Progress without a terminus conditions individuals into directionless striving

Evidence

As there is nearly nothing to this development other than material ambition, the West in all its phenomena has come to exist without principles, progress being likewise characterized as having no purpose or terminus. And a drifting system produces drifting individuals, which explains why the Western individual is fragmented, “inconstant,” “directionless,” and “unable to find his balance.” This precarious state of affairs has been habituated within the illusion of progress, “as if it were enough simply to walk, quite regardless of direction, to be sure of advancing. As for the goal of his advance, he [the individual] does not even dream of asking himself what it is.” Guénon explains the thorough conditioning of the individual into seeing this state of affairs as normal in terms of Aristotle’s concept of second nature as habit, a social technology of creating a subject within what Bourdieu came to call much later a habitus. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 296

Categorization

• XREF: Habits as second nature connects to Bourdieu’s habitus, and to the reader’s material on trust and institutions as social technologies.
• DEFINE: Defines the habitus concept via Guénon/Aristotle’s second nature as a social conditioning technology.