# Gnostic Propensity
so the truth, at least as far as I believe, is that we are them

We're inherently predisposed to perceiving the world and engaging it as gnostics. We just override our urge to do it through our development, but we're still liable to that way of thinking if we're ignorant enough or are able to construct the right rationale for maintaining something which conflicts with a more objective view of reality.

As far as an intelligent psyche is concerned, there are motivations borne both out of a sense that something is wrong with reality, as well as the drive to transform it or refine our understanding of it.

Something wrong: This can include anything from an intuition that it is a false reality (we are spiritual, not material - and this isn't a belief that I am opposed to, but there can be many absurd intuitions that also qualify for this description, like the gnostic cult of Queer - having a body which I do not self-beget is a form of sin for which all should be held accountable. Having an especially tortured existence will get you there - people preying on you and inducing extreme mental illness, etc.)

Refining: It can be your understanding, which is good, but it can also be what you believe about what is possible to be understood based on the standpoint of others (and there's a kernel of truth there).

Something else which makes absurd expectations possible is what I refer to as "historicist thinking", in the sense of seeing history as a process which realizes things that are intended to be realized. Divine belief includes this, regardless of whether one expects that the material world is part of that progression (it could be that the world has to be transformed to something approaching the divine, or it might just be that you believe you will unite with divinity after your mortal life ends).

Historicist thinking allows us to expect anything not yet actualized. All occurs along a single instance of time moving along one dimension (even if there are multiple, our perception through the senses only perceives of one that is reasonably shared with others) making it apparent that all things that do hpapen are part fo teh array of all things that can happen (and, implicitly, all things which have not happened can still happen).

A lot of new agey stuff talks about manifesting and attracting. There's also quantum mechanics which suggest all possibilities occurring over a long enough temporal frame.

From childhood, we are seduced by the belief that we can change reality and, perhaps later (when more mature), that we can reach a higher level understanding of reality such that perception conforms to conception through its reflection by other perceptions. We do the former as children when telling tall tales to grown-ups who pretend to believe us, validating their veracity and inviting us to intoxicate ourselves with the ambiguity over whether reality is something which is, or something that is perceived. The latter would be a more postmodern meditation on what we know of reality when we can only describe it with words chosen both through seeking the most efficacious representation of our thoughts coupled with a process of transaction and negotiation.

The state makes it worse because it can declare pursuit of a conception that we have affinity for, and we are liable to perceive its reification and construct a reference to an expectation that it will be actualized.

Perhaps most fundamentally, though (and, really, one might consider replacing the text above with just the following) is that simplification of complexity is built into our base cognitive architecture. Otherwise, we drown in such immense complexity that perception and, by extension, existence itself is revealed as grotesque and obscene (this is why people should do high dose psychedelics and go crazy.. it reminds them how insane it is that we are able to calmly see the world with one focal point).

now all that being said, the fact of our seeming constraint of having to interact with shared reality via the body means that the manner in which these predispositions manifest as behaviour is, indeed, affected by things such as genes, cognitive capacity, physical capacity, and so forth.

but I think that even the best among us can fall into it, because we've likely all done it in some form at some moment