As we live our every day lives in our every day world, we may think that society is pretty straight forward. But behind it all is a sinister system of oppression!
The left says you need to wake up–that is, become “woke”–to recognize the systemic power structures that keep the privileged in power. The right says you need to stop taking the “blue pill” that makes you think everything is normal and instead take the “red pill” to recognize how the establishment is trying to control you.
According to political scientist Wilfred Reilly, this mindset is a secular version of the ancient heresy of Gnosticism, which teaches that the physical world we inhabit is an illusion that we need to escape by pursuing True Reality.
In his article Political Gnosticism Is a Modern Sickness, he writes,
Almost every prominent left-wing critical theory — and, today, more than a few right-wing equivalents — rests on the idea that what seem to most “normies” to simply be the uncomplicated and necessary workings of civilized society are in fact part of massive hidden systems of “oppression” or “power and dominance.”
This “political gnosticism,” in turn, manifests itself in conspiracy theories, some of which Reilly goes on to list:
–The American justice system is not about locking up killers, rapists, and other criminals. Rather, it’s really all about locking up black and brown males so they won’t stage a revolution.
–The purpose of standardized testing is not so colleges can identify good students in their admission process. Rather, it’s really all about keeping out poor people.
–Marxists believe that cultural practices and institutions–including morality, laws, governments, and religion–are really about the rich keeping the working class under their control.
–Critical race theorists believe that cultural practices and institutions–including morality, laws, governments, and religion–are really about white people keeping black people under their control.
–Radical feminists believe that cultural practices and institutions–including morality, laws, governments, and religion–are really about men keeping women under their control.
–Radical members of the “manosphere” believe that cultural practices and institutions–including morality, laws, governments, and religion–are really about women keeping men under their control.
–Some on both the left and the right believe that Jews are actually behind the scenes controlling everything.
You can no doubt think of other similarly-constructed conspiracy theories that Reilly doesn’t mention in this article (e.g., the Communist conspiracy many Americans feared during the Cold War; the “deep state” that actually runs the government no matter whether Democrats or Republicans get elected; the Q-Anon theories; “Queer theory,” which claims that “heteronormativity”–the view that heterosexuality is normal–is an oppressive social construct of the male-female binary, etc.).
Notice that a good number of the “gnostic conspiracies” that Reilly mentions are not just prominent among alienated individuals. Rather, they are enshrined in the Halls of Academia as actual scholarship. These views are taught. College students are taught to think in this conspiratorial way. And when college-trained teachers get jobs in public schools, they teach their elementary and secondary students to think in this way as well.
If you go to a university and take a literature class, you will be taught to employ the “hermeneutics of suspicion.” That is, to read a play by Shakespeare or a novel by Jane Austen, or, by extension, legal codes and Scriptures, and interpret them through a lens of “suspicion,” so as to ferret out the oppressive views that they are hiding.
To be sure, conspiracies do exist. We now know that Communists really were infiltrating the American government and institutions during the Cold War, though they did not completely control the country as some people feared. The federal bureaucracy may well control the operations of the government more than our elected officials, constituting a “deep state” whose power needs to be trimmed.
But the notion that any group of people is so well-organized, well-placed, and omni-competent as to exert control over every facet of society is pretty unlikely. Society is very complicated, to put it mildly, and it is a vast over-simplification to believe that some cadre of human beings are behind the curtain pulling levers to steer the rest of the human race according to their will.
Gnosticism is a heresy that denies God’s creation and His sovereignty. Reilly’s article made me think of this passage from the prophet Isaiah:
Do not call conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy, and do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread. But the Lord of hosts, him you shall honor as holy. Let him be your fear, and let him be your dread. (Isaiah 8:12-13)
Illustration by CHRISTOPHER DOMBRES from SETE, France, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
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