Rootlessness Part 2: “The Strength Of The Hills”

(Maybe it's not Wonder Bread after all.)

[The first part of this series can be found here. -- FWP]

In a letter to Arthur Greeves dated June 22, 1930, C. S. Lewis mentions J. R. R. Tolkien’s thoughts on the spiritual and generational effects of living directly off of the physically surrounding country:

“Tolkien once remarked to me that the feeling about home must have been quite different in the days when the family had fed on the produce of the same few miles of country for six generations, and that perhaps this was why they saw nymphs in the fountains and dryads in the wood – they were not mistaken for there was in a sense a real (not metaphorical) connection between them and the countryside. What had been earth and air & later corn, and later still bread, really was in them. We of course who live on a standardised international diet (you may have had Canadian flour, English meat, Scotch oatmeal, African oranges, & Australian wine to-day) are really artificial beings and have no connection (save in sentiment) with any place on earth. We are synthetic men, uprooted. The strength of the hills is not ours.”

Tolkien was a true genius, not the limited and eccentric sort our time tends to trumpet. He saw and heard accurately, no matter what was before him. He traced connections unerringly and without distortion. Perhaps most laudable of all, he saw men for what they are... and for what their forebears were in contrast. Scant wonder that his influence was what made skeptic Lewis become a Christian, not to mention the greatest Christian polemicist of the post-Industrial Revolution era.

The sense of possessing roots is indeed linked to multigenerational tenancy in a single locale. A bond develops between the residents and the land itself. Whether the produce of the land, its substance becoming our flesh and bones, is significant can be debated, but the tenancy cannot.

We of Twenty-First Century America are particularly affected by the explosion of human mobility. We can go anywhere, and we often do. Children routinely move away from their parents in search of opportunity and prosperity. Romances arise between persons geographically far apart. Family homes are seldom multigenerational. Several problems contemporary couples face arise from that fractionation, including this one.

Tolkien and Lewis saw it. How many Americans see it even through a glass, darkly?

The previous piece on this subject seems to have baffled many of my Gentle Readers. I wasn’t surprised by that; most current-events talk is of other things, not obviously related to the matter of roots. But one subject, which has been much discussed, is directly tied to rootlessness: uncontrolled immigration.

The personal and familial mobility of our time is what makes an influx of strangers possible. A more strongly rooted culture wouldn’t make room for large influxes. The clans that tenant a place would resist the incursion. They wouldn’t sell their lands; those who agreed to rent, other than to transients, would face community disapprobation. The “hired hand” from elsewhere had to remain in place for a long time – two or more decades, usually – if he sought to become part of the community.

Our tendency to move every few years did away with that degree of community cohesion. Neighborhoods are no longer populated by neighbors. The phrase bedroom community is apposite. We aren’t part of the land as our ancestors were; we merely occupy it for a time.

Perhaps the pulling-up of such roots is part of what has propelled contemporary nationalism. Our loyalties have to go somewhere. Political structures and commonalities of language can feel a bit like the roots our grandparents felt. Yet these, too, can prove temporary.

It’s possible that there’s no way to go back. But what’s definite is that we’ve lost something... something producer Brian True-May might have had in mind when the foofaurauw erupted over the casting choices for Midsomer Murders:

In an article in the March 19, 2011 edition of the Radio Times listings magazine, producer Brian True-May was quoted as saying about this show: “We don’t have ethnic minorities involved. Because it wouldn’t be the English village with them. It just wouldn’t work. Suddenly we might be in Slough. Ironically, Causton is supposed to be Slough, and if you went into Slough you wouldn’t see a white face there. We’re the last bastion of Englishness, and I want to keep it that way. I’m trying to make something that appeals to a certain audience, which seems to succeed. And I don’t want to change it.” He was suspended for these comments, perceived to be racist, which provoked a lot of discussion in the media, with opinions polarized in favor or in opposition with the policy. He was later reinstated, but it was announced that he would step down as producer after the 2011 season had finished.

Something to ponder.