RENE GUENON 11

Rene Guenon, The Multiple States of the Being (Collected Works of Rene Guenon), translated from the French by Henry D. Fohr, edited by Samuel D. Fohr (Hillsdale, NY: Sophia Perennis, 1932, 2001).

RENE GUENON 10

Rene Guenon, The Symbolism of the Cross (Collected Works of Rene Guenon), translated from the French by Angus Macnab (Hillsdale, NY: Sophia Perennis, 1931, 2001).

"CLOUD OF UNKNOWING"

Unknown, The Cloud of Unknowing and Other Works , translated into Modern English with an introduction by Clifton Wolters (London & New York: Penguin Classics/Penguin Books, 1978) ("Do not think that because I call it a 'darkness' or a 'cloud' it is the sort of cloud you see in the sky, or a kind of darkness you know at home when the light is out. That kind of darkness or cloud you can picture in your mind's eye in the height of summer, just as in the depth of a winter's night you can picture a clear and shining light. I do not mean this at all. By 'darkness' I mean 'a lack of knowing'--just as anything that you do not know or may have forgotten may be said to be 'dark' to you, for you cannot see it with your inward eye. For this reason it is called 'cloud', not of the sky, of course, but 'of unknowing', a cloud of unknowing between you and your God." Id. at 66.).

AMERICA'S ECONOMIC GOWTH AND DECLINE

Robert J. Gordon, The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2015) ("This is a book about the rise and fall of American economic growth since the Civil War. It has long been recognized that economic growth is not steady or continuous. There was no economic growth over the eight centuries between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Middle Ages. Historical research has shown that real output per person in Britain between 1300 and 1700 barely doubled in four centuries, in contrast to the experience of Americans in the twentieth century who enjoyed a doubling every 32 years. Research conducted half a century ago concluded that American growth was steady but relatively slow until 1920, when it began to take off. Scholars struggled for decades to identify the factors that caused productively growth to decline significantly after 1970 [Note: this was when the oldest of the baby-boomers turned twenty-five.] What has been missing is a comprehensive and unified explanation of why productively growth was so fast between 1920 and 1970 and so slow thereafter. This book contributes to resolving one of the most fundamental questions your American economic history." Id. at ix. "Our central thesis is that some inventions are more important than others, and that the revolutionary century after the Civil War was made possible by a unique clustering, in the late nineteenth century, of what we will call the 'Great Inventions'." "This leads directly to the second big idea: that economic growth since 1970 has been simultaneously dazzling and disappointing. This paradox is resolved when we recognize that advances since 1970 have tended to be channeled into a narrow sphere of human activity having to do with entertainment, communications, and the collection and processing of information. For the rest of what humans care about--food, clothing, shelter, transportation, health, and working conditions both inside and outside the home--progress slowed down after the 1970, both qualitatively and quantitatively. . . . The third big idea . . . Our chronicle of the rise in the American standard of living over the past 150 years rests heavily on the history of innovations, great and small alike. However, any consideration of U.S. economic progress in the future must look beyond innovation to contemplate the headwinds that are blowing like a gale to slow down the vessel of progress. Chief among these headwinds is the rise of inequality that since 1970 has steadily directed an ever larger share of the fruits of the American growth machine to the top of the income distribution. Id. at 2. "The stagnation of American educational attainment is best measured by the diminishing pace of improvement for those cohorts twenty-five years apart. The real advance came between those born in 1925 (now aged 90), who received on average 10.9 years of schooling, and those baby-boomers born in 1950 (now aged 65), who received 13.2 years. Jump ahead another twenty-five years to those born in 1975 (now aged 40), and attainment crept up only from 13.2 to 13.0 years. The slowing advance of educational attainment is one of the underlying causes of the slowing rate of productivity growth since 1970." Id. at 513. June Carbone and Naomi Cahn: "The American family is changing--and the changes guarantee that inequality will be greater in the next generation. For the first time, America's children will almost certainly not be as well educated, healthy, or wealthy as their parents." Peter Thiel: "We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.").

RENE GUENON 9

Rene Guenon, Spiritual Authority and Temporal Power (Collected Works of Rene Guenon), translated from the French by Henry D. Fohr, edited by Samuel D. Fohr (Hillsdale, NY: Sophia Perennis, 1929, 2001).

RENE GUENON 8

Rene Guenon, The King of the World (Collected Works of Rene Guenon), translated from the French by Henry D. Fohr, edited by Samuel D. Fohr (Hillsdale, NY: Sophia Perennis, 1927, 2004) ("From what we have just said, it is already clear that the 'King of the World' must have a function that is essentially organizational and regulatory (it being not without reason, let us add, that this latter word possesses the same root as rex and regere), a function that can be summed up in words such as 'equilibrium' or 'harmony', which is rendered precisely by the Sanskrit term Dharma, by which we understand the reflection of the manifested world of the immutability of the supreme Principle. And in the same way, it is understandable why the fundamental attributes of the 'King of the World' are 'Justice' and 'Peace', which are only the special forms of this equilibrium and harmony in the 'world of man' (manavaloka)." Id. at 11-12.).

RENE GUENON 7

Rene Guenon, The Crisis of the Modern World (Collected Works of Rene Guenon), translated from the French by Marco Pallis, Arthur Osborne, & Richard C. Nicholson (Hillsdale, NY: Sophia Perennis, 1927, 2001) ("If the word 'democracy' is defined as the government of the people by themselves, it expresses an absolute impossibility and cannot even have a mere de facto existence--in our time or in any other. One must guard against being misled by words: it is contradictory to say that the same persons can be at the same time rulers and ruled, because, to use Aristotelian terminology, the same being cannot be 'in act' and 'in poency' at the same time and in the same relationship. The relationship of ruler and ruled necessitates the presence of two terms: there can be no ruled if there are not also rulers, even though these be illegitimate and have no other title to power than their own pretensions; but the great ability of those who are in control in the modern world lies in making the  people believe that they are governing themselves; and the people are the more inclined to believe this as they are flattered by it, and as, in any case, they are incapable of sufficient reflection to see its impossibility. It was to create this illusion that 'universal suffrage' was invented: the law is supposed to be made by the opinion of the majority, but what is overlooked is that this opinion is something that can very easily be guided and modified; it is always possible, by means of suitable suggestions, to arouse, as may be desired, currents moving in this or that direction." Id. at 74.).