persecuted by Rome in the 2nd and 3rd centuries of the common era, and the
Knights Templar, who were massacred en masse by Church and State in the early 14th
century.
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