Rene Guenon I: Agitation of Moderns

Name of God,

Allah Allah Allah

(This is a series of posts that would have quotes from Rene Guenon's (Abdul Wahid Yahya) works on various topics defining or illustrating characteristics of modernity or of Western or westernized moderns. Hoping that we might save ourselves from the evils of a solely materialistic anti-God civilization or rather anti-civilization.)


Superstition of Life:

"Life and action go closely together; the one's domain is also the other's, and it is to this limited domain that the whole Western civilization keeps, today more than ever. Elsewhere we have told what view the Easterners take of the limitations of action and its consequences, and how for them, in this respect, knowledge is the opposite of action: the Far-Eastern theory of 'non-action' and the Hindu theory of 'deliverance' are inaccessible to the ordinary Western mind, which cannot conceive that a man may dream of freeing himself from action, still less that he may actually come to do so Besides, action is not generally considered except in its most outward forms, in those that strictly correspond to physical movement: hence this growing desire for speed and this feverish restlessness so peculiar to modern life; it is all action for the pleasure of action, and this can only be called agitation, for even in action there are certain degrees to observe and certain distinctions to make."

East and West, Rene Guenon.