{"id":14347,"date":"2021-05-02T22:05:15","date_gmt":"2021-05-03T02:05:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gornahoor.net\/?p=14347"},"modified":"2022-05-01T22:06:47","modified_gmt":"2022-05-02T02:06:47","slug":"perpetual-motion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/?p=14347","title":{"rendered":"Perpetual Motion"},"content":{"rendered":"

The present age is a critical one and interesting to live in. The civilisation characteristic of Christendom has not disappeared, yet another civilisation has begun to take its place. The shell of Christendom is broken. The unconquerable mind of the East, the pagan past, the industrial socialistic future confront it with their equal authority. Our whole life and mind is saturated with the slow upward filtration of a new spirit\u2014that of an emancipated, atheistic, international democracy. ~ George Santayana<\/strong>, The Winds of Doctrine<\/em> (1913)\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Motion Detector<\/h2>\n

While discussing the discoveries of the cognitive psychologist James Gibson, Wolfgang Smith pointed that we don\u2019t perceive motion as a series of independent frames, but rather we grasp it \u201call at once\u201d. Music, too, is experienced \u201call at once\u201d; that is, songs, concertos, symphonies, etc., are recognized as a \u201cwhole\u201d, not as a series of unrelated notes.<\/p>\n

This experience is so common, it is barely noticed, if at all. It is the cause of the \u201cgambler\u2019s fallacy\u201d. A gambler, having seen Red come up 10 consecutive times on the roulette wheel, believes that a Black is \u201cdue\u201d to come up. The gambler is deluded into thinking there must be a relationship between the rolls of the roulette wheel.<\/p>\n

Civilisational Decline<\/h2>\n

When it comes to the larger question of the course of human events, the opposite is the case. Then only individual events are noticed, but few are able to see these events in their Wholeness as part of a larger pattern lasting, perhaps, generations. Early last century some astute minds were able to see the \u201cmotion\u201d and \u201cdirection\u201d of events. I am thinking of Oswald Spengler, for example, but also Rene Guenon and Julius Evola. Writing in 1913, George Santayana, who famously declared that \u201cThose ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it,\u201d had his own astute observations of events. Unfortunately, in our day, it seems that we are doomed to repeat Santayana\u2019s phrase ad infinitum, while still remaining ignorant of history. The civilization in decline, more complete now than then, is called Christendom<\/strong>. Santayana identifies the forces that have been, and still are, replacing it:<\/p>\n