“However we dissect it, though, I believe that the heart of the crisis that is enveloping so much of the world today – cultural, ecological, and spiritual – is this ongoing process of mass uprooting.” – – Against the Machine:  On the Unmaking of Humanity by Paul Kingsnorth

In Paul Kingsnorth’s fascinating new book, Against the Machine:  On the Unmaking of Humanity, he writes about spiritual and emotional alienation in our age of high tech, climate change, and capitalism.  He believes “the Machine” is destroying humanity through increased state control, the growth of cities, the rise of AI, the internet and cell phones.

Kingsnorth talks about “roots,” often literally, in terms of his relationship to the land.  He tells a charming story about planting a field of wildflowers in Ireland and waking up the next day to find the birds had eaten all the seeds. (He is philosophical: farmers can’t control nature.) One day he tires of mowing with a scythe (a scythe! Good God!), and discovers that the hardware store now sells robotic lawnmowers.

Kingsnorth fascinates but he sometimes irritates.  “He’s not wrong,” I’d mutter to myself. “But there are other points of view.”

For instance, he rants against cities.  He lives with his family in the west of Ireland, and thinks it would be better if we all lived in villages, or small towns, or the country, closer to nature, which is good for human nature.

Well, I’m not much of a gardener, but I am a city-dweller by choice.  I was taught that living in a city is ecologically sound, especially if you live in a proper city, where you can take mass transit, walk, or bicycle, drive less or not at all, and pollute the air less.  It is the “uprooting,” the flight to the suburbs and the ex-urbs, that “drives” air pollution. (Driving cars and other light vehicles accounts for about 28% of the emission of greenhouse gases, according to the EPA.)

But, as Kingsnorth says, roots are important.

It took me years to put down roots. For years I felt my roots were still in my charming hometown. It was almost magical, its streets lined with elm trees, and a neighborhood grocery store on every corner. Alas, in the late ’70s many historical buildings were razed in the name of “urban renewal.”

Urban renewal was expensive:  it cost the town a department store, Woolworth’s and many shops and restaurants.  The town’s best bookstore went out of business because the owners could not afford the high rent of the prefab temporary building where they were relocated. And urban sprawl accelerated after urban renewal.  The new pedestrian mall became a bar-and-restaurant district.   People deserted downtown and went to the malls.

 Well, I have been a city dweller for most of my life. One city was old and beautiful, and had a lot of culture, but it was too expensive; another had some culture but was “visually challenging”:  flat, grim, polluted, gray, cold, and, to be brutally honest, ugly. We put down roots in one neighborhood, but, alas, it “went down,” as they say, rapidly, all of a sudden.  ALL THE NEIGHBORHOOD SHOPS CLOSED. And all of us moved out of our apartment house.  The turning point was the day we had to step over the drunken, passed-out john of our new neighbor, a prostitute with a thriving business,

Now we live in a very pretty city, which has a (partially) viable downtown, lots of trees, a few charming bookshops, independent theaters, rivers, lakes, and parks. I wouldn’t have thought of it without the prodding of Kingsnorth’s book, but I do have roots.  I’m no longer “unrooted.”

By the way, Kingsnorth’s book also deals with religion (a former Wiccan, he is now a Christian), our emotional alienation, and the history of mass culture.  His political roots are in the green movement, which he says has lost integrity.  (He explains this in detail.)

And, fascinatingly, he is also a novelist and poet:  his novel The Wake was longlisted for the Booker Prize.

So here’s to being rooted!