To continue with "Divine Fury" : As I read McMahon's book, it becomes crystal clear why Frithjof Shuon hated the idea of evolution and the modern view of the Renaissance as a positive thing. Quoting from McMahon's book regarding the loss of, or alienation from, God in the 18th century: "Bear in mind that this was a predicament without precedent in the history of the world...[people] began to look forward on time's horizon, seeking the unexpected, the original, the unknown...a new figure was seized upon to provide a porton of God's power and an element of the guardian's [guardian angel's) comfort...the genius enchanted a world threatened by disenchantment."
There is so much here that it cannot be done justice in a single blog. To start with, note the very clear fact that NEVER BEFORE in the history of Man had human society as a whole lost or felt alienated from their god or gods. This should come as a wake-up call to those - including myself a times - who think that our era is just another normal passing phase in human history. It is not - in making man the supreme expression of nature, answerable only to himself, we have become lost in a world formerly crowded with as many gods and spirits as there were life forms and natural entities such as the sky, lakes, the ocean and mountains. Why this happened is debatable and complex, but the author notes that Descartes purposefully mentions his conflicting demons in his early works, only to later reject them so that he could form the idea of an objective world of cause and effect. Spirits and god, we might then posit, became hindrances to a notion of 'progress,' that is, scientific and technological exploration and invention, and were thus rejected. And with this triumph of progress, we began to look for a future that was better than our present, which had become dull and disenchanted - that is, that the two, disenchantment and progress, were linked arm in arm.
But what enchantment could there be in an objective, cause and effect world? The author makes this clear: radical innovation, formed by the "genius," which was once considered a spirit but now resides in very special men (and increasingly, women). In a world without magic, if I may call it that, and in an objective world that declares all "equal" (another sideline of the author, but that is for another time) we need a person linked to something special, transcendent, to give our lives excitement and meaning. We look for and actually make, then, our geniuses, to deliver us. We give them quirks and strange behavior and (near) supernatural abilities - just as we once gave these to oracles, prophets, and to our own inner daemons, or angels.
I will stop here, but the perennialists' damning view of modernity in all this becomes perfectly clear. Progress, as we now understand it, is the product of a profane-making mentality that cheapens our experience and flattens the world into mere observable objects. It is not enough - we call, in our misguided turn to progress, for magic in progress, and for the magic-maker, the genius, for only he can now rise above the flatness. It is still not enough. And what Schuon and the perennialists have going for them is exactly this: that objectivity and the scientific view are not enough; that is, it is abundantly clear that we were meant for something more. The perennialists, the religious, the spiritual, all know what that "something else" is; and the dark view that many have of our future is well made, for if our current trajectory can not give us what we need, where will we go? Until the urge for progress is spent, where will we go? Ecologists know the answer - we will continue to try to find the spiritual in substance (and in the genius). Never found, we will (or might) exhaust what we can use in the hopeless quest.
For Schuon, this is a "given," part of a large cycle that has to play itself out. It will, he says, but not before some very, very bad history is made. It is then, from the ashes, that a new age will be born, but not until. Personally, I have hope that the cycle will not have to complete itself, but I agree with the fundamental idea. Our unhappiness as a social mass will not decrease with more stuff, but rather with more spirit. Until the time comes when this movement becomes obvious, there is certainly a lot to worry about. FK
There is so much here that it cannot be done justice in a single blog. To start with, note the very clear fact that NEVER BEFORE in the history of Man had human society as a whole lost or felt alienated from their god or gods. This should come as a wake-up call to those - including myself a times - who think that our era is just another normal passing phase in human history. It is not - in making man the supreme expression of nature, answerable only to himself, we have become lost in a world formerly crowded with as many gods and spirits as there were life forms and natural entities such as the sky, lakes, the ocean and mountains. Why this happened is debatable and complex, but the author notes that Descartes purposefully mentions his conflicting demons in his early works, only to later reject them so that he could form the idea of an objective world of cause and effect. Spirits and god, we might then posit, became hindrances to a notion of 'progress,' that is, scientific and technological exploration and invention, and were thus rejected. And with this triumph of progress, we began to look for a future that was better than our present, which had become dull and disenchanted - that is, that the two, disenchantment and progress, were linked arm in arm.
But what enchantment could there be in an objective, cause and effect world? The author makes this clear: radical innovation, formed by the "genius," which was once considered a spirit but now resides in very special men (and increasingly, women). In a world without magic, if I may call it that, and in an objective world that declares all "equal" (another sideline of the author, but that is for another time) we need a person linked to something special, transcendent, to give our lives excitement and meaning. We look for and actually make, then, our geniuses, to deliver us. We give them quirks and strange behavior and (near) supernatural abilities - just as we once gave these to oracles, prophets, and to our own inner daemons, or angels.
I will stop here, but the perennialists' damning view of modernity in all this becomes perfectly clear. Progress, as we now understand it, is the product of a profane-making mentality that cheapens our experience and flattens the world into mere observable objects. It is not enough - we call, in our misguided turn to progress, for magic in progress, and for the magic-maker, the genius, for only he can now rise above the flatness. It is still not enough. And what Schuon and the perennialists have going for them is exactly this: that objectivity and the scientific view are not enough; that is, it is abundantly clear that we were meant for something more. The perennialists, the religious, the spiritual, all know what that "something else" is; and the dark view that many have of our future is well made, for if our current trajectory can not give us what we need, where will we go? Until the urge for progress is spent, where will we go? Ecologists know the answer - we will continue to try to find the spiritual in substance (and in the genius). Never found, we will (or might) exhaust what we can use in the hopeless quest.
For Schuon, this is a "given," part of a large cycle that has to play itself out. It will, he says, but not before some very, very bad history is made. It is then, from the ashes, that a new age will be born, but not until. Personally, I have hope that the cycle will not have to complete itself, but I agree with the fundamental idea. Our unhappiness as a social mass will not decrease with more stuff, but rather with more spirit. Until the time comes when this movement becomes obvious, there is certainly a lot to worry about. FK
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