Modernity over-ripens into post-modernity and starts rotting as anti-modernity.
The most virulent forms of anti-modernity pose as pre-modernity: fundamentalism.
Fundamentalism is a form of mass-relativism. It originates in breakdown of tradition. Every fundamentalism is founded on radical, alienated skepticism which dissolves all obligation to maintain ties with the dominant tradition. It no longer wishes to reach agreement with anyone outside of itself. It then invents a fictional past and believes in it. It exploits the helplessness of the past, by projecting itself over the past and making the past the history of itself. It does this in order to attain the credibility that comes from having a history. And all those who join up agree with one another, and never tire of agreeing with one another, and most of all on the fact that people outside of the group are not worth talking to because they will never understand, and don’t want to understand, etc. for various despicable reasons.
Perennialism is esoteric fundamentalism.
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The Perennialists steal from modernity, project it onto ancient religious forms — then reject modernity ad hominem. Modernity is ignorant. Modernity doesn’t recognize that it’s discovered nothing new. It hasn’t innovated anything. We need to stop trying to innovate, and get back to the root of wisdom.
They’ve got intellection. If you disagree with them you lack intellection. If you lack intellection, there’s nothing to discuss. If there’s no discussion, there’s no way for anyone to show them their error. But there is no error, because intellection protects them from error. If you already had intellection you would know this.
There’s nothing more postmodern than rejecting contemporary conceptions of truth and returning to ancient traditions. What is truth? Go skeptical — then find your own circular system and excuse yourself from further discussion. Sit alone, wiser than hell. Postmodernism is about fragmentation of culture into a zillion little perspectives, each thinking it contains all the others.
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The crux:
Is it that modernity hasn’t discovered anything new?
Or is it that Perennialism hasn’t discovered anything old?
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Postmodernity is hard to define because it is not a belief one adopts but rather a cultural condition within which thinking is done, whether one accepts postmodernity as its condition or not. Postmodernists are those who believe in this condition, and they are enraging because, rightly or wrongly, they reserve the right to see postmodernity especially where postmodernity is denied.
I do believe in postmodernity, and I see Perennialism as a consequence of postmodernity. It preys specifically on those who suffer most from postmodernity and wish it to not exist.
I am not a Perennialist . That said , I must respectfully disagree with your characterization of the Perennialist perspective . It is true that Perennialists adhere to a basically devolutionary model of history. But that doesn’t mean that they believe that there is no innovation or progress whatsoever . For them , modernity represents something of a trade- off. I think it was Frithjof Schuon who said some thing to the effect that the ages of faith were essentially good , yet naturally contained much evil . Whereas the modern age is a structural evil that naturally contains much good .
Thanks for your comment.
It has been over a decade since I wrote this post, and rereading it now, it is not something I would write today. First, I am far less eager to make bold, unsupported claims about groups of people I have not researched. My personal sample of Perennialists is under a dozen people, all from a single clique, and those I still know have matured in non-Fundamentalist directions. As a group they are plainly better off than the spiritualbutnotreligious people I’ve known. I might still lightly suspect that Perennialism is more Hegelian than it acknowledges, but I know too little about Guenon’s sources and too little about Hegel to develop that hunch into even a respectable hypothesis.
I might even be a “soft” Perennialist now. I printed a pamphlet last year (“Geometric Meditations”) of the symbols I use to orient my life and at least half of it was directly inspired by Guenon and Schuon.
Regarding the Schuon formula you offered, I definitely agree that the popular ideology that dominates the unreflective educated masses is driving them mad (from what I believe is spiritual starvation), and that only vestigial intuitions are slowing our collective slide into unknown extremes, but I’m hesitant to see past faiths/ideologies/philosophies as being much better. I’m suspicious of thinking about whole ages as possessing goodness. Close inspection almost always yields surprising pockets of both good sense and bizarre notions. I do, however, think that traditions can develop and transmit goodness across ages, and that is why Jewish traditions matter to me, and why I am slightly more optimistic about new acquaintances if I discover they belong to a Judeo-Christian faith.