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bittersweet_symphony's review against another edition
4.0
This delicate collection of short essays provides for an easy introduction into Wendell Berry's views on community and society.
While centered around rural communities—including forest commonwealths—the substance of his attention focuses on local economies. He wants to revitalize them because they are the way in which we can best conserve some very important human values: affection, conviviality, social bonds, care, mutual aid, stewardship, place, belonging, humility (limits), cooperation, harmony, and unity.
Being an advocate of such "gentle" virtues, Berry does at times show his "angry farmer" side—which is still fiercely endearing. He loves the land, people, the Sacred, and the simple pleasures that come from hard work, understanding how one fits into the local collective, and laying hold of the wisdom that comes from knowing which aspects of modernism are dehumanizing (and to be resisted).
He has an engaging style that is smart and warm. I think most will find him difficult to categorize, as he says so himself: "Nothing that I have written here should be construed as an endorsement of either of our political parties as they presently function. Republicans who read this book should beware either of approving it as 'conservative' or of dismissing it as 'liberal.' Democrats should beware of the opposite errors."
He is an agrarian at heart. At times one will see his skepticism of corporations and free-market fundamentalism. On other pages, readers will encounter his criticisms of government agencies (specifically, non-local ones) and their technocratic workings. He is pushing back against mechanistic or mechanical views of living that hollow out our spiritual and moral lives.
Wendell Berry is a communitarian thinker, focused on changing the way we relate to the earth. As social capital continues to decline and global climate change and ecological devastations further, Berry stands as a sage elder reminding us that many of the answers to our problems already reside in the tradition we inherited (in his case, the Western canon).
We need to become better stewards—of each other, ourselves, and nature. We are not masters of one another or of "the environment." Berry's focus on fraternity (or gender-neutral fellowship, if that reads more appropriately to you) and community as foundational sources of the good life are deeply moving for me.
Having spent much of adulthood obsessed with unbridled individualism as a supreme good, I find his correction healing. The question we should be asking ourselves regarding any governmental policy, technology, or production, is: does this improve the commonwealth of my community or not? Or perhaps alternatively, will embracing this enable my community to better flourish?
Some of his views may skew more socially conservative (in the religious right) sense, but his advocacy for communitarian approaches to living resonate. One genius innovation, as far as I see it in communitarian thought, is that its elevation of local communities and cultures allows for and encourages people to live according to what works best in their particular contexts. He pushes for the particular over the universal (in many ways). Rather than having a bland universalism, wherein all locales look and live the same, a focus on local community fosters a patchwork of truly diverse and thriving landscapes—human and non-human.
While centered around rural communities—including forest commonwealths—the substance of his attention focuses on local economies. He wants to revitalize them because they are the way in which we can best conserve some very important human values: affection, conviviality, social bonds, care, mutual aid, stewardship, place, belonging, humility (limits), cooperation, harmony, and unity.
Being an advocate of such "gentle" virtues, Berry does at times show his "angry farmer" side—which is still fiercely endearing. He loves the land, people, the Sacred, and the simple pleasures that come from hard work, understanding how one fits into the local collective, and laying hold of the wisdom that comes from knowing which aspects of modernism are dehumanizing (and to be resisted).
He has an engaging style that is smart and warm. I think most will find him difficult to categorize, as he says so himself: "Nothing that I have written here should be construed as an endorsement of either of our political parties as they presently function. Republicans who read this book should beware either of approving it as 'conservative' or of dismissing it as 'liberal.' Democrats should beware of the opposite errors."
He is an agrarian at heart. At times one will see his skepticism of corporations and free-market fundamentalism. On other pages, readers will encounter his criticisms of government agencies (specifically, non-local ones) and their technocratic workings. He is pushing back against mechanistic or mechanical views of living that hollow out our spiritual and moral lives.
Wendell Berry is a communitarian thinker, focused on changing the way we relate to the earth. As social capital continues to decline and global climate change and ecological devastations further, Berry stands as a sage elder reminding us that many of the answers to our problems already reside in the tradition we inherited (in his case, the Western canon).
We need to become better stewards—of each other, ourselves, and nature. We are not masters of one another or of "the environment." Berry's focus on fraternity (or gender-neutral fellowship, if that reads more appropriately to you) and community as foundational sources of the good life are deeply moving for me.
Having spent much of adulthood obsessed with unbridled individualism as a supreme good, I find his correction healing. The question we should be asking ourselves regarding any governmental policy, technology, or production, is: does this improve the commonwealth of my community or not? Or perhaps alternatively, will embracing this enable my community to better flourish?
Some of his views may skew more socially conservative (in the religious right) sense, but his advocacy for communitarian approaches to living resonate. One genius innovation, as far as I see it in communitarian thought, is that its elevation of local communities and cultures allows for and encourages people to live according to what works best in their particular contexts. He pushes for the particular over the universal (in many ways). Rather than having a bland universalism, wherein all locales look and live the same, a focus on local community fosters a patchwork of truly diverse and thriving landscapes—human and non-human.
paul_cloutier's review against another edition
5.0
A great little book on the importance of thinking and acting locally. Berry is a great example of someone I don't always agree with but his arguments are so thoughtful and well reasoned it is like debating with a close friend. I always come out smarter even if it is just thorough perfecting and refining my own opinions.
mattshervheim's review against another edition
challenging
informative
4.0
“The Conservation of Nature and the Preservation of Humanity” might be Berry’s best essay?
tangleroot_eli's review
3.0
A difficult book for me. It starts amazingly, with powerful, well-considered ideas that I agree with strongly. It progresses to powerful, well-considered ideas I disagree with but still respect because of the mix of experience, emotion, and intellect that Berry employs to make his point.
The further the collection progresses, the more it descends into bully-pulpitism, as when Berry uses an essay about responsible forestry to rail against abortion, or a speech about community health to denounce the entire medical profession. I hate to think I'm becoming one of those atheists who can't read anything written by Christian writers, but ultimately, I couldn't connect to writing that paints the world as fallen and argues that the real reason we should care for the environment is to form a relationship with God.
The further the collection progresses, the more it descends into bully-pulpitism, as when Berry uses an essay about responsible forestry to rail against abortion, or a speech about community health to denounce the entire medical profession. I hate to think I'm becoming one of those atheists who can't read anything written by Christian writers, but ultimately, I couldn't connect to writing that paints the world as fallen and argues that the real reason we should care for the environment is to form a relationship with God.
livingpalm1's review
4.0
I started reading Berry's poetry. Years after I began reading his fiction. In 2012, I started on his essays. I'm a fan all the way around. There's a certain amount of sentimentality he includes in each genre that never felt gratuitous, especially grounded in the soil of the good soil of robust language and story. Reading this book of essays, I found myself for the first time feeling like the Farmer's prophetic voice for our country signaled too little too late.
Granted, this book of essays compiled in the mid-1990's may have been right on time and I'm the one late to the conversation. Still, the social, agricultural and economic changes Berry recommends in many of these essays feel past-due. My son, Alex, and I read most of this book out loud together -- mostly because I felt like he needed some Wendell Berry thought in his repertoire before he began his undergrad political science studies. Eventually Alex admitted to me that reading the essays frustrated him more than anything else: "...I think they run the risk of being irrelevant because they're so demanding/impractical."
Still, Berry's words are full of a wisdom that add hearty nutrients for any reader. Perhaps, like the wisdom our parents and grandparents handed down, we benefit by rehearsing their words together, mining them for every amount of practical advice for our current time.
One of the passages where I thought Oh...I think someone paid attention to this warning!:
An example of Berry as a dooming prophet:
Words that will never be outdated:
Granted, this book of essays compiled in the mid-1990's may have been right on time and I'm the one late to the conversation. Still, the social, agricultural and economic changes Berry recommends in many of these essays feel past-due. My son, Alex, and I read most of this book out loud together -- mostly because I felt like he needed some Wendell Berry thought in his repertoire before he began his undergrad political science studies. Eventually Alex admitted to me that reading the essays frustrated him more than anything else: "...I think they run the risk of being irrelevant because they're so demanding/impractical."
Still, Berry's words are full of a wisdom that add hearty nutrients for any reader. Perhaps, like the wisdom our parents and grandparents handed down, we benefit by rehearsing their words together, mining them for every amount of practical advice for our current time.
One of the passages where I thought Oh...I think someone paid attention to this warning!:
"If a safe, sustainable local food economy appeals to some of us as a goal that we would like to work for, then we must be careful to recognize not only the great power of the interests arrayed against us but also our own weakness...
...we should also understand that our predicament is not without precedent; it is approximately the same as that of the proponents of American independence at the time of the Stamp Act -- and with one difference in our favor; in order to do the work that we must do, we do not need a national organization. What we must do is simple: we must shorten the distance that our food is transported so that we are eating more and more from local supplies, more and more to the benefit of local farmers, and more and more to the satisfaction of the local consumers. This can be done by cooperation among small organizations: conservation groups, churches, neighborhood associations, consumer co-ops, local merlchants, local independent banks, and organizations of small farmers. It also can be done by cooperation between individual producers and consumers. We should not be discouraged to find that local food economies can grow only gradually; it is better that they should grow gradually. But as they grow they will bring about a significant return of power, wealth, and health to the people." (from "Farming and the Global Economy", p.6)
An example of Berry as a dooming prophet:
"This essay owes its existence to anxiety and to insomnia. I write, as I must, from the point of view of a country person, a member of a small rural community that has been dwindling rapidly since the end of World War II. Only the most fantastical optimism could ignore the possibility that my community is doomed by the overwhelming victory of industrialism over agrarianism (both North and South) in the Civil War and the history both subsequent and consequent to it...I can not see how a nation, a society or a civilization can live while its communities die." (from "Private Property and the Common Wealth", p. 47)
Words that will never be outdated:
"We know that we need to live in a world that is cared for. The ubiquitous cliches about saving the planet and walking lightly on the earth testify to this....For we not only need to think beyond our own cliches; we also need to make sure that we don't carry over into our efforts at conservation and preservation the moral assumptions and habits of thought of the culture of exploitation....
...And certainly we must preserve some places unchanged; there should be places, and times too, in which we do nothing. But we must also include ourselves as makers, as economic creatures with livings to make, who have the ability, if we will use it, to work in ways that are stewardly and kind toward all that we must use.
...We must include ourselves because whether we choose to do so or not, we are included. We who are now alive are living in this world; we are not dead, nor do we have another world to live in. There are, then, two laws that we had better take to be absolute.
The first is that as we cannot exempt ourselves from living in this world, then if we wish to live, we cannot exempt ourselves from using the world.
...If we cannot exempt ourselves from use, then we must deal with the issues raised by use. And so the second law is that if we want to continue living, we cannot exempt use from care.
...A third law...is that if we want to use the world with care, we cannot exempt ourselves from our cultural inheritance, our tradition. ...we are in it because we are born in it...But that only means that the tradition too must be used with care.
...And so I am proposing that in order to preserve the health of nature, we must preserve ourselves as human beings -- as creatures who possess humanity not just as a collection of physical attributes but also as the cultural imperative to be caretakers, good neighbors to one another and to the other creatures.
...When we include ourselves as parts or belongings of the world we are trying to preserve, then obviously we can no longer think of the world as "the environment" -- something out there around us. We can see that our relation to the world surpasses mere connection and verges on identity. And we can see that our right to live in this world, whose parts we are, is a right that is strictly conditioned. We come face to face with the law...we cannot exempt use from care. There is simply nothing in Creation that does not matter. ("The Conservation of Nature and the Preservation of Humanity")
aemy's review against another edition
It's been a while since I've read any of Wendell Berry's essays, and while I once again deeply enjoyed his discussions of the land, agriculture and community and his self-described "luddite" attitude that sometimes verges on grandfatherly grumpiness I became increasingly aware of the limitations of his perspective. For all he praises the fertility and abundance of the land in North America, and the community and land ethic if its indigenous peoples, and condemns the consequences of industrialism he never makes the connection between settler colonialism and many of those very same consequences. While he can praise the land management techniques of the Menominee, that praise only goes so far as to be taken as direction as how white land owners and communities should behave and relate. He doesn't even seem aware of what perspective he is writing from in this case, let alone how to address it There is also, as other reviewers noted, a very strange digression into pro-life politics. Like. Where did that come from Wendell? Stay in your lane??
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