In Levi-Straussian fashion, each Gnostic myth or system is for him 'merely the transformation of other ones. So enchanted by structuralism is Couliano that he uses it to account not only for Gnostic dualism but even for its nihilistic absence. Instead of taking nihilistic worldliness as the dualistic opposite of Gnostic otherworldliness, he speaks of nihilism as the yearning for lost otherworldliness. Myth for Levi-Strauss serves to alleviate, not to preserve, dualism. The presence, not the absence, of dualism is to be bemoaned.
Myth reconciles human beings to the world.
Yet Levi-Strauss himself sees no incompatibility between the mind and experience. On the contrary, for him human beings project the dualistic structure of their minds onto the world and thereby experience the world as filled with polarities. Couliano fails to see the relationship that Levi-Strauss posits between the mind and the world. Singer, Filoramo, Couliano and their predecessors single out different aspects of both Gnosticism and modernity. By evaluating ancients through modern eyes, they are projecting onto Gnosticism their own hopes, anxieties and convictions.