irainchen

This book is the classic that all Wendell Berry readers should read first. It goes through his ecological ethic and his belief that morality and ecology are inseparable; that our disconnection from the earth and our disconnection from each other are part of the same problem. This quote from his essay Think Little is a perfect introduction to his philosophies. See [http://www.msu.edu/~kikbradl/little.html] ------------------------ Most of us, for example, not only do not know how to produce the best food in the best way - we don't know how to produce any kind in any way. Our model citizen is a sophisticate who before puberty understands how to produce a baby, but who at the age of thirty will not know how to produce a potato. And for this condition we have elaborate rationalizations, instructing us that dependence for everything on somebody else is efficient and economical and a scientific miracle. I say, instead, that it is madness, mass produced. A man who understands the weather only in terms of golf is participating in a chronic public insanity that either he or his descendants will be bound to realize as suffering. I believe that the death of the world is breeding in such minds much more certainly and much faster than in any political capital or atomic arsenal. ------------------------ Wendell Berry has long been an inspiration to me, the kind of person I think about when facing highly symbolic questions that are of little import. What would Wendell Berry think about my job/clothes/car/haircut, I wonder? Alas, in almost all cases I end up feeling like I've let the poor chap down. He is my hero and I love him.

2022-11-14 18:46