Reviews for Life's Little Book of Wisdom for Families

The average rating for Life's Little Book of Wisdom for Families based on 2 reviews is 2 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-07-11 00:00:00 Brian Orach The Legend of Spiritual Authority, Part I "If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking." My Murakami bookmark sheds this insight with slight irony, branded as it is by Book of the Month Club, an entity whose raison d'être is to capitalize on an "Everyone is Reading It!" zeitgeist. It wasn't Murakami, though, that I held as mantra while I was buffeted by René Guénon's archaic ideology. He overwhelmingly defines modernity as destruction, and the old order'with priests, particularly catholic priests'sitting at the top, as the pinnacle of society:Those who are made for action are not made for pure knowledge, and in a society constituted on truly spiritual bases each person must fulfill the function for which he is really 'qualified'; otherwise, all is confusion and disorder and no function is carried out as it should be'which is precisely the case today. Earthly strength'sovereignty of kings, for example'is pointless without the blessing of heaven. Earth without guidance from heaven becomes power for the sake of power, strength without constraint. Wisdom flows only from the divine, and cannot come from humanity. Temporal power is no true power without the divine sanction of wisdom. Being a nerdy kid that grew up in the U.S.A. in the late 1980's, I have no frame of reference for "Power" or "Wisdom" that does not touch The Legend of Zelda. What kept me moving through Spiritual Authority & Temporal Power was the story of Link, Gannon, and Zelda, helped in part because I was also reading the sublime Legends of Localization: The Legend of Zelda. In the first portion of this two-part review, The Legend of Zelda serves as my map and compass to the symbolic parallels that tie the legend of the Triforce and Spiritual Authority & Temporal Power together. Part I Temporal PowerMANY YEARS AGO PRINCE DARKNESS GANNON STOLE ONE OF THE TRIFORCE WITH POWER. PRINCESS ZELDA HAD ONE OF THE TRIFORCE WITH WISDOM. SHE DIVIDED IT INTO '8' UNITS TO HIDE IT FROM GANNON BEFORE SHE WAS CAPTURED. GO FIND THE '8' UNITS 'LINK' TO SAVE HER.This was the nearly the whole story in 1987. As seen from the passable-at-best English phrasing, a book dedicated to parsing meaning from the mangling would be rad; it is. For those of us about to delve into Guénon, it might take us a bit longer to get to find out why "Pols Voice hate loud noises", but it does come together eventually. Beside the kismet of the Guénon/Gannon similarity, there isn't much on the surface that ties the doom of Hyrule to the gloom of modern times. So let us start with what we can: the mysterious Gannon. He stole one of'or perhaps a portion of'the triforce; that of power. "Stole" does connotative duty. It is a normative judgment that Zelda is the rightful controller of both aspects of the triforce. She must have, prior to the theft, maintained both; thus she wielded power through wisdom. Or perhaps she is given power by submitting to wisdom, or balances the two through the grace of the divine. The key is that, before the game begins, Zelda'not Gannon'should has the wisdom necessary to truly wield power. Gannon, the usurper, has upended the natural order. He has abdicated wisdom by seizing, rather than being granted, power:The dependence of the temporal power on the spiritual authority has its visible sign in the anointing of kings, who are not truly 'legitimized' until they have received investiture and consecration from the hands of the priesthood, implying the transmission of a 'spiritual influence' necessary for the regular exercise of their functions. Gannon lacks the blessings of wisdom'Spiritual Authority'to correctly handle Temporal Power. He has not been consecrated. Power through power, through direct action, not contemplative or spiritual guidance, is wrong. And who controls those with power? The Spiritual Authority, which is the wisdom aspect of triforce for Hyrule, and the sacerdotal caste here on earth. Because Gannon's rule'begot by strength alone and not through contemplative or spiritual guidance'the land of Hyrule falls to ruin. The Triforce of Wisdom is split into eight holy relicts and monstrous creatures run wild; power without rightful authority has unleashed the beasts of the field. Even as the land itself revolts:Individualism and naturalism are quite closely interdependent, for they are basically only two aspects of one and the same thing, looked at either with respect to man or to the world; and it may be said generally that 'naturalistic' or anti-metaphysical doctrines appear in a civilization when the element representing the temporal power becomes predominant over that representing the spiritual authority.When humanity takes the reigns of it's own destiny from the hands of the divine, individuality runs amok. Spiritual Authority & Temporal Power is an apocalyptic tome that equates the modern move away from submissive feudal piety with the rampages of Prince Darkness Gannon. In Guénon's mind, it is only by subordinating the Temporal to the Spiritual that peace can return to Hyrule'or humanity. But Gannon is a monster'an actual monster'not a Protestant, atheist, or humanist. Guénon, apparently also a monster, dehumanizes and disenfranchises nearly everyone that is not the Pope:During the Middle Ages there existed throughout the West a real unity, based on properly traditional foundations, which we call 'Christendom', but when these secondary unities of a purely political'that is to say temporal and no longer spiritual'order were formed, this great unity of the West was irremediably broken and the effective existence of Christendom came to an end. The conclusion one might be tempted to draw is that Gannon represents secular humanism ripping power away from God and the Church; Zelda'through her quasi-monastic "true" royalty'rules over a kingdom designed pre rights-of-man, pre nationalist revolutions. This is where the The Legend of Zelda begins to diverge from the conclusions of this irredeemable pile of filth; Who shall stand against the bestial ravages of modernity? Not priest, spiritualist, or truly anointed royal. No, it is a boy, a simple traveler'full of heart [containers]'who begins a journey for the wisdom to return power to the society from whence it was reft: Wisdom and strength...or, if one prefers, spiritual authority and temporal power; it is interesting to note that among the ancient Egyptians one of the meanings of the symbol of the Sphinx joined precisely these two attributes.Link is more than the "link" between the player and the Hyrule, but the link between wisdom and power, active agency in a stagnant land. He is not subsumed by obsequiousness to Spiritual Authority nor lust for Temporal Power. The adventure begins at the nadir of spiritual authority for Hyrule. Link stands by himself, with no representative power; he can do nothing but wander. Shortly, a warning is given: "It is dangerous to go alone! Take this." And so Link takes up the major symbol of Christendom'the cruciform sword'through which he gains agency over the turmoil that besets the land. With his sword, he becomes the true link between earthly strength and holy wisdom. This symbology run through the whole of The Legend of Zelda; do they serve Guénon regressive vision of society, or will they, in the end, subvert it? To Be Continued in The Legend of Spiritual Authority, Part II

Review # 2 was written on 2012-06-17 00:00:00 Jennifer Guzman Guénon holds the view that the Brahmins (priestly caste) as keeper of the doctrine are the true source of power, not the kshatriyas (warrior caste) as Evola claims. He makes a distinction between sacerdotal and temporal power. As the principle idea or doctrines are fixed and internal, they are superior to fluid and temporal ones. Egypt serves as an example for the theocratic state. The Farao's where always appointed out of the priestly caste, when not so they were initiated into the priestly caste and all the mysteries. The decline of ages has commenced by the revolt of the kshatriyas. At the end of this small book, Guénon elaborates on the consequences of this revolt in present times.