u/citoyensatisfait

Hello Everyone,

I wanted to share this for a long time but since the end of Wano the parallels only gets reinforced, and I can't really fall asleep so here goes.

What is a Gnostic Work?

Gnosticism is an ancient christian and philosophical current centered on gnosis : secret knowledge rather than blind faith or blind obedience. It posits that the material universe was created by a lesser, flawed, or tyrannical authority (the Demiurge, god of the old testament) to keep humanity trapped in spiritual ignorance. Liberation requires piercing this cosmic illusion to reclaim the divine spark hidden within.

It was forbidden and hidden for 2000 years, and the texts composing it pan over one century (sounds familiar?)

• The False Authority: The World Government and the Gorosei act as a direct proxy for the Gnostic Demiurge and his Archons-lesser, ignorant, or malevolent rulers who usurp absolute control over a material prison and demand total obedience.A being that claims to be god of the world.

•The Erased Truth: The Void Century functions precisely like the hidden, forbidden knowledge (gnosis). The ruling order's primary mechanism of power is the active revision, censorship, and concealment of humanity's true origins and the nature of the world. It is also as I mentioned earlier an actual fact of gnosticism history. The Orthodox church tried to erase its message.

•The True History / Pleroma: Finding out what happened 800 years ago is the narrative equivalent of piercing through the cosmic veil to realize the current reality is built on a grand deception.

•The Dawn and Liberation: Dawn is insanely present in Gnostic texts. The "Will of D." and the recurring motif of the Sun God Nika—bringing liberation, laughter, and breaking chains—mirrors the spark of divine consciousness waking up within matter to shatter the prison. This is the exact same spirit and message attributed to Jesus in the Gnostic texts, both in the spiritual and material world as a liberation.

There are many more, finer parallels, specially in backstories that go even further in the parallels, it is not outlandish that Oda might have had access to this as it is pretty popular as an inspiration in Japan, whereas it is almost unknown to most of us. Additionally, parallels between Gnosticism and Buddhism have been drawn and we can clearly see Oda loves his references to it.

Why such a success?

I think the key to the success of One Piece is exactly that: the mystery, the search, the unveiling and the taking down of fake gods or oppressors through laughter and joy.

It resonates so much with so many people because it used the same themes and narrative beats as the most ancient mythos and religion, it is literally embedded within most cultures and is a message that was always perverted or redirected by an authority.

Peter Thiel, who despises gnosticism and ignores it totally tried to appropriate One Piece recently to make it fit his authoritarian narrative, pretending that Luffy would wish for deregulating AI, lol. It's almost as if the message was attempted to be perverted again.

It is all pretty striking, but what are your thoughts. Writing this in a rush. Sorry if I made some spelling or syntax mistake.

The point of her killing Krem is that Kara takes revenge because she is already in this trauma state, she knows this hate destroyed her and she wants to prevent Ruthye from experiencing that.

So, she does it herself, because that’s what her parents wished for her, to be a protective force. In this case killing Krem was to prevent him from doing anymore harm and to prevent Ruthye from doing it herself. At the end Kara decides to become a hero on her new home as her parents wished but it doesn’t mean she is past this hate in any way, I assume this will be something they will tackle in the next installment.

She is not naturally good like Clark, her positive actions can be more brutal.

Clark’s storyline was to detach himself from his kryptonian mission and to accept himself as truly human, Kara's is to accept the death of Krypton and to live for the wish her parents made. The result is similar but the characters are widely different mentally and have very different reasons for doing what they do.

At the end of the day they both protect people but Kara is okay with taking the load that could destroy others. If Clark had acted there and imprisoned Krem for example, who is to say that Ruthye's hate would not have continued? That she wouldn’t have sought revenge again?

Kara's sacrifice prevented that.