This is the third part of the chapter on the Workers from La Tradizione Romana [The Roman Tradition] by Guido De Giorgio. Here he describes how science changed the nature of work and displaced tradition.
Hence, the corporations also originally represented modes of realization of the divine organized in a regulatory body that established its purpose. This is the real and deep significance of art, craftsmanship, professions, corporations, and let us not pretend that they all come to fathom it, but what is important is that the pauci optimi [the few of the best], who ought to participate in restoration of tradition, understand what is hidden under the appearances of “utility” and “activity”, expressions so dear to those who understand nothing because they realize nothing beyond the illusion of the world and man, both considered without relationship to divine reality. If man is one half, he has to search for the other in order to be made whole, i.e., to be truly man—hemo homo—and one could say, without making a game of words, that he then will truly be man when he ceases to be so. Likewise the world—if it concludes its etymology—that is attired, ornamented, under which the truth of God is hidden, then it will truly be the world, i.e., the place of purification and resurrection, when it is the world, purified from every ignorance, likewise it also will become—the lapis manalis removed—the wide abyss for the precipitation in the spectral kingdom.
From everything that we have mentioned, one easily understands how and why—not for simple purely aesthetic reasons, therefore negligible in themselves—the machine, in all its forms, represents a veritable profanation of labor, because it removes every sacred character, every profound meaning, violating its secret, denaturizing its purpose, suppressing all those seeds of redemption that constitute the raison d’être of manual work and of art.
The return to a traditional society would entail a prudent progressive normalization that would be, for the ignorant mass, a true and proper regression but which could be accomplished gradually without creating catastrophes. It is enough that the pauci optimi understand, to their full extent, the absolutely positive consequences that would result from a comparable return to normality: it is a question here, more precisely, of the human dignity that would be restored and reintegrated in all its hierarchical development, in all its expressions, in all its aspects, in all its fields, in all the castes, in all men.
In order to become sacred, labor must be accomplished by man and not by the machine that, as is clearly observed, takes revenge on man, destroying him in the most blind, bestial and inhuman way, violently and fatally. A renovation worthy of the name entails the return to the norm of human labor, a restitution of those conditions of existence suitable for the development of the great energies that lie buried in man and that can permit him to reach and truly integrate the divine world of reality.
Labor, once connected to its necessary base of meditative concentration, of patient meticulous contact with the world of Forms, in order to perceive the Rhythms and realize the Silence, would again become sacred for all men and each one could, according to his possibilities, accomplish what he is destined to do and that he is strongly removed from that outrageously superficial and profaning modernity.
May the earth, the sea, the sky be restored to their elementary purity, returned to their symbolic purpose, the earth in order to construct house and temple, the base point for the elevation from the human to the divine, the sea to the navigation between the two shores that separate the transient from the divine, the sky to the penetrative flight into the reality of God that is the only reality, and that the machines are gradually, prudently reduced and eliminated in order to make a place for man and put him visibly, without intermediaries, in the face of the difficulties of his celestial task on the earth. Because he cannot escape from the earth if he does not know it, if he does not penetrate it, if he does not make it transparent, letting the holy spirit of the real achievement pass there, returning to labor and art, enriching again the impoverished world, mutilated and profaned by the machine. This was created by the lowest part of man, from what in man is the negation of man because it is the negation of God. We allude to profane science, to that which for so many centuries gives itself the false privilege of redeeming humanity from the chains of materiality.
Here a position of the absolute level that does not admit subterfuge and loopholes is necessary. There is only a single science, sacred science, in an absolute way, i.e., the knowledge of true man restored to his elementary function, to his base, to his centre, to his reason to exist, to his life; to his being, to his purpose, to his perfection, to his universality, to God. This is the only science, the only power derived from the knowledge of his own limitations—it is well established—and of exceeding the limits of terrestriality for the effective realization of the divine possibilities: in this sense only scire est posse [to know is to be able] and not otherwise.
One goes to God with and in the spirit of God, becoming again sons of God, be it formulated in the integrative fullness that does not admit secondary residues and disturbances. All traditions affirm it, with different expressions, in various forms, but with an intentional unity that no one can misunderstand and confuse. Ars una species mille. What is sacred remains such in every tradition of truly divine order and every race is given a tradition conformed to is possibilities, to which it must remain faithful in order to not make the task of traditional integration difficult, while it is permitted only to very few to return to the Primordial Tradition that is in direct contact with the divine plane.
The true science is therefore that contained in the traditional body and has as its goal the return of man to God in all the forms, through all the levels, and according to all the possibilities. Sacred science is the true absolute and definitive knowledge of man and the world in God and comprises various planes of development according to the domain to which it is applied, each one of these planes, however, not able to, nor ever having to, be considered in itself, but all in convergence, in accordance with the unity of the traditional axis, into a single point. This was maintained in antiquity and in the Middle Ages. Science instead is of the exclusively profane order and considers visible reality exteriorly, as it appears not as it is, by integrating itself in such a case in the invisible reality and, taking as the base point exteriority itself, it determines laws.
Therefore, while sacred science is fixed, immutable, eternally constituted and causes stable and permanent traditional societies, profane science is mutable, unstable, progressive and, with its development, gives origin to anti-traditional, precarious, and transient societies.
The domain of sciences is the visible, i.e., therefore, the superficial that, as such, separated from the body to which it belongs, is illusory and as nonexistent; the successive development of scientific hypotheses shows the inanity of an effort destined to remain sterile, unproductive, since truth indefinitely postponed into the future, i.e., never realized, is not a truth. What is concrete and positive for science is truly the ephemeral and the negative, i.e., the phenomenal appearance considered in itself, because as we said, when brought back to its invisible root, it reacquired another meaning, another attribution, and another reality.
This sign in the theoretical field can suffice: how much then is the development of the so-called western civilizations the most conclusive demonstration of the practical advantage derived from the applications of science? One thinks of the misery, the precariousness, the frivolity of current existence and one will understand what results science applied to life can lead to. It is not allowed to insist on that without falling into the realization that every reasonable man can currently make, considering the shortness of the duration of life, its sussultatory character, the rising devirilization of humanity, the precariousness of everything, the spasmodicity of every bond, the insecurity of every system, finally the instability that is the indicator of a permanent abortive process due to the absence of traditional fixity.
Science, having become secular, i.e., popular, became the dominion of everything because it is accessible to everyone through its exteriority, superficiality, and facility and was the principle stimulus to the so-called servile awakening, to the progressive democratization of Europe since, after eliminating every true traditional knowledge and excluding every spiritual surpassing, it leveled hierarchy and, with its practical industrial applications, it amazed the foolish and caused libertarian unrest in the masses, of which the current world is the strongest and most authentic expression. Humanity let itself deviate by easy explanations, by immediate practical applications and has forgotten to ask itself up to what point could it reach such a pronounced deviation from the traditional axis. First of all, science has infinitized so-called nature, divinizing it and exalting its mysteries as if there could be other mysteries outside the divine, then it made a stir on a problematic god who follows with his benevolent eye, approving, the progressive contaminations, and finally, acting autonomous, was proclaimed the guide of research and master of life. Man, destitute of all his power, i.e., the very surpassing of his own humanity in order to reach higher and decisive states, was given instead a false creativity in the world of exteriority that lasts as long as his life and is prolonged as long as he is ignorant.
Completely in line with what Guenon powerfully wrote in ‘The Crisis of the Modern World’:
“[…] “profane science”, the science of the moderns, can as we have remarked elsewhere be justly styled “ignorant knowledge”, knowledge of an inferior order confining itself entirely to the lowest level of reality, knowledge ignorant of all that lies beyond it, of any aim more lofty than itself, and of any principle that could give it a legitimate place, however humble, among the various orders of knowledge as a whole. Irremediably enclosed in the relative and narrow realm in which it has striven to proclaim itself independent, thereby voluntarily breaking all connection with transcendent truth and supreme wisdom, it is only a vain and illusory knowledge, which indeed comes from nothing and leads to nothing.”
It is challenging for moderners interested in tradition and metaphysical truth to abandon entirely their old awe of profane science, to realize that it presents precisely nothing of true value. Modern scientific erudition is vain and wasted, a pollution of the mind with sterile information, as is all its practical achievements without exception. It is a meaningless misuse of intelligence which would have been ridiculous and clownish, hardly worthy of being taken seriously by any lover of wisdom, if it hadn’t been for its exceedingly destructive effects. It is becoming clearer by the day that profane science will never create a paradisal utopia for humanity; quite to the contrary, it will prove to be its ultimate ruin, even to an extent far worse than what we have to deal with today. Human wills isolated from the Will of Heaven (and thus becoming receptacles of something sinister and sub-human indeed) attempting to “fix” and “improve” the external world by means of an “intelligence” and action completely detached from Truth, does nothing but engender chaos and more chaos without end. All of that must be dropped; all of that must cease; all of that must give way to the divine wu-wei, the only effortless force that may ever order the world for the best of mankind and our spiritual task, the only justification for our existence. The extreme consequence of a profane science that finally reveals its satanic core in all its terrifying and abyssal monstrosity is exemplified by the almost unimaginably evil and anti-human trends of transhumanism and the desire for artificial intelligence (AI), as well as genetic engineering and many other extremist manifestations of a demonically unbridled profane science, which, make no mistake, is becoming a kind of inverted anti-religion of its own, rebelliously spitting in the very Face of the Divine. If these traitorous enemies of mankind succeed in their project—if the creation of a true artificial intelligence is possible (which remains to be seen)—can any intelligent man of tradition doubt that this would be the most perfect vehicle for what we, if using the terminology of the Western tradition, could identify as the “Antichrist”? It would be the ultimate parody, and the lowest and darkest depth of the Kali-yuga, from which no return would be possible on the linear historical plane of horizontal continuity. Could this ultimate demonic achievement of profane science indeed be the final end of the ‘mahayuga’, the result of a descent into increasing unreality? If AI is practically achievable, we can with great certainty state that it will. This would be the absolute pinnacle of modern “progress”—i.e., the final downfall after which there can be no other… the bottom of the abyss, the extreme fruit of a quest for nothingness, for illusion. Transhumanist religionists look forwards to what they term “Singularity”, a wild acceleration of technological development following the invention of AI. For us, on the other hand, it can only represent a massive fall into the negation of everything that is human and sacred, reaching heights of absurdity that we can barely imagine, and all this happening over a very short period of time, since the human limitation to innovation is removed. Now, THIS is the ultimate consequence of embracing profane science and legitimizing its existence, and De Giorgio makes a good example for emulation in not giving in even an inch to this perversion of pseudo-knowledge, granting the foundation of modern science nothing whatsoever. (He ventures even farther than Evola in this direction, which I can only approve of.) We may not be able to stop it, but at least let us be defiant to the very end, loyal to supreme Truth over all else—at the expense of all else. We will admit them no compromises, any more than we would compromise with the agenda of the devil. And even if AI would prove itself to be an impossibility (which remains to be seen), what difference does it make in terms of principles, if the dominant force of science is such that it would make itself responsible for this unspeakable abomination just because it could, just because it happened to be within reach, as many scientists are working hard to achieve as we speak? To begin with, just the fact that they can come up with this criminal idea says it all. We declare without hesitation that such agents deserve no honour for working to increase the pseudo-“knowledge” of a lost and ignorant humanity—as a matter of principle, only a strict but just punishment would suffice in return for their crimes, whether the ones already committed or the crimes still to come. How can we not, based on the observation of these catastrophic tendencies inseparable from external scientific “development” and “progress”, state in all truthfulness that ancient prehistorical man seemingly without civilization was infinitely superior to the current state of mankind in every possible way worth considering? Exactly because the essential inner reality of primordial man was so much more complete, so much more fulfilled in the sense of human spirituality, did they have no need of manifesting all their energies in externalized and material modes. The less you need outside of you, the more you are; the simplicity, purity and unity of his external environment simply symbolized the undivided nature of his soul; conversely, the outer chaos characteristic of progressive/innovative modernity corresponds to the nuked soul of modern man (just as the invention of the nuke itself is highly symbolic in this regard). The only thing counting as far as human cultural conditions are concerned, is whether or not they are well suited to accommodate the inner realization of man’s true spiritual purpose. We do not require any profane science for that, any more than we require the countless external things, soulless inventions, by which we are surrounded in our present world. There can be no doubt about it: a life dedicated to the service of profane science is a wasted and pointless joke of a life, and for all the altruistic rhetoric suffusing their obsession, neither does it offer anything worth mentioning on the scale of values to a humanity that is becoming more lost with each passing day. Can we now safely say that it is enough—can we say that everything of which the modern world is most proud consists of the ugliest and most definitive evil, and that none of it, no work of these so-called geniuses of science in service of the prince of darkness, can be separated from involution and the progressive decline of the present terrestrial mankind and its cycle, and that the crown jewel of all its achievements will be unparalleled disintegration of its host? The answer is an unequivocal “Yes”. Nothing remains but to reject it all—yes, ALL of it—without sparing a single scientific idol, making the slate clean as snow, in favour of the only principles in conformity to sacred Truth, that have been with us since the dawn of the present humanity and beyond, but never before have been so utterly betrayed as today. If we are to defend Tradition, we can just as well defend it absolutely: no concessions to the anti-priesthood of scientists before they bow down in an endless prostration to the sacred order of the divine—no forgiving unless they forever diminish themselves before the only rightful authority. To admit science even an inch of independence is a betrayal of Tradition and a betrayal of mankind’s destiny. The logical and inevitable conclusion of the domination of secular science is the abolition of man—it is suicide.
Thanks.