Space Enough, and Time

Reading Wendell Berry in the 21st century is strange, mainly because much of what he wrote in the 1990s (and even the 1980s) is still relevant today.  I think it’s relevant, even if only as a reminder of the way things were . . . as a kind time-capsule  for a culture that sometimes seems hellbent on erasing particular parts of its history.

In his essay “Conserving Communities,”  Berry recounts the continuing shift in the American mindset from the agrarian to the industrial, when “old and once-valued customers . . . find that they are known by category rather than character.”  One of the most potent parts of the essay:

We are now pretty obviously facing the possibility of a world that the supranational corporations, and the governments and educational systems that serve them, will control entirely for their own enrichment– and, incidentally and inescapably, for the impoverishment of all the rest of us.  This will be a world in which the cultures that preserve nature and rural life will simply be disallowed.  It will be, as our experience already suggests, a post-agricultural world.  But as we now begin to see, you cannot have a post-agricultural that is not also post-democratic, post-religious, post-natural– in other words, it will be post-human, contrary to the best that we have meant by “humanity.”

That is ultimately what is at stake in most of our conversations today: what it means to be human.

(image from nytimes.com)

Lately I’ve been reading some of Wendell Berry’s older essays, most of them dating to the 1980s and 90s.  The first collection that I read, Another Turn of the Crank, begins with an interesting acknowledgment, even and especially twenty years later.

Nothing I have written here should be construed as an endorsement of either of our political parties as they presently function . . .

One reason for this is that I am an agrarian: I think good farming is a high and difficult art, that it is indispensable, and that it cannot be accomplished except under certain conditions . . .

Another reason is that I am a member, by choice, of a local community.  I believe that healthy communities are indispensable, and I know that our communities are disintegrating under the influence of economic assumptions that are accepted without question by both our parties– despite their lip service to various noneconomic values.

Then, as he tries to articulate his view on government, Berry asserts:

The proper role of government is to protect its citizens and its communities against conquest– against economic conquest just as much as conquest by overt violence.

Much has changed in the two decades since Berry penned these thoughts.  And much has stayed the same.  It’s an odd 21st century plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

Reading and reflecting on Wendell Berry is a real challenge and encouragement to me.  He reminds me of a different way of living, one that I experienced parts of growing up.  His has been “a long obedience in the same direction.”  And while I do not always understand or agree with every place he has ended up, I can appreciate the articulation of the journey.

I think many of us today find ourselves like Berry, somewhere between parties, somewhere odd on the political spectrum.  Our sense of what citizenship means might be different.  And we all love our communities, though many today would argue more for their “community” as an abstract, identity-politics kind of grouping as opposed to the people in your neighborhood.  Even with the differences, though, Berry’s sense of healthy is something you rarely (if ever) hear about anymore.  And even if you do, it’s health as a consequence of having courted disease.

I’d like to think that reading Wendell Berry can help make sense of the “rock and a hard place” where many of us find ourselves.

You can order your own copy of Another Turn of the Crank here.