Just read Rooson's comment - superb.  Inconclusive to a hardened skeptic, but obvious to those with an open mind. Something greater is involved in our personal lives, as small as we are, and why not?  Let a scientist produce one millionth of a gram of feces in a vacuum and it would be the most precious thing he could have.  How much more, to paraphrase the Gospels, are you?  FK  

Roker's comment that we cannot do much ourselves, while largely true, reminds me of the famous Hundred Monkey hypothesis, made after some naturalist observations in Japan.  

Japan has several small unpopulated islands where macaques, baboon-like monkeys, have been allowed to thrive and dominate the natural fauna.  By the early 90's (as I recall), tourism to these islands had grown, and to increase the population for the tourists, sweet potatoes were thrown onto the beaches to enrich their (the monkeys', not the tourists') diet.  At first these made little difference, as the sand that stuck to them made them inedible, until one macaque came up with the bright idea of washing the tubers off in the ocean.  Others noticed, and soon all the macaques on the island were doing it.  

Now, this revolution in thought had taken a decade or more to occur, but once it did, within months the macaques on all the other islands picked up the practice.  How, the naturalists thought, had the idea come so quickly to the others when it had taken so long for the first?  They were, after all, not in communication with each other.

The conclusion reached by some was that an idea, once held by a certain percentage of a species, becomes part of the specie's mental grid, or, as Jungians had long called it, part of the archetype or ancestral memory.  Since then, other biologists, such as Rupert Sheldrake, have talked about a morphic field that pertains to classifications of living things that retain such knowledge, accessible to most members of the species from the time it is learned onward into the distant future.  

I could go back to ideas of "oneness" that have been approached by physicists and mystics alike, but for me it recalls the idea of the "master of animals" that many native Americans have had traditionally, whereby a species had a master template (usually situated in a sacred mountain) by which they followed their intended design.  

A lot can be drawn  from these ideas (and a lot criticized, I know), but for our purposes, I refer back to Cal's idea that "little can be done."  I maintained that this is largely true, but that it is not necessarily so.  An idea, an attitude, that is at first maintained by a few can grow to reach others until an unspecific saturation point is reached - one hundred monkeys in our example - and the message, if not the entire spirit, becomes known to nearly everyone.  Like magic.  

We have seen this time and again in ideas and technologies, from the proliferation of the bow and arrow to the design and construction of pyramids.  Archaeologists prefer to attribute this to diffusion, and in some cases might be right, but we might look at the acceptability of certain ideas already present to bolster our argument further.  Human rights, the end of slavery, democracy, any number of ideas have  been present for millenia before they became accepted as "natural and right" for human kind.  

And so I suggest that one's thoughts, one's attempts at finding the sacred, might not be lonely endeavors after all, and might have much greater effects than one might think.  The founder of Christianity, a man with no wealth or background, is one outstanding example.

Ah, it's been a while...good to be back.  Some very interesting comments.  For one, I never knew that Johnny Cash could be so deep!  As for Rooson, yes, full circle - but it has to do with the readings I am doing, as well as the very subtle - even metaphysical - roots behind whatever "end times" might come.  To fathom it is not easy for we of Middle Earth, and it speaks of our predicament.  It has long been my notion, borrowed from others, that in some way or another we chose this place, dimension, or whatever we might call it.  I sometimes see it as a bad dream, but then have to consider the immensity and complexity of it all.  It is not our bad dream alone, but a situation we have fallen into, and it is not really "bad" but peculiar; in other words, a predicament, as said.  In it, there is an immanence of the permanent, or divine, which is obvious in those special "moments of joy" that Krissy mentioned.  It is clear to me that we are meant to grasp these moments and find in them the true- that is eternal - nature of reality, and expand this sense until it illuminates all our perceptions permanently.  This is enlightenment.  Why we have chosen - or been made - to have to work so hard for this I do not really know.  To say "it happens because it it can happen, and all things must happen with God, as he is everything" simply is not satisfactory, at least to me.   

This continues obliquely with the last entry, but only obliquely.  The old adobe  house is illustrative, and is as such printed again. If I had a picture of a modern apartment complex, I would have printed that, for both are illustrative of the point to come, from different angles.

The adobe house: on the one hand, a nightmare for home buyers.  Old natural materials - might mean rot, certainly means holes here and there for the scorpions and tarantulas and bats to enter, and lots of nooks and crannies for them to breed.  Probably needs to be white(pink?)washed regularly, or at least maintained in some annual pain in the butt way.  Electrical wiring? Of what is left over from the mice nibbling, it's probably coated with old rotting cloth or primitive cracked plastic, and of plumbing, all the horrors from a foul cesspool to lead pipes.  In many ways, more a hobby than a home.

On the other hand: soft molding and coloration in conformity to the natural surroundings; the real look and feel of natural materials; a holistic extension of man into nature and nature into man.  A house that is also soul food.  

I don't know.  I have had friends buy these old places and seen them come out with vast expenses for cracked foundations and termite rot.  Yet, like the old English sports car that looks so cool even though it fouls its sparks every ten miles, we are attracted to such things.  And unlike the old colonials and sports cars, this adobe is suited for the weather.  It might survive decades without maintenance in the dry desert, the stucco will not rot, and it is cool in a temperature sense - it's very reason for being.  

I have come to think about this after starting a biography of Fr. Bede Griffiths, mentioned some time before in this blog as a 20th century Catholic Priest who gained fame identifying in a very meaningful way the essence of Christianity with Hinduism.  Some believe him a saint, and he undoubtedly was in at least one waay - that is, by realization of God the Absolute in himself and the world.  

But I am not going in that direction now; instead, I want to focus on something brought up early in the biography - and that is, Griffith's detestation of modern (early 20th century England, where he was then a student at Oxford) architecture and aesthetics in general.  At that time, factories continued to push into the countryside, followed by the cheap housing needed for the poorly paid workers.  Everything about this screamed "ugly" and to Griffiths, this epitomized modernity.  For him, what we built on the outside reflected our inside - and what we lived on the outside affected our inside.  That, then, is our vicious cycle, a feedback of negativity that takes us further and further from nature and our natural - and divine - roots.  

I thought about this as I drove back from my walk this morning, and yes, the newer the structure, the uglier in general it was.  This is farm country, and I could use the grain silos as a great "for instance."  The oldest are made from the rock and earth from the surrounding countryside. The earth was not as high-grade as that used for commercial cement, so most of the few that are left need repair, but they are without doubt the best of the bunch, setting into the countryside with a natural charm.  Next came the cement silos, not so pretty but solid and subdued in coloration - and topped, at least, with wood roof and shingles.  Then the steel silos, garish against the earth and mud and grass, but representing,  at least to me, at least a non-toxic permanence.  Last and very much least, the "white worms," tubes of plastic stuffed with silage that simply lay on the ground waiting for the tractor shovel to rip off a slice.  Grotesque in every way, but by far the cheapest and easiest and, we can add, the least dangerous of the bunch for storing and distributing silage. 

Serviceable, in other words.  Ugly, cheap, but efficient.  

We can use those words to sum up all modern structure and commerce, but does is sum up the modern mind?  Is the outside a reflection of the inside and vice-versa?

Yes and no.  Yes in so many ways, the most notable being our language, which expresses our very ideas and forms the root of who we think we are.  Years ago when I started to look up words, I was struck by the original depth of meaning so many words had - how they corresponded to essential natural elements or cosmic thoughts.  Modern usage has made them flat and utilitarian.  As an outrageous example, take the word "awesome."  We still know what that means but we almost never use it as such - instead it has  become a footstool in language, like "OK."  In effect, meaning has been sleeked down for easy usage, with a corresponding loss of depth.  And never mind vulgarity, which is now as common among women and small children as it once was in the working man's world.  Even those - even vulgar words - have roots in deeper meaning.  In fact, in all my studies of primitive cultures  I don't recall any reference to vulgar language.  It is my belief that they had none.  While tone might reflect displeasure, what words represented - the world of these people - was simply beyond vulgarity (how, for instance, did all but clinical language about sex become vulgar?)

The "yes" of flat, ugly utilitarianism in ourselves can continue - obviously to art and architecture, as well as to our world view in general, or what I have been referring to continually in the blog as a "flat" epistemology (that is, mode of thought).   

However, we do have a saving grace, at least as I see it.  While the primitives (again, as in "primal" or "first" - no disrespect intended whatsoever) and early civilized (as in civic, "city") peoples connected directly to greater meaning, it seems they did so from a different sort of flat perspective - that is, without reflection.  This I see as our strength - that we do not simply follow tradition or the rules without reflecting on how these might affect people other than ourselves; for instance, the Jews in the New Testament would thoughtlessly have stoned the adulterous woman without conscious reflection on their own hypocricy  - and on the life of the woman herself as an individual.  

I am not alone in noticing this difference - in anthropology, they call it a move from "shame" (based on exterior actions, words and so on) to "guilt" (based on internal reflection).  We could write books on it, but for here it occurs to me that Christianity met the demise of meaning in civilized culture with an increase in the depth of the individual.  Like much of Christianity, this seems a contradiction, for we are supposed to love our brother as ourselves - that is, see LESS individual distinction - but a little thought proves, I think, that the route to oneness has to go through the atomization of the social body through individuation.  And yet - is this not why our social systems are falling apart?  More contradiction, but through that might be seen The Way - and why we must suffer an apocalyptic collapse before we rise again from the ashes.  FK    

(There will be a pause of several days in the blog for Spring Break.  Happy surfing!)                                   

It was an early morning, and after the chores were done I was able to take a long walk before the sunrise.  It was cold and clear and just right. Snow has been late this year and still deep in places, and the freezing temperatures allowed me and the dog to skitter across the snow like flying fish.  The sun rose just as I reached the top of a hill, while to the west the rusty full moon was nearing its setting on the horizon.  There are many swamps and ponds here, and the geese and sand hill cranes were causing the kind of stir that comes only with the excitement of spring and new life.  As I approached a stretch of woods, the rising sun was shining on a stand of white poplar, the only ones among the tall trees with buds filled with sap to nearly bursting, waiting for those first few warm days to finally pop.

Beautiful, and I am grateful to have such opportunities.  It reminded me of the epiphany I had a few days ago as I watched the sun from another angle, this later in the afternoon.  The light must have hit me just right, for I was filled with an absolute contentment - not the type that you get at the end of a long, productive day, but a fuller sort, where everything is as it should be, perfect and complete, and you would not have it any other way.  This attitude has come to me frequently of late, and it brings with it the idea that I want for nothing.  Not only that, but that anything else but being and that which is necessary for life is not only unnecessary, but ridiculous.  No money or  treasures or prestige can tempt me at such times, for they seem as remote from my own desires as my childhood wishes for more plastic dinosaurs.  On thinking about this, I recall Orson Well's movie, Citizen Kane.

A story about a poor boy suddenly made rich, it begins with him in his Colorado home, sledding on a hillside with the other boys, laughing.  On his sled is the maker's mark "Rosebud."  He is summoned by a woman - his mother, I presume - to come into the house, where he is told about his new-found wealth, which leads quickly to his attendance at boarding school, posh college, a publishing and political career and so on, finally landing him at in a vast estate where an ever-increasing debauchery is matched by ever-increasing bitterness with life.  He dies in his vast hall, his last words being, "Rosebud."

If I got some of the details wrong, forgive me.  It is all about Rosebud, after all, which I knew instantly after watching it in my college film class.  Yes indeed, that would be on the test.  The answer to it seemed easy - he had preferred his homily life to the grandeur of wealth and power.  That was the answer I put on the exam, and it was the right one.  But now I wonder.  Whether Wells intended it or not, I believe the real answer was this: the boy was living the epiphany.  Life had peaked, all was well with the world.  Perhaps because of his age he could not know it, but in later life he began to understand that this sense, this being with what is, this recognition of the value of existence in and of itself, is everything.  It is what money and power are meant to bring, but can never do so.  It is an inward sense and there is simply no comparison to it with wealth - the former towers over the latter like the sun over a hill.  

Yes, I know it as a truism that has become cliche, but it is nonetheless true.  When you feel it, you know it is so.  And this explains what Jesus meant when he said: suffer the children; the meek shall inherit the earth; and, the lowest shall become the highest.  People have had fun with these contradictions for some time because they have forgotten what they once knew: that having nothing in innocence is the greatest joy we can have.  It's the boy on his sled; its the old man in just the right sunlight; and it might be the millionaire on his yacht, but it is not the yacht that gives the pleasure, but the simple sense of being.  And this simple sense is most easily sensed when one is simple - lowly, childlike, having nothing - that is, free, if we can know it.  If we can know we are free, we are, and that is the great joy.  Free of everything but our God-given essence, free as one eternal being in eternity.  FK          
          

A brief addition to the last:
What has always puzzled me is that I know that we know a lot more than we let on to ourselves - that is, that we pretty much know what's coming our way, just as the trees do, but we don't let on to ourselves.  I know this because I have run across my inner "overmind" - and it is like a benign, unobtrusive god, fascinated with the little fellow down below (it feels as if it is up above) and how he's dealing with his self-imposed (or outwardly imposed) blindness.  In thinking of this, it comes to me that we know both our personal and cultural destiny - at least in probability.  My theory is, that this overmind is perfectly aware of what our destiny should be, but is only very aware but not perfectly so as to what will actually happen.  Like the growing tree, it cannot know certain outside incidentals (for instance, the park is sold for a condo development).  This is only an analogy.  The overmind knows us better than we know ourselves, but is not God - redemption and grace may be sought and obtained that the overmind would not know of for certain.

In the case of cultural - now world - destiny, I believe this is known to us in a similar way.  We are headed in a certain direction, and the super-intelligence (that is, our overminds) know this - but this may be altered as it might be in the personal realm.  Still - Jesus knew that the end would come, just not when.  And that's what I would hang my hat on.  We might, then, have several centuries to go yet.  And what?, we might discover faster than light travel and get off this particular terrestrial cycle as well.  On the other hand, that may never have the chance to occur before the end of the age.

I have been brought to think about this again, again with my reading, and again with the last chapters of Schuon's book.  In it, he shows how Christianity is an esoteric - that is, essentially spiritual - "religion."  I put religion in quotes because religious forms are by definition exoteric (outward signs, words, symbols, etc).  Christ did not bring us religion, but Truth - but we genuinely cannot handle the truth.  What Schuon makes of it is this: there is therefore an inherent instability within Christianity, its exoteric form clashing with the esoteric essence of Christ's message (all outer form is ultimately NOT the truth, as truth is ALL without exception.  A religion, for the average man, cannnot be all.)  Schuon goes on to explain that this was not only planned (of course, by a perfect God) but planned to be unstable to hasten the end of this last, most imperfect era - that is, our era.  Christianity, then, is an act of mercy with its destabilization of human form - much like Jesus's relatively quick death was an act of mercy.  We must suffer, but not longer than necessary.

And so Christianity, through its instability, facilitated the Renaissance which facilitated the Reformation, which  facilitated the industrial rev, scientific and colonial imperialism and so on - down to the final stage.  But the thing is, we know this, too.   Several years ago, a friend admitted that he was anxiously awaiting disasters - this was before 9/II - and felt guilty about it.  At the time, I passed it off as a desire for excitement, for some change in our ordinary humdrum life, but now I see it differently.  Now I see that many of us are anxious for this era to end, as we know it will.  We feel guilty about it because it involves some sort of misery, and we feel anxious about it because the misery will affect all of us, but still the desire is there.  I liken it to the desire to get the root canal over with.  Just get it done!  But, really, how much better to have the tooth miraculously healed?  We can hope and do what we can to stop the final dis.  I suppose, in the contradictions that make up Christianity, that is what we're supposed to do.  FK  

Easter commeth!  And with it art.  As a small note to Schuon in his book, The Transcendental Unity of Being, in it he describeds perfectly why many in the Church were so infuriated with Renaissance Art.  It was, as we would call it, naturalistic art, in that it captured in sculpture and paint realistic portrayals.  For me, this period has always meant the beginning of good art (the end coming with the "modernist" movement begun in the late 19th century.  In over a hundred years it has not caught on with the Folk, a sure sign of their superiority to the cultural elite), but not to Schuon and the Traditionalists.  Here he notes that art in medieval Europe before this classical revival could not help but be sacred art, for that was the reason for art: to divine the meaning of form and translate that deeper meaning to the laity.  It served a purpose - to expose the sacred meaning of creation.  Naturalistic art, on the other hand, only copied the work of God - always an inferior copy that concentrated the viewer's attention on form rather than substance; in other words, naturalistic art represents a form of paganism, where the form is mistaken for the substance (as in: a tree has the spirit of God and so might be worshiped.  Correctly, the tree would rather express facet of God, being only a form itself).  My reply: I understand but  cannot wholly agree.  I find that much of Renaissance art DOES serve as a vehicle to higher understanding (Botticelli comes to mind).  I will not go into the nuances for his argument here, but thought it interesting.  I had always heard of the conflict over art but have never fully  understood it until now. 

On to intuition; the idea arose after a friend of mine explained how he came to stay up late to watch Harvard win its first NCAA tournament game.  Harvard had been leading, then was trailing, and it was late and pretty much a given that it would lose - again.  But after he turned off the set, something told him to turn it on again.  He did, and was rewarded with a live witness to the first win.
Something told him...that is intuition.  We can parse it in many ways - for instance, we could say that it is no more than a subconscious deduction of factual probability.  That might work for the Harvard game, but would it explain cancelling a trip because of an eerie feeling, and finding that the plane broke down, or even crashed?  Perhaps - for you have thousands having such intuitions but one only hear of the ones that work out.  But then again, there are many examples, countless, of phone calls you know you will receive, of the sudden impression that a relative has died, of love that comes about through unusual means.  The list goes on and on (and I would love to hear from readers some of their own examples).

The best explanation for this comes from the quantum theory/metaphysical knowledge that the universe is interconnected and timeless - that is, that even the separation of events through time does not exist at the ultimate level.  Therefore, everything becomes explainable.  I won't go into the stuff here - we've touched on it before and undoubtedly will again - but I want to point out two observations I have had associated with intuition, the first being: how do you know?  How do you know that the little voice talking to you out of nowhere is not a random thought or a wish-fulfillment?  I get intuitive messages all the time - and also many random thoughts.  I generally cannot tell the difference until a future event validates the intuition  - and all too late.  The only thing I can say is, the voice of true intuition is generally calm, matter of fact, and out of the blue.  So much so that it is easy to ignore.  There are methods I have read about as to how to tell intuition  from randomness, but the best probably is by the quiet ordinariness of the real thing.  Which belies what you think, and makes you often pass it by.  Like the zen archer who achieves his bulls-eye without thinking of the outcome, it is by calm movement with the self that such a voice can be discerned.  In China, this is called recognizing the Tao, or Way (of heaven).  

In any case, I am lousy at it, but I did think of a naturalistic phenomena that describes it (much as the Chinese attempt to  describe the Tao - see the I Ching).  Several years ago in a local park, the managers planted a score of so of new trees to create an oak-hickory-field gallery forest that "was how Southern Wisconsin was before Euro settlement."  They never mention that the mosaic was an artificial one created by American Indians with regular burning, but that is besides the point; what they did to reproduce this "natural" forest was to plant several trees, many close to other much larger, established trees.  

After a few years of growth, I began to notice something: that the smaller trees, still young but no longer saplings, were growing away from the larger trees.  This might seem natural - as a friend pointed out, they must be reaching away from the other trees for better sunlight.  But no: the larger tree were well behind them and to the north; in other words, by growing away from the larger trees, they would not gather more sunlight.  To understand why they grew so, risking possible uprooting as they grew larger because of the slant, one had to project their growth and the larger trees behind them 30 years or more into the future.  In that time, the trees would be large enough to grow into each other, something that is decidedly not good for trees.  But to understand that, the younger trees had to understand where they would be in 3 decades.  How did they know?


We would do it through the logic of observation, but trees do not have logic.  They have no brains, for that matter.  They do have photo sensors, however, and through this they might be able to detect some shade behind them (somehow) that otherwise does not touch them.  Let's give it that.  But still, the shade is not affecting them yet - that is a conjecture for the future.  But tree can't conjecture.  By this I understand that the trees understand the situation beyond time - for they can only react to the present.  And so the future is there as a potential in the present, affecting events before the cause actually happens.  That is, affect happens before actual cause; that is, normal lineal time has been transcended.


This may seem complex, but what I am getting at is that beings without intellect can respond to stimuli before they directly stimulate, without thought.  Because of this, we might say that the potential, whether it is understood or not, can warn us before it actually affects us - and can warn us in a supraintellectual way.  That is, we would feel it as the tree does, and this might then be translated into a softly transmitted set of words that relay the meaning to our intellect (softly because it does not belong to the dominant ego.)  Thus we can know the future.  And this future has a "shade" that extends for us well beyond what it does in the example of the trees; it would extend perhaps across the cosmos, but certainly throughout the social and natural realms that can directly affect us.  

Thus intuition is the language of the cosmos, spoken by every living, and perhaps inanimate, thing or object.  It is the knowledge born from eons of the effects, subtle or not, that the world has upon the thing form the thing's perspective.  And yes, we can go back to quantum theory to explain, but we don't need to.  Only to know everything about us is on the same plane and KNOWS itself, every bit of it, just as we would if we knew how to listen. 


            


 


        

                              

Cal - I agree about the inner silence, of course - thus the name of the website.  Outer poverty - or rather, the lack of concern for the things of this world - is something that is verifiable to a degree.  Wisdom is a harder thing to judge.  And yes, I agree with you - it would be better for us to have a theocratic institution (with checks and balances to reduce corruption - we must be specific about them) than what we have now.  In this we would agree with Guenon and the Traditionalists.  The barbs to this are in the implementation: how would we get started?; what would be the checks and balances?; who would oversee the institution, and how would the overseer be picked in the first place?  This is where my concern lies - in the beginnings.  Once we have the truly wise and soul- realized in place, we would be safe for some time.

There is something lurking in the last few entries that is probably not obvious to those not reading the Traditionalists, and that is the negative views they share on democracy.  Maybe this is due to stodgy Old World conservatism, but that is not what they say.  Rather, Guenon specifically makes a point that the rise of democracies is a sign of the imminent collapse of the human order.  The theory is rather simple and elegantly made: that is, if the human collective has become so far removed from greater reality, so will the decisions of this human collective.  Ignorance will only breed more ignorance, which will further entrench this ignorance in a vicious circle that will not end well.  

I understand the waffling of Cal on the inevitability of world culture chaos leading to some sort of collapse.  For one, Americans are optimistic; we don't take doom for an answer.  We may be proud of this, but we must also understand that this is due in part to our history.  Unlike most of the rest of the world, we have not experienced the horrors of political and social collapse in warfare (the South did to an extent, but they were quickly welcomed back as Americans, which they were, only divested of the right to own African slaves).  For another, the way I wrote the last piece was so, well, certain!  Is Cal's reaction another sign of the pervasiveness of relativity, or only a realistic look at the uncertainties in predicting the future?

Yesterday's blog was written in the spirit of Frithjof Schuon, a German (Swiss) metaphysician schooled in the early 20th century, and he was every bit the temperament of his national origin and time - hard-core and no nonsense to the extreme.  However, he has based his reasoning not only on his own insight, but on the holy scriptures of several traditions.  We Christians know that the world as we know it is destined to end in a rather dramatic way - to make room for the reign of Christ.  For the Hindus, the world moves through stages, and most would agree that we are in the final of the primary 7 - that is, the age of Iron, or the Maha-Yuga.  While the end is taken on faith by Christians, for the Hindus, whose roots stretch back 2000 years before Christ, the passage of the human world through stages is seen as a science  - much as I described it yesterday.  This is not to say that God has built in a doomsday mechanism, but that human nature, through the summation of individual choice, proceeds along specific lines.  For instance: in the Golden Age, Man stands as he truly is, the image of God, and the realization is as natural for him as it is for us to see the blue sky and white snow.  But the mirror of this reflection becomes clouded.  As it does, Revelation is given to humanity to help clean this mirror, but in time fewer and fewer do so because with the dimming of the divine reflection, the Separateness of the world seems more and more real.  At one point, towards the end of the Iron Age, most are blinded.  Materialism wins the day.  The reflected image becomes only a reflection itself, something seldom seen but only talked about (in Religion).  At some point, even the reflection of the reflection becomes clouded; even the exoteric forms of knowledge dispensed by religious dogma become incomprehensible to most.  Religion as a living body withers,  Materialist science dominates, and, as the poet said, "the center cannot hold," for no center is recognized.  All is particularized, taken from its place in the cosmic whole to serve a particular, atomized purpose (technology).  There is no Truth anymore, only relative viewpoints, all more or less equal, limited, and transient, subject to the whims of the elite or the vox populus. 

Sound familiar?  However, what I say is nothing new - the "end" has been predicted since the death of Jesus.  So I do agree with Cal to a degree - we do NOT know the time, only that it may come at any time - we are certainly set up for it.  But there have been revivals and new Revelations in historical time - perhaps we have a while to go yet.  Even Rene Guenon, another of the founders of the Traditionalist school, stated that, although it was likely that world culture would shatter, it was not absolutely inevitable - and that each of us must work to that end that believes it is not inevitable.  In the end, we do not know what the "end" will really look like - and there is always divine grace.