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Our Only World: Ten Essays
As the United States prepares to leave its long war in Afghanistan, it now must contemplate the necessity of sending troops back to Iraq, recalling General Colin Powell’s advice to President Bush: “If you break it, you own it,” as
the world’s hot spots threaten to spread over the globe with the ferocity of a war of holy terror and desperation.
The planet’s environmental problems respect no national boundaries. From soil erosion and population displacement to climate change and failed energy policies, American governing classes are paid by corporations to pretend that debate is the only democratic necessity and that solutions are capable of withstanding endless delay. Late Capitalism goes about its business of finishing off the planet. And we citizens are left with a shell of what was once proudly described as The American Dream.
In this new collection of eleven essays, Berry confronts head-on the necessity of clear thinking and direct action. Never one to ignore the present challenge, he understands that only clearly stated questions support the understanding their answers require. For more than fifty years we’ve had no better spokesman and no more eloquent advocate for the planet, for our families, and for the future of our children and ourselves.
the world’s hot spots threaten to spread over the globe with the ferocity of a war of holy terror and desperation.
The planet’s environmental problems respect no national boundaries. From soil erosion and population displacement to climate change and failed energy policies, American governing classes are paid by corporations to pretend that debate is the only democratic necessity and that solutions are capable of withstanding endless delay. Late Capitalism goes about its business of finishing off the planet. And we citizens are left with a shell of what was once proudly described as The American Dream.
In this new collection of eleven essays, Berry confronts head-on the necessity of clear thinking and direct action. Never one to ignore the present challenge, he understands that only clearly stated questions support the understanding their answers require. For more than fifty years we’ve had no better spokesman and no more eloquent advocate for the planet, for our families, and for the future of our children and ourselves.
196 pages, Hardcover
First published January 19, 2015
151 people are currently reading
1899 people want to read
About the author
Wendell Berry
292 books4,865 followersWendell Berry is a conservationist, farmer, essayist, novelist, professor of English and poet. He was born August 5, 1934 in Henry County, Kentucky where he now lives on a farm. The New York Times has called Berry the "prophet of rural America."
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 158 reviews
November 29, 2016
So much for the comforting post-Trump reading thing... I'd love to be able to "deal" with Wendell Berry in some way, to put him in some kind of handy mental box so I wouldn't have to really reckon with what he's saying in this book and others. I mean, shit, he's an octogenarian Christian farmer named "Wendell" and he's from Kentucky... Shouldn't be too difficult, right? Yet something about Berry refuses to be written off. He criticizes our postmodern, postindustrial, hyper-scientific, violence-ridden world mercilessly, and in response, all I can mentally muster is, "Uh, but, no." He doesn't make it easy for anyone who's likely to be reading him, which is to say, for progressive secular city folk vaguely interested in the goings-on of the country. We wanna believe we're special and clever because we DO care, dammit, about climate change and stuff. But Berry knows that we don't really care, not really-- most of us have never tended to the land, or really lived off the land, or even looked at the land unless it was part of a park or in a film. He knows we'd rather drink and screw and ruin the planet and pat ourselves on the back for our superior understanding than for one second consider the true cost of the lives we live. In his perfect, patient, seemingly gentle style (one that makes him more convincing that a thousand snide theorists), he speaks of a true revolution: an overthrow of our industrial overlords, and a return to stewardship, affection, and human community.
So I don't know what to do, here. This book is well-written. It has ten essays. They're all kind of saying the same thing, but that thing seems like it needs to be said. Will anyone really hear it? Have I really heard it?
So I don't know what to do, here. This book is well-written. It has ten essays. They're all kind of saying the same thing, but that thing seems like it needs to be said. Will anyone really hear it? Have I really heard it?
December 2, 2019
Wendell Berry's ten essays address some of the challenges we face as stewards of the land. I like the essay on forest management and the efforts of Troy Firth using sustainable forestry. I agree with Berry that many large environmental problems can be dealt with in small ways by individuals and communities. Waiting for government intervention and policy can be exasperating.
Industrialization has brought great changes - both good and bad. Although Berry does give credit for some advancements, it often seems like he is advocating going back to a pre-industrialized era. I am an optimist about most things but I cannot see our society of excess radically changing. "Spending less, burning less, traveling less may be a relief." I quickly become a pessimist on hearing your 'pie in the sky' idea, Mr. Berry. Most people will not change their comfortable ways just because it is good for the land. It saddens me to tell you this.
Industrialization has brought great changes - both good and bad. Although Berry does give credit for some advancements, it often seems like he is advocating going back to a pre-industrialized era. I am an optimist about most things but I cannot see our society of excess radically changing. "Spending less, burning less, traveling less may be a relief." I quickly become a pessimist on hearing your 'pie in the sky' idea, Mr. Berry. Most people will not change their comfortable ways just because it is good for the land. It saddens me to tell you this.
February 7, 2017
“Man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun.” Clifford Geertz
Local economies local communities, even local families, in which people lived and worked as members, have been broken. Wendell Berry
Koyaanisqatsi (a Hopi word meaning 'life out of balance.') (and the name of a wordless film about local and interdependent world ecosystems)
I feel like I’ve known Wendell Berry most of my life: organic farmer, poet, essayist, teacher. In our present and ongoing environmental crisis, Berry continues to weigh in, with a series of essays. While acknowledging climate change as part of that crisis, Berry focuses on long term land abuse as yet another component of the problem. Like others, he puts his finger on manifest destiny and industrialization, and urges us to reconsider our relationship to the local land we live in, to sustainable practices, to each other. Short term profits vs long term growth. Ecological degradation is inked to a failure of kindness, of disrespect for ecosystems, of the failure to maintain economics as local.
Berry wants us to turn back to the ways of the Amish, who have a correct relationship to the land, to scale, who understand the value of horse-drawn plows vs. tractors. Is this a joke, that we might turn back to sustainable practices vs factory farm destruction of the land? Is it naïve? Is it too late? What practices do we need to learn to save the planet, to save human existence? Berry includes examples of models we can follow if we want to “get back to the garden,” as Joni Mitchell put it 50 years ago.
“Humility is the primary virtue of good forestry.”
One essay focuses on Troy Firth, who knows how to grow a forest with the sake of the forest ecosystem as a whole in mind, vs. what we have had forever, the rapacious razing of the planet for short term profits. Belonging to the land. And love. Of community, of land, of the local. “One person can begin, and can get better with the help of others.” Again, naïve? I think there’s only one way out. With local knowledge, and listening to the needs of particular people and communities. Large scale industrial practices and endless fossil fuel use are what has gotten us into this mess, this desertification of the west, of deforestation, of species die-off, of the death of ecosystems. If it is indeed not too late, what principles can undergrid our practices going forward? Listen to Berry.
When I think of education--and in terms of my shop--as one foundation for developing principles for living on the planet, we have on the one hand the drive, backed by Big Business, of a National Curriculum and National Standards, but most good teachers know that the best curricula are local, that assessment has to be local, that we have to attune our learning to the needs of the students and communities in which we live. We need more project-based learning founded in the needs of the community, of the health of particular places, in conversation with cities, with rural areas, but in particular neighborhoods. What Freire calls problem-solving curriculum, linking words to worlds instead of this worksheet culture with its focus on skills at the expense of knowledge. An ecological and usefully anarchist approach to systems, to humans, not to individual test scores but interdependence. What’s the relationship between ecology and ecology, between capital and collapse? Can we think of schools as models for sustainability?
"I want to suggest that the kind of science practiced at The Land Institute is itself a great and necessary resource. It is by definition a local science, carried on conscientiously in the contexts of the local ecosystem and the local human community. Whatever is developed in that place will require local adaptation, and the careful employment of many minds in other places. This science, moreover, is carried on with respect for local nature and local humanity."
Local economies local communities, even local families, in which people lived and worked as members, have been broken. Wendell Berry
Koyaanisqatsi (a Hopi word meaning 'life out of balance.') (and the name of a wordless film about local and interdependent world ecosystems)
I feel like I’ve known Wendell Berry most of my life: organic farmer, poet, essayist, teacher. In our present and ongoing environmental crisis, Berry continues to weigh in, with a series of essays. While acknowledging climate change as part of that crisis, Berry focuses on long term land abuse as yet another component of the problem. Like others, he puts his finger on manifest destiny and industrialization, and urges us to reconsider our relationship to the local land we live in, to sustainable practices, to each other. Short term profits vs long term growth. Ecological degradation is inked to a failure of kindness, of disrespect for ecosystems, of the failure to maintain economics as local.
Berry wants us to turn back to the ways of the Amish, who have a correct relationship to the land, to scale, who understand the value of horse-drawn plows vs. tractors. Is this a joke, that we might turn back to sustainable practices vs factory farm destruction of the land? Is it naïve? Is it too late? What practices do we need to learn to save the planet, to save human existence? Berry includes examples of models we can follow if we want to “get back to the garden,” as Joni Mitchell put it 50 years ago.
“Humility is the primary virtue of good forestry.”
One essay focuses on Troy Firth, who knows how to grow a forest with the sake of the forest ecosystem as a whole in mind, vs. what we have had forever, the rapacious razing of the planet for short term profits. Belonging to the land. And love. Of community, of land, of the local. “One person can begin, and can get better with the help of others.” Again, naïve? I think there’s only one way out. With local knowledge, and listening to the needs of particular people and communities. Large scale industrial practices and endless fossil fuel use are what has gotten us into this mess, this desertification of the west, of deforestation, of species die-off, of the death of ecosystems. If it is indeed not too late, what principles can undergrid our practices going forward? Listen to Berry.
When I think of education--and in terms of my shop--as one foundation for developing principles for living on the planet, we have on the one hand the drive, backed by Big Business, of a National Curriculum and National Standards, but most good teachers know that the best curricula are local, that assessment has to be local, that we have to attune our learning to the needs of the students and communities in which we live. We need more project-based learning founded in the needs of the community, of the health of particular places, in conversation with cities, with rural areas, but in particular neighborhoods. What Freire calls problem-solving curriculum, linking words to worlds instead of this worksheet culture with its focus on skills at the expense of knowledge. An ecological and usefully anarchist approach to systems, to humans, not to individual test scores but interdependence. What’s the relationship between ecology and ecology, between capital and collapse? Can we think of schools as models for sustainability?
"I want to suggest that the kind of science practiced at The Land Institute is itself a great and necessary resource. It is by definition a local science, carried on conscientiously in the contexts of the local ecosystem and the local human community. Whatever is developed in that place will require local adaptation, and the careful employment of many minds in other places. This science, moreover, is carried on with respect for local nature and local humanity."
April 28, 2019
(Review from 2016)
How do you review Wendell Berry? It's Wendell Berry, for Pete's sake.
That said...this is, subject-matter-wise, mostly about Berry's convictions on land use. Not that you can't pull many other ideas out of the ways that we think about crops and forestry, fishing and pollution, and, more generally, how our collective attitude or apathy towards these things is hurting ourselves, other people, and the earth under our feet. But if direct talk on those subjects doesn't interest you, you would probably enjoy his fiction more. A short story about Burley Coulter or Art Rowanberry can give you much of the same thought as the text of a speech does about the pleasures of roaming around the land. The importance of the essays, though, is that they're about current policies and problems; the examples aren't made up, nobody can be accused of romanticizing the old ways for literary effect. They show that Wendell Berry cares a whole lot about the present and the future as well as about the past.
How do you review Wendell Berry? It's Wendell Berry, for Pete's sake.
That said...this is, subject-matter-wise, mostly about Berry's convictions on land use. Not that you can't pull many other ideas out of the ways that we think about crops and forestry, fishing and pollution, and, more generally, how our collective attitude or apathy towards these things is hurting ourselves, other people, and the earth under our feet. But if direct talk on those subjects doesn't interest you, you would probably enjoy his fiction more. A short story about Burley Coulter or Art Rowanberry can give you much of the same thought as the text of a speech does about the pleasures of roaming around the land. The importance of the essays, though, is that they're about current policies and problems; the examples aren't made up, nobody can be accused of romanticizing the old ways for literary effect. They show that Wendell Berry cares a whole lot about the present and the future as well as about the past.
February 9, 2017
Wendell Berry has done more to reshape the geography and landscape of my thinking over the last 10 years, whether his writing comes in the form of poetry, fiction or, as in this case, essays. I also heard Mr. Berry speak at Duke Divinity School of Theology about 8 years ago. The convocation was called "Our Daily Bread". In one setting, Wendell and his good friend, Wes Jackson, sat on stage and had a "conversation" (with all of us listening in) on the topics discussed in this book, "Our Only World". Many of the themes Wendell and Wes took up in that conversation years ago are echoed and magnified here in this present work. Berry is passionate about trying to shake our current ways of thinking about the earth, the soil, water, streams, rivers, the ocean, agriculture, and our human lives as they are lived out in the particular contextual demands of the particular place in which we find ourselves.
Berry is skeptical about supposed "one-solution" answers which propose to fit all places and problems. He urges a more attentive eye towards local context, which the industrial economy, along with its industrial agricultural component, ignores to the detriment of places and people and other living creatures. Industrial agriculture can produce short term gains in the economic scheme as set up and measured by Wall Street. But industrial agriculture is doing so without doing all the math. The cost to land, human lives, water, air, soil erosion, etc., is not in their math. The have failed to consider the long-term debt of poisoning the land with pesticides, which invariably poison our streams and waterways; land loss through soil erosion (with land being virtually a nonrenewable resource considering the 1000's of years it takes to create an inch or two of topsoil); as well as disrupting human cultures to the point that they have mostly lost their ability to carefully care for the earth and its resources. If destruction to such elements is acknowledged at all by the industrial economy, it is usually referred to as "creative destruction" and considered acceptable collateral damage, but acceptable because it provides its consumers and investors with the biggest short-term profit margin. Any offset in the math will just have to be paid by future generations.
Berry points out that the "high-dollar" solutions to the overwhelming problems looming on the horizons may only prove to be more damaging than the current state of affairs. The solutions will probably benefit the persons who sell us the solutions without regard to what further problems and disasters they initiate. Near the end of this collection of essays, Berry offers a list of things we can do now, as communities, but more importantly so as to sustain hope, as individuals. If we think that the "big" solution in the future is power down, use much less fossil fuels, then start using less energy now. If the idea is a good idea and it makes sense for the government to promote and enforce it, if it seems like the reasonable, right, and moral thing to do, then voluntarily do it now. How much more noble and respectable and dignified to act with restraint and intention now, rather than joining the masses in throwing up hands and saying, "The job is too big, my little bit won't matter, so we'll just have to wait for someone to fix this in the future." No, go ahead and pick the bottle up out of the ditch. If we wait for the government solution to get the bottle out of the ditch, then things will only get worse. More importantly our lives lived in the meantime have the potential of being less meaningful and more shallow/self-centered if we fail to act in a way to try and understand where our approach to life on this one earth is not sustainable. Promoting the "slow-food" movement (as opposed to the fast-food industrialization of food which has overall diminished the quality of our food) is something we can all do by planting a garden, buying as much of our food from local farmers, by working with others in community gardens, etc.
Perhaps, then, our government policies will be thus dictated by and imitate our example of doing the right, just, and moral things. The will and the intent along with proper practice of careful care of creation, communities, water, soil, living creatures, forests, etc., as lived out in principle by growing numbers of people, will have greater sway and influence on shaping local, then state, and then hopefully national policies and practices.
Berry is skeptical about supposed "one-solution" answers which propose to fit all places and problems. He urges a more attentive eye towards local context, which the industrial economy, along with its industrial agricultural component, ignores to the detriment of places and people and other living creatures. Industrial agriculture can produce short term gains in the economic scheme as set up and measured by Wall Street. But industrial agriculture is doing so without doing all the math. The cost to land, human lives, water, air, soil erosion, etc., is not in their math. The have failed to consider the long-term debt of poisoning the land with pesticides, which invariably poison our streams and waterways; land loss through soil erosion (with land being virtually a nonrenewable resource considering the 1000's of years it takes to create an inch or two of topsoil); as well as disrupting human cultures to the point that they have mostly lost their ability to carefully care for the earth and its resources. If destruction to such elements is acknowledged at all by the industrial economy, it is usually referred to as "creative destruction" and considered acceptable collateral damage, but acceptable because it provides its consumers and investors with the biggest short-term profit margin. Any offset in the math will just have to be paid by future generations.
Berry points out that the "high-dollar" solutions to the overwhelming problems looming on the horizons may only prove to be more damaging than the current state of affairs. The solutions will probably benefit the persons who sell us the solutions without regard to what further problems and disasters they initiate. Near the end of this collection of essays, Berry offers a list of things we can do now, as communities, but more importantly so as to sustain hope, as individuals. If we think that the "big" solution in the future is power down, use much less fossil fuels, then start using less energy now. If the idea is a good idea and it makes sense for the government to promote and enforce it, if it seems like the reasonable, right, and moral thing to do, then voluntarily do it now. How much more noble and respectable and dignified to act with restraint and intention now, rather than joining the masses in throwing up hands and saying, "The job is too big, my little bit won't matter, so we'll just have to wait for someone to fix this in the future." No, go ahead and pick the bottle up out of the ditch. If we wait for the government solution to get the bottle out of the ditch, then things will only get worse. More importantly our lives lived in the meantime have the potential of being less meaningful and more shallow/self-centered if we fail to act in a way to try and understand where our approach to life on this one earth is not sustainable. Promoting the "slow-food" movement (as opposed to the fast-food industrialization of food which has overall diminished the quality of our food) is something we can all do by planting a garden, buying as much of our food from local farmers, by working with others in community gardens, etc.
Perhaps, then, our government policies will be thus dictated by and imitate our example of doing the right, just, and moral things. The will and the intent along with proper practice of careful care of creation, communities, water, soil, living creatures, forests, etc., as lived out in principle by growing numbers of people, will have greater sway and influence on shaping local, then state, and then hopefully national policies and practices.
March 25, 2024
Wendell Berry is a modern day cultural prophet. He is a prophet in the sense of his critique and calling our nation (and sometimes world) back to our senses. A man who practices what he preaches, nonetheless. I find his thoughts on industrialization, the economy, politics, agriculture, love of land and people, and frugality (I certainly missed a few) SO refreshing. I never leave a paragraph without being challenged in my thoughts and actions. Much of these essays are about things I’m not connected to (industrial agriculture) or have no knowledge of and yet they deeply effect me. Let us not go about our lives ignorant of our actions and sticking to the status quo. Wendell is a great author to read if you want to be challenged and changed. Godspeed 🫡
September 29, 2019
Summary: Ten essays on various subjects related to our care for our world and its people emphasizing the local and the sustainable.
In reading this collection of essays by Wendell Berry, some transcriptions of addresses, written between 2010 and 2014, I felt like I had read much of this material before. In some sense, I have. Berry continues to ring the changes of themes that recur in his works: local membership, sustainable land practices, the character of good work, our violent relationship with our world.
There was the sense of someone who has been saying these things for a long time, and perhaps coming toward the end of his work. As I write this, Berry has recently celebrated his eighty-fifth birthday. Both his earlier essay collections and earlier novels are longer. For all that, it seems to me that we have both a summing up and a carrying forward into our current context of the things Wendell Berry has been saying to us for fifty years.
The essays range widely covering everything from our tendency to dissect life into parts rather than see wholes (his "Paragraphs from a Notebook"), our violent treatment both of the creation and our fellow human beings ("The Commerce of Violence" and "On Receiving One of the Dayton Literary Peace Prizes"), and sustainable practices centered around right-sized land management and appropriate technology ("A Forest Conversation," "Local Economies to Save the Land and the People," "Less Energy, More Life," "Our Deserted Country," and "For the 50-Year Farm Bill"). Two address wider concerns in our society ("Caught in the Middle" in which Berry sets forth his views on abortion and gay marriage and "On Being Asked for a 'Narrative for the Future").
There were several that stood out for me. One was "A Forest Conversation." Much of this essay describes the practices of forest owner Troy Firth, who owns a maple sugar operation and also logs his forest with sustainable practices in his choices of trees to cut, and in how he removes them to minimize damage to the forest floor (horses!). "Our Deserted Country" chronicles the movement of people from country to city and the use of industrial technology as a substitute for an appropriate ratio of "eyes to acres" that human-scaled land care involved. He ranges widely in this essay, discussing impacts on the land, the disappearance of a country culture of fishing, hunting, and foraging, and the decline of local streams, including the loss of his favorite willows that no one can explain or had noticed.
In "Caught in the Middle," Berry voices what many of us feel, that neither of the major political parties represent his views. He ventures into the contentious space of abortion and gay marriage. He opposes abortion as the taking of life, and yet concedes there are circumstances he would help someone obtain an abortion. He acknowledges the conflict in these statements but also contends there should be no laws for or against abortion. He argues this is a personal matter that should not be subject to law, and argues similarly with regard to gay marriage. He questions whether "rights" are bestowed by government, including the "right" to marry. He would go further in saying that neither does the church, but that a "marriage" is made by two individuals who vow and live those vows until death. I suspect this is one of those essays that has subjected him to fire from all sides, the danger of being "caught in the middle." But Wendell Berry has never shrunk from controversy!
His concluding essay speaks a good word to all our prognostications about the future. He writes:
In this essay and elsewhere, I have advocated for the 50-Year Farm Bill, another big solution I am doing my best to promote, but not because it will be good in or for the future. I am for it because it is good now, according to present understanding of present needs. I know that it is good now because its principles are now satisfactorily practiced by many (though not nearly enough) farmers. Only the present good is good. It is the presence of good--good work, good thoughts, good acts, good places--by which we know that the present does not have to be a nightmare of the future.
It may well be that this is the theme that under-girds all these essays. His urging that we turn away from our energy-intensive economy is not first for the environment, but because it is not a good way to live. His arguments limiting the power of big government and reliance on national politics is centered in the goodness of the local community, and the ability of local people to best care for their land. Good work, rather than jobs, is what people were made for, but is also good for the world.
Agree with Berry or not (and probably no one will on all he writes), his contrarian voice comes from a different place from much of our public discourse. It comes from a place that is close to land from a life of tending a farm and the surrounding land, and to local people, a "membership." He offers us the chance to examine the way of living and the way of governing a society that we have assumed. In the end, his concern is not to change the world, or Washington, but to invite each of us to consider what it means to pursue the good in the place we are. Perhaps at the end of the day, that is the best we can do in "our only world."
In reading this collection of essays by Wendell Berry, some transcriptions of addresses, written between 2010 and 2014, I felt like I had read much of this material before. In some sense, I have. Berry continues to ring the changes of themes that recur in his works: local membership, sustainable land practices, the character of good work, our violent relationship with our world.
There was the sense of someone who has been saying these things for a long time, and perhaps coming toward the end of his work. As I write this, Berry has recently celebrated his eighty-fifth birthday. Both his earlier essay collections and earlier novels are longer. For all that, it seems to me that we have both a summing up and a carrying forward into our current context of the things Wendell Berry has been saying to us for fifty years.
The essays range widely covering everything from our tendency to dissect life into parts rather than see wholes (his "Paragraphs from a Notebook"), our violent treatment both of the creation and our fellow human beings ("The Commerce of Violence" and "On Receiving One of the Dayton Literary Peace Prizes"), and sustainable practices centered around right-sized land management and appropriate technology ("A Forest Conversation," "Local Economies to Save the Land and the People," "Less Energy, More Life," "Our Deserted Country," and "For the 50-Year Farm Bill"). Two address wider concerns in our society ("Caught in the Middle" in which Berry sets forth his views on abortion and gay marriage and "On Being Asked for a 'Narrative for the Future").
There were several that stood out for me. One was "A Forest Conversation." Much of this essay describes the practices of forest owner Troy Firth, who owns a maple sugar operation and also logs his forest with sustainable practices in his choices of trees to cut, and in how he removes them to minimize damage to the forest floor (horses!). "Our Deserted Country" chronicles the movement of people from country to city and the use of industrial technology as a substitute for an appropriate ratio of "eyes to acres" that human-scaled land care involved. He ranges widely in this essay, discussing impacts on the land, the disappearance of a country culture of fishing, hunting, and foraging, and the decline of local streams, including the loss of his favorite willows that no one can explain or had noticed.
In "Caught in the Middle," Berry voices what many of us feel, that neither of the major political parties represent his views. He ventures into the contentious space of abortion and gay marriage. He opposes abortion as the taking of life, and yet concedes there are circumstances he would help someone obtain an abortion. He acknowledges the conflict in these statements but also contends there should be no laws for or against abortion. He argues this is a personal matter that should not be subject to law, and argues similarly with regard to gay marriage. He questions whether "rights" are bestowed by government, including the "right" to marry. He would go further in saying that neither does the church, but that a "marriage" is made by two individuals who vow and live those vows until death. I suspect this is one of those essays that has subjected him to fire from all sides, the danger of being "caught in the middle." But Wendell Berry has never shrunk from controversy!
His concluding essay speaks a good word to all our prognostications about the future. He writes:
In this essay and elsewhere, I have advocated for the 50-Year Farm Bill, another big solution I am doing my best to promote, but not because it will be good in or for the future. I am for it because it is good now, according to present understanding of present needs. I know that it is good now because its principles are now satisfactorily practiced by many (though not nearly enough) farmers. Only the present good is good. It is the presence of good--good work, good thoughts, good acts, good places--by which we know that the present does not have to be a nightmare of the future.
It may well be that this is the theme that under-girds all these essays. His urging that we turn away from our energy-intensive economy is not first for the environment, but because it is not a good way to live. His arguments limiting the power of big government and reliance on national politics is centered in the goodness of the local community, and the ability of local people to best care for their land. Good work, rather than jobs, is what people were made for, but is also good for the world.
Agree with Berry or not (and probably no one will on all he writes), his contrarian voice comes from a different place from much of our public discourse. It comes from a place that is close to land from a life of tending a farm and the surrounding land, and to local people, a "membership." He offers us the chance to examine the way of living and the way of governing a society that we have assumed. In the end, his concern is not to change the world, or Washington, but to invite each of us to consider what it means to pursue the good in the place we are. Perhaps at the end of the day, that is the best we can do in "our only world."
August 1, 2016
In the first essay, he criticizes classifying nature. Classification started with Aristotle, and we owe him much for it. All of the scientists I encounter love the plants and animals they study.
Berry speaks of the "scientific-industrial culture." I agree that we have used our "natural resources" abysmally.
In the second essay he compares the violence of the Boston Marathon bombing with human violence on nature. I see his point, but such comparisons are risky.
The third essay conveys the need for good forest management. Too often dead and dying trees are cut, for example, but they provide homes for many species of animals. Again Mr. Berry seems to hope individuals can change things. I have a sense that beyond that we need solid forest management rules and training.
In my town, a business man complained that he could not get a permit to cut down a "few trees." He ended up getting his permit and wiping out a large area. His idea of "freedom."
The fourth essay is about supporting the local economy in your area. Very necessary. Unfortunately, the local economy where Berry lives includes the coal companies or the lumber industry. The nagging feeling I get reading Berry is that he's right but not realistic enough.
Essay five was a speech to a convention of Unitarians. I have to say that the UU church has been one of the most impressive I have ever encountered.
Berry mentions this book a few times in his essays. It's on my To Read list, a classic about coal mining:
by Harry M. Caudill
The extraction, transportation, and use of fossil fuels is one of our greatest problems. It may even be #1. Berry's main conclusion is that we must use less. Much less. I have to agree.
Essay #6 is about feeling caught in the middle with American politics. He expresses an anti-government attitude that, in my view, only plays into the hands of the big polluters.
Essay 7 was a speech after receiving a Peace Prize in Dayton, Ohio.
Frankly, I'm never quite sure about those who cry Peace. Is it peace if we ignore suffering elsewhere? I don't know. If I were in danger, I would want someone to help me out.
He discusses nuclear disarmament. To unilaterally disarm is suicide. And such negotiations are pretty difficult to do. Just look at the efforts to discourage Iran from going nuclear and then setting off a new Middle East arms race.
Essay 8 is by far the longest and best.
He states that the "purpose of industrial technology has always been to cheapen work by displacing human workers, thus increasing the flow of wealth from the less wealthy to the more wealthy." Hard to disagree with that.
The land-using population has had to leave their farms to work for industry. The new "farmers" run their machines over thousands of acres. Disconnect people from their land and they suffer.
"No-till" farming was encouraged with its dependency on herbicides. Industrial agriculture is blind. It treats one place like another. Farms and equipment became larger. Plowing even went downhill, literally. So water ran down the hill instead of "walking" in the rows. And the farmers themselves no longer walk around their land. It is like a desert. Love of the land was lost.
Even the scientists and conservationists were hired by the corporations. They sold their souls.
A valuable part of life disappeared. The pleasure of work was gone. Young people were no longer working. We have all seen what has happened with technology.
The black willow trees disappeared from Kentucky rivers. Probably herbicide runoff. The whole ecosystem of rivers changes for the worse. But without absolute proof, it is difficult to change things.
Nitrogen fertilizer has ruined the Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi River.
Worst of all is the disposability of human beings.
Essay 9 is about the "50-Year Farm Bill."
To the best of my knowledge, the 50-year farm bill has never passed on any level. Instead, "conservatives" in Kansas have given us the "Freedom to Farm Act" which displaced small farmers and left us with more industrial agriculture. When did "freedom" become a bad word?
Here is an article with more information:
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/a...
In essay 10, he talks about the future.
Berry's main point is that there is no point in speaking about the future unless we do the right thing today. The future is now. That is how to solve climate change. He again mentions the 50-year farm bill. Individually, we all have to do our part.
Berry speaks of the "scientific-industrial culture." I agree that we have used our "natural resources" abysmally.
In the second essay he compares the violence of the Boston Marathon bombing with human violence on nature. I see his point, but such comparisons are risky.
The third essay conveys the need for good forest management. Too often dead and dying trees are cut, for example, but they provide homes for many species of animals. Again Mr. Berry seems to hope individuals can change things. I have a sense that beyond that we need solid forest management rules and training.
In my town, a business man complained that he could not get a permit to cut down a "few trees." He ended up getting his permit and wiping out a large area. His idea of "freedom."
The fourth essay is about supporting the local economy in your area. Very necessary. Unfortunately, the local economy where Berry lives includes the coal companies or the lumber industry. The nagging feeling I get reading Berry is that he's right but not realistic enough.
Essay five was a speech to a convention of Unitarians. I have to say that the UU church has been one of the most impressive I have ever encountered.
Berry mentions this book a few times in his essays. It's on my To Read list, a classic about coal mining:
by Harry M. CaudillThe extraction, transportation, and use of fossil fuels is one of our greatest problems. It may even be #1. Berry's main conclusion is that we must use less. Much less. I have to agree.
Essay #6 is about feeling caught in the middle with American politics. He expresses an anti-government attitude that, in my view, only plays into the hands of the big polluters.
Essay 7 was a speech after receiving a Peace Prize in Dayton, Ohio.
Frankly, I'm never quite sure about those who cry Peace. Is it peace if we ignore suffering elsewhere? I don't know. If I were in danger, I would want someone to help me out.
He discusses nuclear disarmament. To unilaterally disarm is suicide. And such negotiations are pretty difficult to do. Just look at the efforts to discourage Iran from going nuclear and then setting off a new Middle East arms race.
Essay 8 is by far the longest and best.
He states that the "purpose of industrial technology has always been to cheapen work by displacing human workers, thus increasing the flow of wealth from the less wealthy to the more wealthy." Hard to disagree with that.
The land-using population has had to leave their farms to work for industry. The new "farmers" run their machines over thousands of acres. Disconnect people from their land and they suffer.
"No-till" farming was encouraged with its dependency on herbicides. Industrial agriculture is blind. It treats one place like another. Farms and equipment became larger. Plowing even went downhill, literally. So water ran down the hill instead of "walking" in the rows. And the farmers themselves no longer walk around their land. It is like a desert. Love of the land was lost.
Even the scientists and conservationists were hired by the corporations. They sold their souls.
A valuable part of life disappeared. The pleasure of work was gone. Young people were no longer working. We have all seen what has happened with technology.
The black willow trees disappeared from Kentucky rivers. Probably herbicide runoff. The whole ecosystem of rivers changes for the worse. But without absolute proof, it is difficult to change things.
Nitrogen fertilizer has ruined the Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi River.
Worst of all is the disposability of human beings.
Essay 9 is about the "50-Year Farm Bill."
To the best of my knowledge, the 50-year farm bill has never passed on any level. Instead, "conservatives" in Kansas have given us the "Freedom to Farm Act" which displaced small farmers and left us with more industrial agriculture. When did "freedom" become a bad word?
Here is an article with more information:
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/a...
In essay 10, he talks about the future.
Berry's main point is that there is no point in speaking about the future unless we do the right thing today. The future is now. That is how to solve climate change. He again mentions the 50-year farm bill. Individually, we all have to do our part.
May 3, 2022
I have had many identity crises in my life. This is the first one that made me want to move to eastern Kentucky and be a farmer for the rest of my life.
yee haw
yee haw
August 10, 2018
I find Wendell Berry's essays both maddening and encouraging. I am nodding in agreement with one essay and shaking my head with another. I learned much about forestry, stuff I had never before considered. I prefer Wendell Barry's fiction and poetry to his essays.
His response to receiving the Dayton Literary Peace Prize made me snort: when we were notified of this award my wife, Tanya Berry, uttered a sound that closely resembled laughter. She better than anybody knows how willingly I have risked controversy, and how much I have enjoyed it, especially when I was young.
His response to receiving the Dayton Literary Peace Prize made me snort: when we were notified of this award my wife, Tanya Berry, uttered a sound that closely resembled laughter. She better than anybody knows how willingly I have risked controversy, and how much I have enjoyed it, especially when I was young.
September 13, 2017
I like this very much. Someone who isn't afraid to tell the truth the way it is but also having the ability to be tactful about it, that is a rare quality these days but It was managed here .
May 8, 2019
There is no better time to consider some of the thoughts and ideas of Wendell Berry, a gifted and prodigious writer of poetry, novels, short stories, and non-fiction. The Los Angeles Public Library's catalog lists numerous works by him (hard copy, audio-visual and e-media), with more of his work to be found in a variety of journals and magazines. His poems are approachable and suggestive; as a cultural critic his work is provocative, philosophical and grounded. Berry is a writer, a farmer, a political activist, and an environmentalist.
This short collection of essays is a good introduction to Berry's social and agrarian thoughts and concepts. The essays and speeches are recent, some are 6 years-old, but are definitely predictive of what is happening now: in politics among the world's populations, specifically the divisiveness that is found in the United States and worldwide. He offers some remedies to consider, and for someone his age, 84 years-old, he has not given up hope, is not a cockeyed optimist, and offers reason and ideas for changes to take place in our country and elsewhere. As an environmentalist he is not likely to hug a tree, instead he will provide concise botanical and ecological information about current and long-term forestry planning. His reverence and love for nature shines through in his language and his practical solutions to help make our world endure.
Among the most provocative and practical essays is the “The 50-year farm bill” (Here is the complete 50-year farm bill.) written by someone who comes from a long line of farmers. At the present time there is concern for mega/industrial farms (for plant and animal production). "This bill addresses ... soil erosion, toxic pollution of soil and water, loss of biodiversity, the destruction of farming communities and cultures ... by invoking Nature's primary law ... keep the ground covered, and keep it covered, by preference, with perennial plants." Not annual plants, which he documents as a problem. Berry's concern, emphasis and thesis are the connections between people and places, in particular those who are farmers and ranchers. His analysis and proposals also cover timely issues: land use and abuse; forestry; agrarian reform; communities and places; political action taken by people and not by bureaucracies; and limitation of all types of growth.
As a native of Kentucky, he states, " ... my thoughts begin with the history of rural Kentucky, which in all of its regions has been deplorable. In my county, for example, as recently as the middle of the last century, every town was a thriving economic and social center. Now all of them are either dying or dead. ...The people in these towns and their tributary landscapes once were supported by usefulness to one another. Now that mutual usefulness has been removed, and the people relate to one another increasingly as random partciles." Those problems are the ones he sees in other parts of our country, where people's lives have been disrupted and torn apart by "job-creating industries" which frequently do not include opportunities for the very people they are supposed to be helping. To resolve this major problem, Berry offers ten suggestions, and one idea is not that new, "The 'leaders' will have to be led," which is a basic tenet of representative democracy. Wendell Berry reminds all of us about living in a democracy, and that is the often burdensome task of being responsible citizens: take the time to voice your opinions and concerns in an open forum; listen to other people in a respectful manner; make every attempt to work on equitable solutions to solve problems.
His more recent book is, The art of loading brush, new agrarian writings. Here are three collections of his poetry: New collected poems; A timbered choir : the sabbath poems, 1979-1997; and Terrapin and other poems.
Reviewed by Sheryn Morris, Librarian, Central Library
This short collection of essays is a good introduction to Berry's social and agrarian thoughts and concepts. The essays and speeches are recent, some are 6 years-old, but are definitely predictive of what is happening now: in politics among the world's populations, specifically the divisiveness that is found in the United States and worldwide. He offers some remedies to consider, and for someone his age, 84 years-old, he has not given up hope, is not a cockeyed optimist, and offers reason and ideas for changes to take place in our country and elsewhere. As an environmentalist he is not likely to hug a tree, instead he will provide concise botanical and ecological information about current and long-term forestry planning. His reverence and love for nature shines through in his language and his practical solutions to help make our world endure.
Among the most provocative and practical essays is the “The 50-year farm bill” (Here is the complete 50-year farm bill.) written by someone who comes from a long line of farmers. At the present time there is concern for mega/industrial farms (for plant and animal production). "This bill addresses ... soil erosion, toxic pollution of soil and water, loss of biodiversity, the destruction of farming communities and cultures ... by invoking Nature's primary law ... keep the ground covered, and keep it covered, by preference, with perennial plants." Not annual plants, which he documents as a problem. Berry's concern, emphasis and thesis are the connections between people and places, in particular those who are farmers and ranchers. His analysis and proposals also cover timely issues: land use and abuse; forestry; agrarian reform; communities and places; political action taken by people and not by bureaucracies; and limitation of all types of growth.
As a native of Kentucky, he states, " ... my thoughts begin with the history of rural Kentucky, which in all of its regions has been deplorable. In my county, for example, as recently as the middle of the last century, every town was a thriving economic and social center. Now all of them are either dying or dead. ...The people in these towns and their tributary landscapes once were supported by usefulness to one another. Now that mutual usefulness has been removed, and the people relate to one another increasingly as random partciles." Those problems are the ones he sees in other parts of our country, where people's lives have been disrupted and torn apart by "job-creating industries" which frequently do not include opportunities for the very people they are supposed to be helping. To resolve this major problem, Berry offers ten suggestions, and one idea is not that new, "The 'leaders' will have to be led," which is a basic tenet of representative democracy. Wendell Berry reminds all of us about living in a democracy, and that is the often burdensome task of being responsible citizens: take the time to voice your opinions and concerns in an open forum; listen to other people in a respectful manner; make every attempt to work on equitable solutions to solve problems.
His more recent book is, The art of loading brush, new agrarian writings. Here are three collections of his poetry: New collected poems; A timbered choir : the sabbath poems, 1979-1997; and Terrapin and other poems.
Reviewed by Sheryn Morris, Librarian, Central Library
November 23, 2023
I don’t think I was smart enough to read this. Or at least, I don’t think I have a deep enough understanding of agrarian life to make sense of much of Berry’s argument. However, what I was able to connect with was incredibly challenging. How should Christians deal with violence in society? How should Christians deal with fossil fuels? How should Christians contend with declining land quality due to overuse and overproduction? How should Christian’s understand local market economics as they relate to larger global economies?
I don’t pretend to have the answers to any of these questions. But Berry does! So read this work.
This work is well anthologized and hits in some of Berry’s best work across a variety of subjects that define him as an American intellectual. I definitely had to read this for a research assignment, and I think I might have enjoyed this a little better if I came upon it on my own.
I don’t pretend to have the answers to any of these questions. But Berry does! So read this work.
This work is well anthologized and hits in some of Berry’s best work across a variety of subjects that define him as an American intellectual. I definitely had to read this for a research assignment, and I think I might have enjoyed this a little better if I came upon it on my own.
December 30, 2018
Always much wisdom to be gained by reading Wendell Berry.
"We believe in what is apparent, in what we can imagine or "picture" in our mind, in what we feel to be true, in what our hearts tell us, in experience, in stories - above all, perhaps, in stories."
"To have a mind, I think, depends upon one's willingness to change it."
"Oversimplified moral certainties - always requiring hostility, always potentially violent - isolate us from mercy, pity, peace, and love and leave us lonely and dangerous."
"Condemnation by category of the lowest form of hatred, for it is cold-hearted and abstract, lacking the heat and even the courage of a personal hatred. Categorical hatred is the hatred of the mob, which makes cowards brave. And there is nothing more fearful than a religious mob overflowing with righteousness, as at the crucifixion, and before, and since. This sort of violence can happen only after we have made a categorical refusal of kindness to heretics, foreigners, enemies, or any other group different from ourselves."
"We believe in what is apparent, in what we can imagine or "picture" in our mind, in what we feel to be true, in what our hearts tell us, in experience, in stories - above all, perhaps, in stories."
"To have a mind, I think, depends upon one's willingness to change it."
"Oversimplified moral certainties - always requiring hostility, always potentially violent - isolate us from mercy, pity, peace, and love and leave us lonely and dangerous."
"Condemnation by category of the lowest form of hatred, for it is cold-hearted and abstract, lacking the heat and even the courage of a personal hatred. Categorical hatred is the hatred of the mob, which makes cowards brave. And there is nothing more fearful than a religious mob overflowing with righteousness, as at the crucifixion, and before, and since. This sort of violence can happen only after we have made a categorical refusal of kindness to heretics, foreigners, enemies, or any other group different from ourselves."
May 24, 2015
As always Wendell Berry is thinking outside the lines and coming up with ideas that we all would be well advised to ponder. His description of the importance of knowing the land is one example. It's not good enough to just know and study forests, one should study and walk through and really get to know A forest in all its variety and mini ecosystems. Each forest is unique in its layout and parts, we can only understand that through truly being in it over many years.
"This is why it is important for good foresters both to stay put and to have local successors. The US Forest Service makes a practice of moving people around.... Troy's idea, on the contrary, is to stay in place himself, and to hire local people for life>"
Several times we have been privileged to hear Wendell Berry speak at The Prairie Festival at The Land Institute. Wes Jackson and Wendell are kindred spirits.
"But I want to suggest that the kind of science practiced at The Land Institute is itself a great and necessary resource. It is by definition a local science, carried on conscientiously in the contexts of the local ecosystem and the local human community. Whatever is developed in that place will require local adaptation, and the careful employment of many minds in other places. This science, moreover, is carried on with respect for local nature and local humanity."
After laying out the problems he sees in how we currently live in the world Wendell suggests: "Or maybe we could give up saving the world and start to live savingly in it."
"This is why it is important for good foresters both to stay put and to have local successors. The US Forest Service makes a practice of moving people around.... Troy's idea, on the contrary, is to stay in place himself, and to hire local people for life>"
Several times we have been privileged to hear Wendell Berry speak at The Prairie Festival at The Land Institute. Wes Jackson and Wendell are kindred spirits.
"But I want to suggest that the kind of science practiced at The Land Institute is itself a great and necessary resource. It is by definition a local science, carried on conscientiously in the contexts of the local ecosystem and the local human community. Whatever is developed in that place will require local adaptation, and the careful employment of many minds in other places. This science, moreover, is carried on with respect for local nature and local humanity."
After laying out the problems he sees in how we currently live in the world Wendell suggests: "Or maybe we could give up saving the world and start to live savingly in it."
October 3, 2022
Wendell Berry is not only one of the finest American novelists alive today, but he is also an outspoken critic of the Industrial Agriculture which is steadily exhausting the land. By comparison, he lauds the farming techniques of the Amish for their careful husbandry of their land and resources. While he recognizes the futility of trying to return agriculture to that scale, he nevertheless makes sensible suggestions for protecting the land from overuse. Ironically, it would mean returning 80% of arable land back to perennial ground cover (pasture land) and using it for grazing cattle, sheep etc. I say ironically because climate change alarmists want to reduce our intake of meat-based protein, blaming cow flatulence for the increase in the Earth’s temperature. Berry sees the erosion of the land and the poisoning of the waters as the greater threat. He is also critical of those environmentalists who only lobby for wilderness areas - pointing out that the health of the rest of the planet has a direct impact on the wilderness areas too. He bolsters his arguments by referring to the Bible (given his Christian worldview), however, I found it incongruous that on the subjects of abortion and homosexual marriage his arguments are made on the basis of pragmatism rather than on the basis of the Scriptures. Ironic, given that there is clearer direction on those subjects than there is for his arguments in support of husbandry and neighborly love when it comes to the use of land. I suppose we all have our blind spots. Still, an interesting compilation of essays and worth reading.
July 12, 2015
Sometimes I get weary of Wendell Berry's curmudgeonly, Luddite shtick and his general sense that this is the worst generation in all time (which reveals, in my mind, a serious historical amnesia). But, there were some thoughtful pieces here. And I was especially impressed by his carefully reasoned arguments regarding abortion and gay marriage, which I frankly was not expecting.
May 6, 2024
Recommended to me by my friend Max, this collection of essays was one of my favorite books I have ever read. Wendell Berry has the unique gift to combine thoughts about land use, farming, Scripture, and current issues into a coherent and convicting argument for the betterment of this earth and its people.
September 14, 2022
This is not a book I would normally pick up on my own. In the beginning, I felt like he was telling tales - all life will be perfect, happy, rosy, if we just xyz. I don't like being sold idealized fantasies that nobody, even the teller, really believes in. Or being told lies in order to get me to change my ways and conform to someone else's ideas of what is best. (I probably also had this reaction because I had just read "Animal Farm" for the second time in two months and his promises of earthly environmental paradise sounded very empty and farfetched at times.)
I also disagreed significantly with a few of his major points. I don't think the harm Industrialization has done to our planet and population outweighs the benefits it has provided - although I don't even try to argue that in humanity's excitement and ignorance, we went about Industrialization in the best way. I don't agree that farmers (even the vast majority of them as he does concede that some farmers are still in touch with the land) don't care about the health and future of the soil, the animals, the crops, and the land. I think there are far more people who feel deeply in touch with the land and nature and there are far more "experts" who care/love these things than he believes.
But, then again, I've never been to Kentucky. I have no experience, as he does, watching the changes in crop choices, land usage, rivers biodiversity, and despair of people displaced due to lack of "jobs." I don't have the same experience that he does, and so I feel his book is so valuable as it opens up a completely new world to me. I don't have to agree with him on anything at all to understand what he is saying, what angers him, what he sees we are doing wrong, and what he proposes we should do to try to heal the land. While at first I had negative reactions to word choices such as comparing the violence of mining to atom bombs and stereotyping all industrialists, businessmen, and even later in the essays environmentalists and conservationists as greedy and ignorant, through reading ALL the essays with the intent to understand instead of critique, I felt like I DID start to understand. And that, understanding, is what makes a valuable literary experience for me.
I still don't agree with some of the things he says. I thought the essay on abortion and homosexual marriage in the middle of the book was a little weird - not that the essay was weird, but just it's inclusion in this book. I suppose it helps us understand our author better, which is also valuable when seeking understanding of his views.
This would be an interesting book to discuss with others, but I can see that discussing it with the wrong people - meaning those who aren't open to listening for understanding (not necessarily those who are set in their opinions) - could very easily lead to heated arguments. These are, unfortunately, hot button issues sometimes and perhaps that makes this book even more appealing. It is a pleasant experience to read a differing opinion and just listen and not be asked to respond. Clarity, not victory, as he would say.
Above all, I appreciate the awareness he brings to a topic he feels very passionate about that effects us all so very deeply and on so many levels, even if many of us don't even know the topic exists, or if we do, we barely give it a second's thought. It is healthy for us all to be reminded of the wholeness of the land and all natural things on it, of the symbiosis and the processes of the natural world, and of our opportunity to be good stewards of it. I'm not sure I recommend this book to just anyone, but I'm glad I read it myself, and it will remain on my shelves.
I also disagreed significantly with a few of his major points. I don't think the harm Industrialization has done to our planet and population outweighs the benefits it has provided - although I don't even try to argue that in humanity's excitement and ignorance, we went about Industrialization in the best way. I don't agree that farmers (even the vast majority of them as he does concede that some farmers are still in touch with the land) don't care about the health and future of the soil, the animals, the crops, and the land. I think there are far more people who feel deeply in touch with the land and nature and there are far more "experts" who care/love these things than he believes.
But, then again, I've never been to Kentucky. I have no experience, as he does, watching the changes in crop choices, land usage, rivers biodiversity, and despair of people displaced due to lack of "jobs." I don't have the same experience that he does, and so I feel his book is so valuable as it opens up a completely new world to me. I don't have to agree with him on anything at all to understand what he is saying, what angers him, what he sees we are doing wrong, and what he proposes we should do to try to heal the land. While at first I had negative reactions to word choices such as comparing the violence of mining to atom bombs and stereotyping all industrialists, businessmen, and even later in the essays environmentalists and conservationists as greedy and ignorant, through reading ALL the essays with the intent to understand instead of critique, I felt like I DID start to understand. And that, understanding, is what makes a valuable literary experience for me.
I still don't agree with some of the things he says. I thought the essay on abortion and homosexual marriage in the middle of the book was a little weird - not that the essay was weird, but just it's inclusion in this book. I suppose it helps us understand our author better, which is also valuable when seeking understanding of his views.
This would be an interesting book to discuss with others, but I can see that discussing it with the wrong people - meaning those who aren't open to listening for understanding (not necessarily those who are set in their opinions) - could very easily lead to heated arguments. These are, unfortunately, hot button issues sometimes and perhaps that makes this book even more appealing. It is a pleasant experience to read a differing opinion and just listen and not be asked to respond. Clarity, not victory, as he would say.
Above all, I appreciate the awareness he brings to a topic he feels very passionate about that effects us all so very deeply and on so many levels, even if many of us don't even know the topic exists, or if we do, we barely give it a second's thought. It is healthy for us all to be reminded of the wholeness of the land and all natural things on it, of the symbiosis and the processes of the natural world, and of our opportunity to be good stewards of it. I'm not sure I recommend this book to just anyone, but I'm glad I read it myself, and it will remain on my shelves.
July 6, 2022
My favorite old guy and conservationist. Some passages I really liked (sorry for the length, they're so good!):
"If we are serious about these big problems, we have got to see that the solutions begin and end with ourselves. Thus we put an end to our habit of oversimplification. If we want to stop the impoverishment of land and people, we ourselves must be prepared to become poorer.
If we are to continue to respect ourselves as human beings, we have got to do all we can to slow and then stop the fossil fuel economy. But we must do this fully realizing that our success, if it happens, will change our world and our lives more radically than we can now imagine. Without that realization we cannot hope to succeed. To succeed we will have to give up the mechanical ways of thought that have dominated the world increasingly for the last two hundred years, and we must begin now to make that change in ourselves. For the necessary political changes will be made only in response to changed people.
We must understand that fossil fuel energy must be replaced, not just by 'clean' energy, but also by less energy. The unlimited use of any energy would be as destructive as unlimited economic growth or any other unlimited force. If we had a limitless supply of free, nonpolluting energy, we would use the world up even faster than we are using it up now. If we are not in favor of limiting the use of energy, starting with our own use of it, we are not serious. If we are not in favor of rationing energy, starting with the fossil fuels, we are not serious. If we have the money and we are not willing to pay two dollars to keep the polluting industries from getting one, we are not serious. If, on the contrary, we become determined to keep the industries of poison, explosion, and fire from determining our lives and the world's fate, then we will steadfastly reduce our dependence on them and our payments of money to them. We will cease to invest our health, our lives, and our money in them. Then finally we will be serious enough, our effort complex and practical enough. By so improving our lives, we will improve the possibility of life."
"nobody can claim that marriage is either the government's invention or that the government has an inherent right to determine who may marry."
"The purpose of industrial technology has always been to cheapen work by displacing human workers, thus increasing the flow of wealth from the less wealthy to the more wealthy."
"From earliest times we have known, if we were willing to know, having learned by experience and example, that when people are disconnected from their land they suffer. But that is only half the truth. The other half is that when its rightful people, the people who rightfully care for it, are absent from it, the land suffers. It is the mutual, indivisible suffering of land and people that sets in right perspective the suffering of either."
"The collapse of families and communities--so far, more or less disguisable as 'mobility' or 'growth' or 'progress' or 'liberation' --comes from or with the collapse of personal character and is a social catastrophe. It leaves individuals subject to no requirements or restraints except those imposed by government. The liberal individual desires freedom from restraints upon personal choices and acts, which often has extended to freedom from familial and communal responsibilities. The conservative individual desires freedom from restraints upon economic choices and acts, which often extends to freedom from social, ecological, and even economic responsibilities. Preoccupied with these degraded freedoms, both sides have refused to look straight at the dangers and the failures of government-by-corporations.
The Christian or social conservatives who wish for government protection of their version of family values have been seduced by the conservatives of corporate finance who wish for government protection of their semireligion of personal wealth earned in contempt for families. The liberals, calling for too few restraints upon incorporated wealth, wish for government enlargement of their semireligion of personal rights and liberties. One side espouses family values pertaining to temporary homes that are empty all day, every day. The other promotes liberation that vouchsafes little actual freedom and no particular responsibility. And so we are talking about a populace in which nearly everybody is needy, greedy, envious, angry, and alone. We are talking therefore about a politics of mutual estrangement, in which the two sides go at each other with the fervor of extreme righteousness in defense of rickety absolutes that are indefensible and therefore cannot be compromised."
"[The Amish] limit schooling in order to keep their children in the community. This makes sense if you want to keep you children in the community, and if you have understood that the purpose of mainstream education is to prepare children, and especially country children, to leave the community. If you contrive in general to keep the community's children in the community, there are two desirable results: 1) The children, from earliest childhood, learn the community's work, by observing it and, as they become able, by doing it; and 2) If you keep all or most of the community's children in the community, then as a matter of course you keep the brightest and most talented ones."
"Confronting industrial agriculture in particular, we are requiring ourselves to substitute science for citizenship, community membership, and land stewardship."
"...it has been a mistake to allow industrialism, from the beginning, to measure its conduct exclusively by its own success, using such standards as mechanical efficiency or monetary profit, and ignoring all else. This great project of continuous technical innovation and obsolescence, substituting technologies for human workers, was intentionally wrong from the start in its evasion of the long-established moral requirement of neighborliness."
"I am not an accredited interpreter of Scripture, but taking thought for the morrow is a waste of time, I believe, because all we can do to prepare rightly for tomorrow is to do the right things today."
"I know from my experience, from the memories of my elders, from certain features of my home landscape, from reading history, that over the last 150 years or so the weather has changed and is changing. I know without doubt that to change is the nature of weather.
Just so, I know from as many reasons that the alleged causes of climate change--waste and pollution--are wrong. The right thing to do today, as always, is to stop, or start stopping, our habit of wasting and poisoning the good and beautiful things of the world, which once were called "divine gifts" and now are called "natural resources." I always suppose that experts may be wrong. But even if they are wrong about the alleged human causes of climate change, we have nothing to lose, and much to gain, by trusting these particular experts."
"While the theme of climate grows ever more famous and fearful, land abuse is growing worse, noticed by almost nobody."
"If we understand that Nature can be an economic asset, a help and ally, to those who obey her laws, then we can see that shed can help us now. There is work to do now that will make us her friends, and we will worry less about the future. We can begin backing out of the future into the present, where we are alive, where we belong. To the extent that we have moved out of the future, we also have moved out of "the environment" into the the actual places where we actually are living.
If, on the contrary, we have our minds set in the future, where we are sure that climate change is going to play hell with the environment, we have entered into a convergence of abstractions that makes it difficult to think or do anything in particular. If we think the future damage of climate change to the environment is a big problem only solvable by a big solution, then thinking or doing something in particular becomes more difficult, perhaps impossible."
"The need policy changes, though addressed to present evils, wait upon the future, and so are presently nonexistent. But changes in principle can be made now, by so few as just one of us."
"If we are serious about these big problems, we have got to see that the solutions begin and end with ourselves. Thus we put an end to our habit of oversimplification. If we want to stop the impoverishment of land and people, we ourselves must be prepared to become poorer.
If we are to continue to respect ourselves as human beings, we have got to do all we can to slow and then stop the fossil fuel economy. But we must do this fully realizing that our success, if it happens, will change our world and our lives more radically than we can now imagine. Without that realization we cannot hope to succeed. To succeed we will have to give up the mechanical ways of thought that have dominated the world increasingly for the last two hundred years, and we must begin now to make that change in ourselves. For the necessary political changes will be made only in response to changed people.
We must understand that fossil fuel energy must be replaced, not just by 'clean' energy, but also by less energy. The unlimited use of any energy would be as destructive as unlimited economic growth or any other unlimited force. If we had a limitless supply of free, nonpolluting energy, we would use the world up even faster than we are using it up now. If we are not in favor of limiting the use of energy, starting with our own use of it, we are not serious. If we are not in favor of rationing energy, starting with the fossil fuels, we are not serious. If we have the money and we are not willing to pay two dollars to keep the polluting industries from getting one, we are not serious. If, on the contrary, we become determined to keep the industries of poison, explosion, and fire from determining our lives and the world's fate, then we will steadfastly reduce our dependence on them and our payments of money to them. We will cease to invest our health, our lives, and our money in them. Then finally we will be serious enough, our effort complex and practical enough. By so improving our lives, we will improve the possibility of life."
"nobody can claim that marriage is either the government's invention or that the government has an inherent right to determine who may marry."
"The purpose of industrial technology has always been to cheapen work by displacing human workers, thus increasing the flow of wealth from the less wealthy to the more wealthy."
"From earliest times we have known, if we were willing to know, having learned by experience and example, that when people are disconnected from their land they suffer. But that is only half the truth. The other half is that when its rightful people, the people who rightfully care for it, are absent from it, the land suffers. It is the mutual, indivisible suffering of land and people that sets in right perspective the suffering of either."
"The collapse of families and communities--so far, more or less disguisable as 'mobility' or 'growth' or 'progress' or 'liberation' --comes from or with the collapse of personal character and is a social catastrophe. It leaves individuals subject to no requirements or restraints except those imposed by government. The liberal individual desires freedom from restraints upon personal choices and acts, which often has extended to freedom from familial and communal responsibilities. The conservative individual desires freedom from restraints upon economic choices and acts, which often extends to freedom from social, ecological, and even economic responsibilities. Preoccupied with these degraded freedoms, both sides have refused to look straight at the dangers and the failures of government-by-corporations.
The Christian or social conservatives who wish for government protection of their version of family values have been seduced by the conservatives of corporate finance who wish for government protection of their semireligion of personal wealth earned in contempt for families. The liberals, calling for too few restraints upon incorporated wealth, wish for government enlargement of their semireligion of personal rights and liberties. One side espouses family values pertaining to temporary homes that are empty all day, every day. The other promotes liberation that vouchsafes little actual freedom and no particular responsibility. And so we are talking about a populace in which nearly everybody is needy, greedy, envious, angry, and alone. We are talking therefore about a politics of mutual estrangement, in which the two sides go at each other with the fervor of extreme righteousness in defense of rickety absolutes that are indefensible and therefore cannot be compromised."
"[The Amish] limit schooling in order to keep their children in the community. This makes sense if you want to keep you children in the community, and if you have understood that the purpose of mainstream education is to prepare children, and especially country children, to leave the community. If you contrive in general to keep the community's children in the community, there are two desirable results: 1) The children, from earliest childhood, learn the community's work, by observing it and, as they become able, by doing it; and 2) If you keep all or most of the community's children in the community, then as a matter of course you keep the brightest and most talented ones."
"Confronting industrial agriculture in particular, we are requiring ourselves to substitute science for citizenship, community membership, and land stewardship."
"...it has been a mistake to allow industrialism, from the beginning, to measure its conduct exclusively by its own success, using such standards as mechanical efficiency or monetary profit, and ignoring all else. This great project of continuous technical innovation and obsolescence, substituting technologies for human workers, was intentionally wrong from the start in its evasion of the long-established moral requirement of neighborliness."
"I am not an accredited interpreter of Scripture, but taking thought for the morrow is a waste of time, I believe, because all we can do to prepare rightly for tomorrow is to do the right things today."
"I know from my experience, from the memories of my elders, from certain features of my home landscape, from reading history, that over the last 150 years or so the weather has changed and is changing. I know without doubt that to change is the nature of weather.
Just so, I know from as many reasons that the alleged causes of climate change--waste and pollution--are wrong. The right thing to do today, as always, is to stop, or start stopping, our habit of wasting and poisoning the good and beautiful things of the world, which once were called "divine gifts" and now are called "natural resources." I always suppose that experts may be wrong. But even if they are wrong about the alleged human causes of climate change, we have nothing to lose, and much to gain, by trusting these particular experts."
"While the theme of climate grows ever more famous and fearful, land abuse is growing worse, noticed by almost nobody."
"If we understand that Nature can be an economic asset, a help and ally, to those who obey her laws, then we can see that shed can help us now. There is work to do now that will make us her friends, and we will worry less about the future. We can begin backing out of the future into the present, where we are alive, where we belong. To the extent that we have moved out of the future, we also have moved out of "the environment" into the the actual places where we actually are living.
If, on the contrary, we have our minds set in the future, where we are sure that climate change is going to play hell with the environment, we have entered into a convergence of abstractions that makes it difficult to think or do anything in particular. If we think the future damage of climate change to the environment is a big problem only solvable by a big solution, then thinking or doing something in particular becomes more difficult, perhaps impossible."
"The need policy changes, though addressed to present evils, wait upon the future, and so are presently nonexistent. But changes in principle can be made now, by so few as just one of us."
February 13, 2018
I disagree pretty strongly with a lot but I loved reading this. I was trying to figure out his politics and then perfectly inserted was an essay on what he sees as the problems with both the left and the right. He is some sort of conservative agrarian but somehow also quite left-wing... reminds me maybe of Tolkien.
I always thought in the classic Federalists vs. Antifederalists I would side hard with the Jeffersonians, but now I’m not so sure. Maybe I would side with Hamilton against Berry. Either way I now feel quite uneasy with the choice.
There’s a lot to like about Wendell Berry. I can feel reading a nostalgia for something I’ve never personally lived in his mournful prose. I don’t think a spiritual reckoning is coming to humanity, nor do I think people will want to give up the benefits of global industry to be small hold farmers. I think more technology is the solution to much of what concerns him. We go from artisans to assembly lines and somehow back again just as a result of economic imperative.
Robert Nisbet has a line in The Quest for Community about how before the Industrial Revolution literature was all about how constrained and burdened everyone felt by their community and familial obligations; tied to the land. After the IR, it was all about alienation. Both are true; we like to complain. I think his nostalgia gets the better of him sometimes.
All that being said, I would read more and will certainly crack my version of The Art of the Commonplace soon.
I always thought in the classic Federalists vs. Antifederalists I would side hard with the Jeffersonians, but now I’m not so sure. Maybe I would side with Hamilton against Berry. Either way I now feel quite uneasy with the choice.
There’s a lot to like about Wendell Berry. I can feel reading a nostalgia for something I’ve never personally lived in his mournful prose. I don’t think a spiritual reckoning is coming to humanity, nor do I think people will want to give up the benefits of global industry to be small hold farmers. I think more technology is the solution to much of what concerns him. We go from artisans to assembly lines and somehow back again just as a result of economic imperative.
Robert Nisbet has a line in The Quest for Community about how before the Industrial Revolution literature was all about how constrained and burdened everyone felt by their community and familial obligations; tied to the land. After the IR, it was all about alienation. Both are true; we like to complain. I think his nostalgia gets the better of him sometimes.
All that being said, I would read more and will certainly crack my version of The Art of the Commonplace soon.
November 13, 2025
Novelist, poet, Kentucky farmer, someone of deep personal faith and conviction, speaker of truth and wisdom, steward of our land .
. Wendell Berry is a writer and thinker worth spending time with. In this collection of 10 essays, Berry reflects on challenges facing our world- environmental destruction, the widespread effects of industrialization, the disregard for neighborly love and care - and the impact of these things on our daily lives. His writing is not flashy, but it is incredibly profound and thoughtful. He speaks to not just effects - but also the ability to affect, sharing thoughts on proactive change, not just response to damage done. If you like a book that will make you think, maybe read a page or two, ponder and shift your perspective - Berry is one to pick up.
"Condemnation by category is the lowest form of hatred, for it is cold-hearted and abstract, lacking the heat and even the courage of personal hatred. Categorical hatred is the hatred of the mob, which makes cowards brave. And there is nothing more fearful than a religious mob overflowing with righteousness, as at the crucifixion, and before, and since. This sort of violence can happen only after we have made a categorical refusal of kindness to heretics, foreigners, enemies, or any other group different from ourselves." (2013)
. Wendell Berry is a writer and thinker worth spending time with. In this collection of 10 essays, Berry reflects on challenges facing our world- environmental destruction, the widespread effects of industrialization, the disregard for neighborly love and care - and the impact of these things on our daily lives. His writing is not flashy, but it is incredibly profound and thoughtful. He speaks to not just effects - but also the ability to affect, sharing thoughts on proactive change, not just response to damage done. If you like a book that will make you think, maybe read a page or two, ponder and shift your perspective - Berry is one to pick up.
"Condemnation by category is the lowest form of hatred, for it is cold-hearted and abstract, lacking the heat and even the courage of personal hatred. Categorical hatred is the hatred of the mob, which makes cowards brave. And there is nothing more fearful than a religious mob overflowing with righteousness, as at the crucifixion, and before, and since. This sort of violence can happen only after we have made a categorical refusal of kindness to heretics, foreigners, enemies, or any other group different from ourselves." (2013)
Read
January 1, 2020I'm reading through Lithub's 365 Books to Start Your Climate Change Library, a reading list in four sections (Classics, Science, Fiction & Poetry, and Ideas). This book is #5 of Part 4: The Ideas and #13 overall.
Re-read from a couple years ago.
Worth reading for the essay on forestry practices ("worst-first single tree selection"), which I would not peg as being particular engaging based on a synopsis, but it kinda blew my mind when I read it the first time through. It's interesting to see America through Berry's worldview, which I would describe primarily as pro-family/community & anti-violence, with 'violence' including both violence against people and against the earth.
Re-read from a couple years ago.
Worth reading for the essay on forestry practices ("worst-first single tree selection"), which I would not peg as being particular engaging based on a synopsis, but it kinda blew my mind when I read it the first time through. It's interesting to see America through Berry's worldview, which I would describe primarily as pro-family/community & anti-violence, with 'violence' including both violence against people and against the earth.
November 27, 2024
This is my first nonfiction Wendell Berry read, and my initial observation is how much his views on our interaction with the world we live in are a part of his fiction writing as well.
Reading this in late 2024 adds a different layer, as some of the issues he raises are starting to be discussed in the public square. This makes me cautiously optimistic, although in America there is such a tangled web that it’s hard to imagine where to begin. I currently live—literally—in the middle of someone else’s cornfields, and over the past 10 years of observing and pondering, I have become thoroughly disillusioned with the common practices in 21st century American agriculture. Reading Berry only increases that disillusionment, as he gives me a clearer picture of what agriculture could (and should) be.
Reading this in late 2024 adds a different layer, as some of the issues he raises are starting to be discussed in the public square. This makes me cautiously optimistic, although in America there is such a tangled web that it’s hard to imagine where to begin. I currently live—literally—in the middle of someone else’s cornfields, and over the past 10 years of observing and pondering, I have become thoroughly disillusioned with the common practices in 21st century American agriculture. Reading Berry only increases that disillusionment, as he gives me a clearer picture of what agriculture could (and should) be.
October 14, 2017
I feel like a clod giving this collection of thoughtful essays two stars, but man it was repetitive and depressing. That's not to say that we don't need Berry's prophet-in-the-wilderness polemic because I think we do. It's just hard to read a short collection of long-winded writing about the terrible things we've done to the land by becoming industrialized. Did we have a choice? That's always pitched as progress and I don't know too many people that are anti-progress, especially when it means feeding more people and raising the general standard of living. I do appreciate Berry's voice. I hope there are pockets of farmers doing right by the land, and I'm glad to see local farming on the rise in some areas. But, gee, this little book is a hard pill to swallow. Thank you, Mr. Berry. Next . . . .
July 14, 2025
There is no questioning Berry’s lifelong advocacy of caring about ecosystems, the natural environment, and the fate our planet in the hands of us humans. His early work is pioneering and classic, and this volume of ten essays echoes many of his vital ideas warning of man’s harsh impact on the sustainability of Earth. However, these essays come off somewhat piecemeal and rambling, perhaps too philosophical and not as grounded, focused, and clearsighted as his better work over the decades. Still, there are great passages that bristle with his hallmark conscience and with truth and demand close and second reading. But overall Our Only World is not a stellar collection.
March 15, 2019
Wendell Berry is an incredibly thoughtful person, and this book is full of gems. Some people might find some essays more easy to read than others (he spends significant time in a couple of them talking about logging and farming), but these are on the whole are so valuable for framing the way we think about ecology and the land around us and our place in it. Berry has such a deep connection to and respect for the earth, and has an interesting and challenging perspective regarding what it means to take care of it.
December 23, 2018
I probably should have read the description of the book before taking it into my hands. Berry's essays are largely politically circumnavigated; I wasn't too much a fan of the topics he considers. However, Berry's prose was respectable and occasionally loftily intriguing. These ten essays could change someone's life, I'd imagine. Just not mine.
October 1, 2019
Of the ten essays, the ones I enjoyed the most were those about forestry and land preservation. He spoke with passion and authority on those subjects. His condemnation of industrialization and the consequent undoing of rural society was also righteous and convincing. We unleashed a monster that we can’t put back in its box. His views on abortion and gay marriage ...
February 2, 2018
I didn't always like what I read, but I couldn't deny its truth most of the time. Berry's focus is the present need for smarter farming and living and a focus on the local efforts that have to be the catalyst for these better ways of using and conserving our land.
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