The Reign of Quantity & the Signs of the Times

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1. kkonceviciusMay 2024
   The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times - Rene Guenon (1945).

   An esoteric book that summarises everything as a direction which moves away from quality and towards quantity. Here is an excerpt that uses this system to analyse modern workplace anonymity:

   "[...] tendency to uniformity demands that individuals shall be treated as mere numerical 'units', thus realizing equality by a leveling down, for that is the only direction in which equality can be reached 'in the limit' [...] Anyone who wonders what happens to the individual in such conditions will find that [...] he is so to speak reduced to his substantial aspect, and this amounts to saying that he becomes scarcely more than [...] 'a body without a soul'. From such an individual the qualitative or essential aspect has indeed almost disappeared ('almost', because the limit can never actually be reached); and [...] the individual really no longer has any 'name' that belongs to him, because he is emptied of the qualities which that name should express; he is thus really 'anonymous', but in the inferior sense of the word. This is the anonymity of the 'masses' of which the individual is part and in which he loses himself, those 'masses' that are no more than a collection of similar individuals, regarded purely and simply as so many arithmetical 'units'. 'Units' of that sort can be counted, and the collectivity they make up can thus be numerically evaluated, the result being by definition only a quantity; but in no way can each one of them be given a denomination indicating that he is distinguished from the others by some qualitative difference."

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2. kkonceviciusMay 2024
   "The reign of quantity and the signs of the times" - Rene Guenon
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3. kkonceviciusJul 2023
   If anyone wishes to pursue this topic of "quantization" further, I recommend "The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times" - a book by Rene Guenon [1]. Guenon examines the direction the world is going to as a shift from quality to quantity, and with this simple analysis he covers topics ranging across democracy, science, art, crafts, production, etc. The book was written in 1945 and some of the topics he touches upon can at first seem quite esoteric - i.e. that a tendency to measure the effect of some tragedy according to how many people were affected by it is already a sign of quantitative thinking. But I am surprised how well it captured many trends we see in society today. For example it can be argued that under the view he proposed, AI would be yet another step away from quality and towards quantity.

   [1]: https://www.amazon.com/Reign-Quantity-Signs-Times/dp/0900588...

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4. omarchowdhuryJul 2020
   The Crisis of the Modern World and The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times by René Guénon.
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5. KKPMWJun 2020
   "The problems of philosophy" by Bertrand Russell. ~8 times.

   "The abolition of man" by "C.S. Lewis" 3 times.

   "The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times" by René Guénon. 3 times, and planning to set a weekend for another re-read soon.

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6. georgia_peachJul 2022
   The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times

   Latest example: Taylorism, applied to the bedroom.

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