I just wanted to throw some “props” in the direction of Fantastic Planet for this excellent article Gnosticism: The Ultimate Conspiracy Theory? Definitely check it out if you’re interested in exploring the (positive) parallels of gnosticism and contemporary conspiracy theory, which I’ve been talking about a lot lately.

There’s tons of great stuff in this article, but my favorite is the Whack-A-Mole game analogy:

Within the context of Gnosticism and conspiracy theory, understanding reality is like playing a game of whack-a-mole. When it comes to understanding the nature of reality, those of us who choose to play are handed mallets, told to stand in front of the machines and whack away. Occasionally we’re able to knock one of the little bastards back down, about as often as we’re able to glean valid information from mainstream sources.

Most people, after playing for some time, get tired and give up– after all, why bother with a silly game that seems so pointless? The conspiracy theorist, however, thinks to herself, “well, I could get rid of these moles by trying to bash ‘em, or, I could try to dismantle the machine and stop them at the source.” She then attempts to remove the game’s casing (often drawing the adverse attention of the arcade management) and understand the mechanisms that cause the moles to rise and fall, and stop them by shorting the circuitry.

The Gnostic goes a step further. We could dismantle the case, but then we should find out where the game is made, who made it, and why the heck they’re forcing us to play the damnable game in the first place.