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Simone Weil and the Need for Roots

paulkingsnorth.substack.com

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Re: Simone Weil and the Need for Roots

#31

Post by kewrkewm53 »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #28
kewrkewm53 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

True, indeed Finns tend to be fairly privacy conscious anywhere. But in owned flats people still do seem to be more mindful of their neighbours - less antisocial behaviour of all kinds. Of course it's hard to know how much of this is linked to ownership / sense of roots, and how much to socioeconomic factors.

Re: Simone Weil and the Need for Roots

#32

Post by borepop »

When an author is (1) simultaneously lamenting the loss of "roots" and "real culture" and attacking internationalism, (2) taking gratuitous shots at "wokeness," and (3) dressing the whole thing up in an intentionally vague "intellectual" wrapper that doesn't actually add anything substantive, it's not that hard to see where he's heading. All this article needs is a light sprinkling of references to "cultural Marxism" to reach full Jordan Peterson status.

Re: Simone Weil and the Need for Roots

#33

Post by burntoutfire »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #20
burntoutfire wrote: post #18

Earlier 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…

Welfare is basically mandatory charity - it's forcing everyone to chip in (via taxes) for the people who can't manage to support themselves.

What I'm talking about is something else entirely - it's a setup where for example the neighbor takes care of your cows and other animals if you go to town for a day or two. Or you help him rebuild his house after a fire. Or, the older kids of your neighbor look after your younger kid, as they play together outside all day. Or somebody is the village's blacksmith and is fixing everyone's iron equipment. Or, you give excess of apples during harvest to someone and expect some other favor from them down the line. Essentially, it's deep interconnectedness with the people around you and essentially an opposite of welfare state, in which you interact not with your neighbors, but with bored and depressed bureucrats at the welfare office and the kafkesque rules that determine whether or not you will be granted the money.

Re: Simone Weil and the Need for Roots

#34

Post by ceilingcorner »

Deleuze - Guattari and their concept of deterritorialization is useful here. Basically, capital destroys the culture of a local area, rebuilds it, and repeats this process ad infinitum.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deterritorialization

This is easy to observe in somewhere like San Francisco. Most traces of culture from the pre-1990 era have been erased completely or have been turned into a theme park. Contemporary SF has almost zero connection to its roots and the sociopolitical consequences speak for themselves.

Re: Simone Weil and the Need for Roots

#35

Post by kergonath »

seandoe wrote: post #3
killtimeatwork wrote: post #2

I tend to fully agree with the thesis. Sadly, there's nothing to return to, so I am condemned to live in a current barren wasteland of modernity.

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. It's a shame we choose to focus on our subtle differences to intentionally divide ourselves.

We are not deeply connected to the natural world at all. Otherwise we’d have panicked about the mass extinction we are causing already and we’d do more than talking about addressing climate change.

We are profiting off nature, turning it into a domesticated version we hope will be sustainable (but have no proof it will be, quite the contrary).

And yet it’s true that we never understood the world around us so well. This is fantastic if you are interested in sciences. Overwhelming evidence shows that most people don’t care.

Re: Simone Weil and the Need for Roots

#36

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

burntoutfire wrote: post #33
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #20

Earlier 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…

Welfare is basically mandatory charity - it's forcing everyone to chip in (via taxes) for the people who can't manage to support themselves. What I'm talking about is something else entirely - it's a setup where for example the neighbor takes care of your cows and other animals if you go to town for a day or two. Or you help him rebuild his house after a fire. Or, the older kids of your neighbor look after your young…

Your idealistic vision sounds well and good. But what if you refuse to conform to cisgender- and heteronormativity, but your neighbour is a bigot? What if you are a politically active citizen, but your neighbor’s politics are hostile to yours? (Note that the rise of the Nordic welfare states in fact helped to smooth out some political polarization that was hurting those societies in the early 20th century.) In the past, neighbourly help often was refused to people like that. And what if you are a very introverted person who simply doesn’t want to interact with people outside your comfort zone?

Also, “bored and depressed bureaucrats” and “Kafkaesque rules” is a caricature, it may not be how others perceive their country’s welfare state. Satisfaction in fact may run high.

Re: Simone Weil and the Need for Roots

#37

Post by aphextron »

Nursie wrote: post #5

> We need these roots. You might. I need friends and family, some community participation is nice, sure, but I don't particularly feel the need for gods, ancient traditions or worship, which these seem to be tied up with in the text. > Our culture is not in danger of dying; it is already dead, and we are in denial. This just seems like unnecessary hyperbole.

>I don't particularly feel the need for gods, ancient traditions or worship

You do. It's just that in modern society we've substituted these for more easily digestible, commodified, manufactured replicas. Hollywood celebrities have replaced the pantheon of Greek gods. Consumerism is the new piety. Techno Utopianism and liberalism (in the classical sense) has supplanted the ancient traditions of old. The Zuckerbergs and Musks of the world are our priestly class. We still need these things, but instead of searching for them, communing with others, and engaging with our inherited body of three thousand years of western cultural heritage to find meaning, we purchase it with the press of a button on an app.

Re: Simone Weil and the Need for Roots

#38

Post by zozbot234 »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #34

Deleuze - Guattari and their concept of deterritorialization is useful here. Basically, capital destroys the culture of a local area, rebuilds it, and repeats this process ad infinitum. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deterritorialization This is easy to observe in somewhere like San Francisco. Most traces of culture from the pre-1990 era have been erased completely or have been turned into a theme park. Contemporary S…

There's nothing about this process that's contingent on capital, and 'capital' is a confused term anyway. The causal factors are both social (generally grouped under the broad term "modernity") and technical (since technical changes might make some forms of d18n more feasible than they would otherwise be).

Re: Simone Weil and the Need for Roots

#39

Post by zozbot234 »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #36
burntoutfire wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Welfare is basically mandatory charity - it's forcing everyone to chip in (via taxes) for the people who can't manage to support themselves. What I'm talking about is something else entirely - it's a setup where for example the neighbor takes care of your cows and other animals if you go to town for a day or two. Or you help him rebuild his house after a fire. Or, the older kids of your neighbor look after your young…

Your idealistic vision sounds well and good. But what if you refuse to conform to cisgender- and heteronormativity, but your neighbour is a bigot? What if you are a politically active citizen, but your neighbor’s politics are hostile to yours? (Note that the rise of the Nordic welfare states in fact helped to smooth out some political polarization that was hurting those societies in the early 20th century.) In the pa…

> Your idealistic vision sounds well and good. But what if you refuse to conform

Then you vote with your feet and move to a community that's friendlier to your values. That community will in turn have strong values of its own, which will help preserve a sense of high social trust within it. It's easy to move out to a competing community, because these quasi-tribal dynamics are inherently limited in scale to a max of about 150 individuals.

Re: Simone Weil and the Need for Roots

#40

Post by ceilingcorner »

zozbot234 wrote: post #38
ceilingcorner wrote: post #34

Deleuze - Guattari and their concept of deterritorialization is useful here. Basically, capital destroys the culture of a local area, rebuilds it, and repeats this process ad infinitum. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deterritorialization This is easy to observe in somewhere like San Francisco. Most traces of culture from the pre-1990 era have been erased completely or have been turned into a theme park. Contemporary S…

There's nothing about this process that's contingent on capital, and 'capital' is a confused term anyway. The causal factors are both social (generally grouped under the broad term "modernity") and technical (since technical changes might make some forms of d18n more feasible than they would otherwise be).

Social changes and technology aren’t dependent on capital? I’d say it’s pretty much impossible to divorce modernity from capital.
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