Editing Simone Weil (section)

=== Rootedness ===
In ''The Need for Roots'' Weil argues that ''rootedness'' is a spiritual need which involves their real, active, and natural participation in the life of a collectivity that keeps alive the treasures of the past and the aspirations of the future.<ref name=":3">{{Cite book |last1=Weil |first1=Simone |title=The need for roots: prelude to a declaration of obligations towards the human being |last2=Kirkpatrick |first2=Kate |date=2023 |publisher=Penguin Books |isbn=978-0-241-46797-8 |series=Penguin classics |location=UK USA |translator-last=Schwartz |translator-first=Ros |trans-title=33-34}}</ref> Weil believes this rootedness is natural, coming from place, birth, and occupation with each person needing to have multiple roots and deriving their moral, intellectual, and spiritual life from the environment in which they belong.<ref name=":3" /> Weil makes the case for roots or the idea that the persistence of people is tied to the persistence of their culture, their way of life, as carried through generations. For Weil roots involved obligations to participate in community life, feel connected to place, and maintain links through time. The "roots" Weil refers to are nourishment that enable humans to fully grow and that a rooted community allows the individual to develop with a view toward God or eternal values.<ref>{{Cite news |last=McRobie |first=Heather |date=2009-02-03 |title=Should we still read Simone Weil? |url=https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2009/feb/03/religion-simone-weil |access-date=2024-08-02 |work=The Guardian |language=en-GB |issn=0261-3077}}</ref><ref name=":12" />

In contrast, a threat to the human soul is uprootedness (''déracinement'') is the condition of people where the only binding forces in society are money and the imagined nation.<ref name=":12" /> For industrial working conditions Weil states "although they have remained geographically stationary, they have been morally uprooted, banished and then reinstated as  it were on sufferance, in the form of industrial brawn".{{r|Zaretsky|p=102}} Weil states that "money destroys human roots wherever it is able to penetrate" and it "manages to outweigh all other motives because the effort it demands of the mind is so much less...".{{r|Zaretsky|p=102}} Uprootedness may be caused by many factors, including conquest, colonialism, money, and economic domination. Weil states money destroys roots wherever it goes, because the drive to make money supplants everything else.<ref name=":32">{{Cite book |last1=Weil |first1=Simone |title=The need for roots: prelude to a declaration of obligations towards the human being |last2=Kirkpatrick |first2=Kate |date=2023 |publisher=Penguin Books |isbn=978-0-241-46797-8 |series=Penguin classics |location=UK USA |translator-last=Schwartz |translator-first=Ros |trans-title=33-34}}</ref> Uprootedness is aggravated if people also lack participation in community life and uprooted people lack connections with the past and a sense of their own integral place in the world.

Weil opposed behavior that uprooted people including colonialism (including the French empire), some forms of mass media, and poor industrial working conditions. Weil did not excuse moral issues within a place, stating countries are a vital medium but one with good and evil and justice and injustice. Weil wrote passionately against the French government's colonial policies including the [[Civilizing mission|''mission civilisatrice'']] stating "we can no longer say or think that we have received from on high the mission  to teach the universe how to live". though Weil also opposed the creation of new nations based on the European model stating "there are already too many nations in the world"{{r|Zaretsky|pp=111,115}}