“I do believe that it is precisely rootedness which gives you ease in multilingual expression or participation in dancing intercourse with very different cultures. Only when one’s roots are cut or denied or considered as something secondary does the search for the so-called identity, for some kind of inner fitting of the individual upon itself, become an important fantasy.”1
How ironic—that we need to be rooted in one culture in order to conversing with other cultures! Today, don’t we assume the opposite, namely, that we have to give up our own cultural roots in order to connect with those form other cultures? Illich adds that we humans need soil to survive the desert.
This book is a fascinating series of conversations with one of the most unique thinkers of the 20th century. I reread it regularly.
1 David Cayley, Ivan Illich in Conversation (Concord, ON: Anansi, 1992), 197.
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