“Is it any wonder that so many of us, after a busy week of work, opt for a change of scene, as often as we can, rather than stay put and build the kind of community that we find so appealing elsewhere? The 17th-century French thinker Blaise Pascal suggested that this was down to humankind’s ‘secret instinct which impels them to seek amusement and occupation abroad.’ Alongside this urge, Pascal wrote, stood a contradictory pillar of self-knowledge: ‘That happiness in reality consists only of rest, and not in stir.’ In the case of the village mentality the contradiction is evident: We want the deep peace of belonging, but our itchy feet undermine our ability to put in the hours.”
