For now, the useful work seems to be that outlined by Joseph Campbell: 'to conquer death by birth'. Simone Weil concluded her study of the rootless West by suggesting that the best response for we who find ourselves living in it is 'the growing of roots'-the name she gave to the final section of her work. Pull up some of the exhausted old plants if

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Spengler's answer to the crumbling of the West was to await the coming of his new Caesar. Others have their own responses: revolution, reaction, retreat, endless fights over policies and politicians. There are as many reactions as there are human personality types. But beyond all of it, there is another way that we could respond, one that is both

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What is a culture? It is a story that a people tells itself. Whether or not that story emerges from the Earth and then creates a people to tell it-as Spengler believed and as I am tempted to believe too—we build and rebuild our cultures every day, in the stories we tell our children and ourselves. Stories about who we are, where we came from and

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Wherever we come from, wherever we are, we are almost all uprooted now. The power of the 'global economy' demolishes borders and boundaries, traditions and cultures, languages and ways of seeing wherever it goes. Record numbers of people are on the move as a result, and as the population increases and climate change bites, those numbers will rise

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