Obligatory classic takedown: http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/essays/simone-weil.htm
Simone Weil and the Need for Roots
21–30 of 73 posts
Re: Simone Weil and the Need for Roots
#22Did anyone else think this was going to be about algebraic roots?
The complex numbers are famously the algebraic closure of the reals, but I find myself wondering lately if there is a related thought which doesn’t privilege them over the hyperbolic numbers or the dual numbers.
Re: Simone Weil and the Need for Roots
#23My roots are the roots of all humanity: War, pillage, xenophobia, power-grabs, jealousy and envy, and, finally, decamping to somewhere more promising when the vaunted Land Of My Ancestors crapped out. Multiple times over, given current knowledge about prehistoric human migrations, because I refuse to limit "my roots" to what a 19th Century Scientific Racist would say about them.
These roots you profess as being our core are more modern than you think in terms of our overall history as a people.
- For waring more complicated and denser societies were required than our hunter gatherere tribes of old
- For Pillaging, and power grabs, jealousy, envy individual ownership was required that didn't emerge until we settled down with farming anywhere at 10,000 bc
>decamping to somewhere more promising when the vaunted Land Of My Ancestors crapped out
This too did not happen until we started settling down and consuming all the local resources until they ran dry. Hunter gatherers foraged from larger areas of land with lower population density like wolves or other big predators of today and in a more sustainable way. I'm sure as tribes prospered and grew they split off exploring for greener pastures. One could argue why they couldn't just have a conflict with their neighbours, it's because beyond a certain size tribes tend to be very violent and dangerous governing structures for their constituents. That's the reason why we don't see geographically contiguous tribes beyond a certain size and they usually move to a more chieftan structure of governance.
I think all of this is a round about way of saying, I don't think there are innate, universal, roots that humans are bound by. Beyond our mammalian firmware, and human firmware, most of the rest would be a software programmed through your experiences with the world, that's why there is such an expansive manifold of how humans can live and behave for better or worse.
Re: Simone Weil and the Need for Roots
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I think we're blessed to live in a time where we have such a plethora of scientific knowledge that shows how deeply connected we are to the natural world and each other. We are mostly connected to each other via sanitized business transactions. Meanwhile, we don't even know the names of most of our neighbors.
Not knowing one's neighbours may seem like a problem to you, but it can be a great thing for others. So many young people who move from close-knit small towns or villages to big cities (especially, but not only, sexual minorities), find it liberating that no one is scrutinizing their lifestyles like back home. Also, countries like Finland manage to be high-trust and relatively homogeneous societies, while at the same…
I guess it can depend from your life-stage really. As a lonely kid with different interests I really hated living in such a close-knit village, and felt great moving away from there. Yet now after years of living in the city, with a stable relationship and all, I constantly dream of moving to rural countryside and raising my future children there, in a more stable and calm environment.
I believe it's quite natural for young people to go seek new life and opportunities elsewhere from their place of birth, as many of them have always done historically. But having to constantly move in search of them, never finding a place where you could stay permanently, now that really isn't a good way of living for the vast majority of people, even though modern employment market encourages it.
As far Finnish block of flats go, I would argue that rental buildings with high turnover rate have quite low level of trust between neighbours and way more problems, while those owned by their residents have high trust and less issues. Some of it can be attributed to socioeconomic factors of course, but lack of roots and feeling of attachment to rental property is definitely also a factor.
Re: Simone Weil and the Need for Roots
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
People used to depend on neighbors - for example, they helped each other on their farms on a regular basis. Now it's no longer the case and perhaps the dynamics you're describing is the worst of both worlds, where the actual economical need for rich and frequent interactions with neighbors is gone and everything that's left is the nosiness. But, this itself is a result of modernity compartmentalizing people to the de…
But if you live in a successful welfare state, what need have you for help from your neighbours? The welfare state might help you even better, as it can benefit from economies of scale, and it will not demand anything in return from you except, once you are working a normal job, your taxes. Also, depictions of pre-welfare-state help from neighbours often underscore how that help was always conditional: sexual and rac…
The successful welfare state is the product of your neighbours who tacitly agree to maintain society in many ways including of course paying for it. It's a mistake to suppose that that stance is a given in perpetuity.
Re: Simone Weil and the Need for Roots
#26The more I re-read and think about this article, the less meaning I find in it. There's a fair bit of lamenting, but it's ultimately difficult to ascertain what exactly is the issue the cause and the consequences of this great uprooting to any further granularity than: things are different than they used to be and it's never going to be the same.
This is true, but to what end. Will we truly end in civil war or anarchy because I don't live on the Italian countryside of the great grandparents I've never met?
As far as the metaphor of rootedness: a plant does not wither and die upon being uprooted if it is planted in new soil in a reasonable amount of time (in fact, international houseplant shipping is done bare-rooted due to phytosanitary regulations). Upon replanting, the plant will go into shock and probably have a few weeks/months/years (depending on the size of the plant) of acclimation where you'll see no new growth. Perhaps it will die if the new environment is not offering good conditions.
In the right conditions, you don't even need the full plant with original roots, you can just take a cutting off many plants and grow new roots in water or moss, then transplant to soil. In the houseplant community, propagating plants through cuttings in this way is much more common than reproduction by seed.
Re: Simone Weil and the Need for Roots
#27Did anyone else think this was going to be about algebraic roots? The complex numbers are famously the algebraic closure of the reals, but I find myself wondering lately if there is a related thought which doesn’t privilege them over the hyperbolic numbers or the dual numbers.
You are being downvoted, but this is not as off-topic as it may seem.
Simone Weil had a brother, André Weil. You may not know his name on the top of your head, but I guarantee you that you've heard of the pseuodonym he created together with some other mathematicians: Nicolas Bourbaki.
I'm sure Weil and/or Bourbaki has lots to say about these topics.
Re: Simone Weil and the Need for Roots
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not knowing one's neighbours may seem like a problem to you, but it can be a great thing for others. So many young people who move from close-knit small towns or villages to big cities (especially, but not only, sexual minorities), find it liberating that no one is scrutinizing their lifestyles like back home. Also, countries like Finland manage to be high-trust and relatively homogeneous societies, while at the same…
I guess it can depend from your life-stage really. As a lonely kid with different interests I really hated living in such a close-knit village, and felt great moving away from there. Yet now after years of living in the city, with a stable relationship and all, I constantly dream of moving to rural countryside and raising my future children there, in a more stable and calm environment. I believe it's quite natural fo…
> I would argue that rental buildings with high turnover rate ... while those owned by their residents
Note that in the Finnish context (at least in the more-populated south), this isn’t a rental/owned distinction. that is, the expectation for privacy also applies to blocks of flats where residents own their flat and may live there for decades.
Re: Simone Weil and the Need for Roots
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
But if you live in a successful welfare state, what need have you for help from your neighbours? The welfare state might help you even better, as it can benefit from economies of scale, and it will not demand anything in return from you except, once you are working a normal job, your taxes. Also, depictions of pre-welfare-state help from neighbours often underscore how that help was always conditional: sexual and rac…
The successful welfare state is the product of your neighbours who tacitly agree to maintain society in many ways including of course paying for it. It's a mistake to suppose that that stance is a given in perpetuity.
Definitely, but the point is that society found a way for neighbours to assist each other, without requiring individual neighbours to know (and carefully maintain friendships with) their individual neighbours. Of course support for this model could possibly weaken over time, but I think many people find the welfare state superior to the old way that took more effort and would only benefit you if you conformed to expectations.
Re: Simone Weil and the Need for Roots
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
People used to depend on neighbors - for example, they helped each other on their farms on a regular basis. Now it's no longer the case and perhaps the dynamics you're describing is the worst of both worlds, where the actual economical need for rich and frequent interactions with neighbors is gone and everything that's left is the nosiness. But, this itself is a result of modernity compartmentalizing people to the de…
But if you live in a successful welfare state, what need have you for help from your neighbours? The welfare state might help you even better, as it can benefit from economies of scale, and it will not demand anything in return from you except, once you are working a normal job, your taxes. Also, depictions of pre-welfare-state help from neighbours often underscore how that help was always conditional: sexual and rac…
Yet it should be noted that a successful welfare state exists only as long as well-doing people feel enough solidarity and trust towards the poor to pay higher taxes in support of them, and as long as those receiving the welfare benefits genuinely do their best to find employment, at least most of them.
I'm pretty sure Finland won't be a welfare state in 50 years. There's just too little left of the solidarity and common identity which helped creating the welfare state. Individualism and diversity seem to be today's trends, not community and social cohesion.