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The Need for Roots brought home the modern era's disconnection with the past and the loss of community. There has rarely been a day since I first read The Need for Roots, nearly two decades ago, that I haven't thought of Simone Weil – one of my earliest heroines along with Hannah Arendt and Rosa Luxemburg.

The Need for Roots brought home the modern era's disconnection with the past and the loss of community

It was the title that initially attracted me more than the contents. Having recently moved to a Himalayan village after a peripatetic life in the plains, I had begun to feel rooted for the first time, connected to a stable community which, living off the land, neither poor nor rich, and low rather than upper caste, was marked above all by dignity – remarkable in a country where villages had become synonymous with destitution. And when Weil asserted that the central event of the modern era was uprootedness – the disconnection from the past and the loss of community – she seemed to speak directly to my experience. The range of her admirers – from TS Eliot to Albert Camus – attest to the difficulty of describing Weil. This was not all abstract speculation. The Love Competition. Slavoj Zizek: Capitalism with Asian values - Talk to Al Jazeera. From the Middle East to the streets of London and cities across the US there is a discontent with the status quo.

Slavoj Zizek: Capitalism with Asian values - Talk to Al Jazeera

Whether it is with the iron grip of entrenched governments or the widening economic divide between the rich and those struggling to get by. But where are those so hungry for change heading? How profound is their long-term vision to transform society? Slovenian-born philosopher Slavoj Zizek, whose critical examination of both capitalism and socialism has made him an internationally recognised intellectual, speaks to Al Jazeera's Tom Ackerman about the momentous changes taking place in the global financial and political system. In his distinct and colourful manner, he analyses the Arab Spring, the eurozone crisis, the "Occupy Wall Street" movement and the rise of China. Slavoj Zizek's latest book is Living in the End Times (Verso). Sumner Albee, George - La Cima. Jonathan Glover on Systems of Belief.

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