The World-Ending Fire by Wendell Berry
I loved reading this book. Wendell Berry puts words to many of the opinions that I’ve held for a long time but have often struggled to articulate: the importance of local community and the issues with scale; the ugliness of an economy based on competition; the silliness of expecting the free market to fix our society’s ills; the questionable value of supposed technological progress; the appeal of a home economy; the necessity of living one’s own values.
Berry’s view of the world is solidly grounded in his experience as a small-town, small-scale farmer. I think just about every essay in the book mentions soil erosion or some other harm humanity has inflicted on the earth. I can see how that might become tiresome, but it didn’t bother me. I see it as the real, practical lens through which Berry views these topics.
I’m impressed by Berry’s ability to accept his own part in the issues he writes about. He argues that we should all be living differently, living better, in more harmony with each other and with the earth, and he acknowledges that he wishes he were doing more. He seems to recognize that he is complicit in a problem, feel the associated guilt, and yet still live a fulfilling life doing the best that he can. I find that I often get stuck on the guilt step, and rather than ignoring the problem to avoid the guilt, I’d like to be more like Berry in moving forward to the doing-the-best-I-can part.
Here are a few of my favorite essays, though I’ll note that in flipping through the book to pick these it was hard not to pick them all:
“The Making of a Marginal Farm” gives some backstory on how Berry wound up practicing subsistence farming in rural Kentucky. I would love even more details about the particulars of his life; it fascinates me.
“Horse-Drawn Tools and the Doctrine of Labor-Saving” makes a great case that the common claim that technological “progress” is good for all of us is a sham. If we’ve made such impressive strides at reducing toil, why do we all still work just as much as we did decades ago?
“Two Minds” is an interesting comparison between the narrow, problematic “Rational Mind” and a more broadly focused “Sympathetic Mind.” I tried and failed to summarize this essay after reading it – perhaps I need to read it again – but I enjoyed it anyway.
“Word and Flesh” argues that we need real, lived change on a personal level, not just “systemic” (or as was apparently the term when Berry wrote this essay, “planetary”) change. I have long felt that although we certainly do have problematic systems which perpetuate problems, it is important to try to buck the system and live differently when we can, both for the sake of progress and for the sake of feeling internal harmony. Berry says it better than I can.
“Some Thoughts on Citizenship and Conscience in Honor of Don Pratt” make similar arguments as “Word and Flesh” from a different angle and in a different form. I think this essay is a great example of Berry’s ability to sit with his guilt and still live a fulfilling life by doing what he can in his own life.