QuoteThe Greek adjective gnostikos ("leading to knowledge" or "pertaining to knowledge") was first used by Plato to describe the cognitive or intellectual dimension of learning, as opposed to the practical.

Whereas some researchers argue that the term gnostic should be restricted to the sects or schools that called themselves by that name, others extend the category to include additional religious movements that allegedly shared various distinctive features. Still others treat gnosticism as a world religion that existed from antiquity to early modern times—surviving, for example, in the mythology and ritual of the Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran (see below Influence).

Many of the so-called gnostic groups are characterized by a mythology that distinguishes between an inferior creator of the world (a demiurge) and a more transcendent god or order of being. Another frequently encountered theme is that there is a special class or race of humans that is descended from the transcendent realm and is destined to achieve salvation and to return to its spiritual origins. Salvation is understood as a revelation that reawakens knowledge (gnosis) of the race's divine identity; in contrast, the traditional Christian emphasis is on redemption through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

While the transcendent god or invisible spirit is inconceivable and ineffable, the pleroma (Greek: "full perfection") of the divine is a hierarchical family of personified aeons, who emerge as the fruit of the spirit's self-contemplation or self-expression.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/gnosticism/Apocryphon-of-John

QuoteFWN:

QuoteFormula for my happiness: a yes, a no, a straight line -- a goal.

WSB:

Quote"(It is thought that the virus is a degeneration from more complex life-form. It may at one time have been capable of independent life. Now has fallen to the borderline between living and dead matter. It can exhibit living qualities only in a host, by using the life of another-the renunciation of life itself, a falling towards inorganic, inflexible machine, towards dead matter.)"
 
"Bureaus die when the structure of the state collapses. They are as helpless and unfit for independent existences as a displaced tapeworm, or a virus that has killed the host."

Summary: A lack of purpose. Without purpose, the will-to-power and fiction-absolute converge on rationalizing the self, which in turn creates individualism and a void within the self because now its mental state is unstable. This is why individualists like to manage their internal mental state by forcing unnecessary changes on the external world; in fact, they prefer destructive changes. Individualism is a pathology, not a philosophy.

Quoteanthropocentric

1: considering human beings as the most significant entity of the universe
2: interpreting or regarding the world in terms of human values and experiences

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anthropocentric

QuoteIndividualism = dedicated to the individual, namely maintaining its mental state and fiction-absolute; transcendentalism = dedicated to a realistic outlook and search for a holistic sense of enhancing the transcendentals (good, beautiful, real).

QuoteIndividualism, political and social philosophy that emphasizes the moral worth of the individual.

Following the upheaval of the French Revolution, individualisme was used pejoratively in France to signify the sources of social dissolution and anarchy and the elevation of individual interests above those of the collective.

The French aristocratic political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–59) described individualism in terms of a kind of moderate selfishness that disposed humans to be concerned only with their own small circle of family and friends.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/individualism

QuoteLiberalism, political doctrine that takes protecting and enhancing the freedom of the individual to be the central problem of politics.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/liberalism