In her book The Need for Roots , Simone Weil discusses the needs of the human soul. She says that a soul needs to be rooted, and that there are negative repercussions when it is not rooted. In the latter half of the book, she examines what it looks like to be uprooted, but in the first section she begins by examining the things the souls needs to be rooted. Society has become more and more rootless, and it is not only Weil who has observed this. In his book The Man Who Was Thursday, G.K. Chesterton observes a group as they wrestle with how to maintain stability in society. He follows them through their struggles and to their differing conclusions about the world and its meaning. Likewise, Evelyn Waugh in A Handful of Dust shows what a society is like without roots. He constructs a setting in which there are no truly connected and rooted people and demonstrates the effects that culture has on a society. Three of Weil’s needs of the soul that are very apparent both of these st...
“If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.” -C.S. Lewis