Catch 22: Bennett’s ties with reactionary Gurdjieffianity /2012/09/28/catch-22-bennetts-ties-with-reactionary-gurdjieffianity/

Catch 22: Bennett’s ties with reactionary Gurdjieffianity

http://darwiniana.com/2012/09/26/a-question-about-bennetts-dramatic-universe-as-a-resource-for-the-left/
Catch 22: Bennett’s ties with reactionary Gurdjieffianity

This post on Bennett tried to make a point, but here I must caution that the world Bennett moved in is a problem for any leftist. Everything about the Gurdjieff circles he moved in was reactionary. And Bennett seems to have compromised with it.
But the point here is that his The Dramatic Universe is public domain, despite a few marginal references to Gurdjieff ideas, which play no part in his core systematics, with one exception: the ideas of reciprocal maintenance, which spoil his work with a corrupt sufi idea, are painted onto the treatment. The reciprocal maintenance is a dangerous idea justifying spiritual exploitation, and got passed into Bennett’s system in the confusion of his double allegiance.
This hybrid makes it unlikely the left would ever go near such a figure.
As my original review notes, Bennett’s work was spoiled by his associations, but, as I realized later, it makes no difference. Hegel was a reactionary, but his Logic is a resource. Same for Bennett. Or Schopenhauer, for that matter, who, despite the brilliance of his work, better than Hegel’s, was an absolute schmuck in the 48 revolutions.

Anyway, Bennett quietly handed the baton to the left, and some of the ideas, which don’t even have to be taken up, can help to exercise the frozen Hegelian spiderweb in which Marxists have been embalmed.

This exercise might help some leftists to move in religious, Xtian, or sufi circles, to see the way reaction is corrupting religion. Armed with a left version of Bennett, they might be better able to help, than with stale historical materialism.