Rene Guenon

Modern man, instead of attempting to raise himself to truth, seeks to drag truth down to his own level.

Guénon the crisis of the modern world p. 66

It is highly significant that there is no longer any question here of ‘truth’, but only of a ‘reality’ that is reduced exclusively to the sensible order and conceived as something essentially changing and unstable; with such theories, intelligence is reduced to its lowest part, and reason itself is no longer admitted except insofar as it is applied to fashioning matter for industrial uses. After this there remained but one step: the total denial of intelligence and knowledge altogether and the substitution of ‘utility’ for ‘truth’. […] This, in its main outlines, is the course that ‘profane’ philosophy, left to itself and claiming to limit all knowledge to its own horizon.

Guenon the crisis of the modern world p. 58

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Individualism necessarily implies the refusal to accept any authority higher than the individual, as well as any means of knowledge higher than individual reason; these two attitudes are inseparable. Consequently the modern outlook was bound to reject all spiritual authority in the true sense of the word, namely authority that is based on the supra-human order, as well as any traditional organization, that is, any organization based essentially on this authority be its form – for the form will naturally vary with each civilization.

Guénon the crisis of the modern world p. 60/1

It will doubtless be asked why cyclic develoment must proceed
in this manner, in a downward direction, from higher to lower, a course that will
at once be perceived to be a complete antithesis to the idea of progress as the
moderns understand it. The reason is that the development of any manifestation
necessarily implies a gradually increasing distance from the principle from
which is proceeds; starting from the highest point, it tends necessarily
downward, and, as with heavy bodies, the speed of its motion increases
continuously until finally it reaches a point at which it is stopped.

Guénon the crisis of the modern world chapter 1, page 7/8