“Even if you are living where your forefathers have lived for generations, you can bet that the smartphone you gave your child will unmoor them more effectively than any bulldozer could." (Kingsnorth, Against the Machine)

The sort of central point—at least in the early parts of this book—is that we have all become uprooted by The Machine, a sort of loose term for the global crisis that has severed us from tradition, culture, nature, community, ourselves, etc... It is driven by the global economy and although it was created by the West we can see it being furthered by States all around the world.

We have all been uprooted.

"Meanwhile, out in what is fondly called ‘the real world’ by people who often don’t know very much about reality, you are living in a metastasizing machine which is closing in around you, polluting your skies and your woods and your past and your imagination... Most of the things you like are fading away. The great forests and the stories made in and by them. The strange cultures spanning centuries of time. The little pubs and the curious uninhabited places. The thrumming temples and dark marshlands and crooked villages and folk tales and conviviality and spontaneous song and old houses which might have witches in them. The possibility of dragons. The empty beaches and wild hilltops, the change of getting lost in the rain forever or discovering something that was never on any map. A world without maps, a world without engines."

Picked up 'Against the Machine' by Paul Kingsnorth at the library the other day. This part in the introduction leaped out at me.

Most of the things you like are fading away.