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The New Gnostics From neopaganism to
cryptocurrency cults, the Internet today
is full of strange quasi-faiths

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Posted By: Calvinesq, 11/14/2022 11:42:31 AM

In early 2022, a video-essay creator named Dan Olson uploaded a two-hour-long exposé to YouTube. “Line Goes Up—the Problem with NFTs” quickly became a viral sensation, accumulating nearly 9 million views as of August—an incredible number for a seemingly niche topic. (The acronym “NFT” stands for “non-fungible token,” the name of a very small subset of the still fairly obscure online cryptocurrency system.) [Snip] In earlier eras of American history, major crises, as well as the ideological and religious revivals that often followed them, played out in streets, churches, tent meetings, and lodges. Now the process takes shape primarily online, where the new Gnostics preach.

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Long article, but very worth your read. This Swedish Christian has some important thoughts and views on the state of our younger generations. The heresy of gnosticism in its new internet forms remains with us.

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Reply 1 - Posted by: kono 11/14/2022 12:00:12 PM (No. 1333010)
The Gnostic heresy took centuries and some of the greatest minds of the Christian faith to defeat. The new Gnosticism may be just as challenging, without such an array of articulate apologists to counter it, and with the dual assault from the interwoven elements of Woke philosophy presenting a second front in the war against biblical faith.
5 people like this.

Reply 2 - Posted by: Quigley 11/14/2022 12:24:30 PM (No. 1333026)
A worthwhile read. However, i wonder if the writer makes the same error he is chronicling. There is infinite nonsense and sense out on the nearly infinite web: there is sufficient material to weave any tale. Perhaps crypto is nothing more than a modern iteration of the tulip bulb craze. In the end it was just tulip bulbs. I have only heard two knowledgeable people state that crypto is of no functional worth other than to those engaging in criminal transactions. To believe that it will remain free of regulation seems naive. An economic good with such volatility is not suited to being a currency. What is it useful for? Global warming is certainly an extremely widespread article of faith, but i have never been able to find conclusive evidence of it, yet it persists and propagates. And greta and hansel thunderburger are angry about it. And all the other fetishes mentioned? They’ve always been around but the internet makes them easier to find. 40 years ago if i wanted a hard to find book, i had to write a letter to a bookfinder in NY to locate a copy; now i can buy it online and immediately download it. Lyndon larouche wrote a fascinating nook about the Federal Reserve which i got a photocopy of in the 1980s; now you can download it. The human mind is always agitated.
4 people like this.

Reply 3 - Posted by: jimboscott 11/14/2022 1:11:10 PM (No. 1333050)
About crypto... The value in crypto is the fact that is requires no trust in any governments or institutions when implemented in its truest form. EVERYONE has a copy of the ledger so the records keeping is universal. It divorces transaction and store of value from reliance upon any central authority. What about FTX? FTX did not fail on the merits of crypto. It failed because FTX mismanaged what was ENTRUSTED to them by their clients. Ie., FTX became a CENTRALIZED authority over those funds. See the picture? It was centralization that brought FTX down and centralization is exactly what crypto was created to avoid. As for criminals using crypto for their trade... one only has to go back to the days of dollar bills to find the very same thing taking place not that many years ago. I value my privacy. I will not give it up just so some group of snoops can arrest a drug dealer down the street. Crypto is a technology that is here to stay. Governments and institutions do not like it because it encroaches upon their territory and threatens their control.
5 people like this.

Reply 4 - Posted by: FormerDem 11/14/2022 2:29:41 PM (No. 1333102)
the final degenerate stage of logical positivism - "it always worked for me!" - my rabbit´s foot, my bitcoin, my votes for the Democrats, my lucky shirt, lifestyle recommendations from Teenage Vogue,
3 people like this.

Reply 5 - Posted by: CivilServant 11/14/2022 5:44:55 PM (No. 1333243)
#3, what happens if I make a journal entry that is fallacious? Quo custudiet ipsos custodies? Nope. No value in ether coins. Not to this guy.
1 person likes this.

Reply 6 - Posted by: NYbob 11/14/2022 11:41:00 PM (No. 1333517)
I looked at crypto because of NFTs. As an artist I thought there might be some merit in it for me as another ave for selling art. First off, any exchange requires extensive documentation from you. Then the changing fees for minting a NFT put you in a hole before trying to get attention in a very weird market. I decided there was no way it was going to work for me, but it makes a lot of sense for people who want a way to wash money they did not earn. At least until governments figure out how to track and tax the accounts in the exchanges that have all that documentation. Then it is as simple at tracking emails and phone calls, only billions of dollars are involved.
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