I hit Relapsed Catholic at least once a day. I think I have a lot in common with the woman who writes it, Kathy Schaidle, a Toronto-based blogger who apparently used to subscribe to the punk rock vision of the world--anti-Reagan rallies, anarchy now, safety pins and purple bangs, etc.
But eventually, the drip drip drip of reality wears away our stony resistence to it. Then again, I know some stalagmites who seem to grow more deluded with every bit of evidence to the contrary of their world view. For those of us who are certain we've relapsed into the truth, there's a tremendous urge to take a sledge hammer to those stalagmites, and I guess that's one of the reasons I started this blog. Kathy takes aim at what she thinks is an especially tempting target in "Wendell Berry is a boring old fart!" (Sorry--can't perma link, so here's the whole thing minus quotes from the article she links to.)
I'll bet Wendell Berry has, like, $10-million bucks in Exxon Mobile stock under his futon, like Ralph Nader.
Look: nature is covered in dirt and has bugs all over it. Ugh. I don't want to know where my food comes from and where it goes. Garbage should be burned in giant piles -- hell, people would pay good money to watch. Recycling is a waste of time, money and, yes, energy. If we all had to live in a big glass dome and eat pills like the Jetsons, then good, as long as it pisses off hippies. The world should be like Las Vegas everywhere, no bikes allowed.
And NONE of this eco-poo has ANYTHING to do with Christianity, no matter what Wendell Berry and all his scrubby friends say. Jesus was nailed to a cross -- doesn't that tell you that wood is evil? Was it a plastic cross? No it was not.
Sheesh already.
I hat to say it, but it seems some of the old punk spirit of "bash first, question...whenever" seems to be showing here. Shaidle has Berry pegged into a very small hole. I'm willing to bet that if she withheld fire until her target were a bit more in focus, then disagree as she might with Berry on certain points, she'd realize that he was far more of an ally than enemy, not to mention a rare example of a man who walks what he talks, and in his way, is the truest of conservatives. Wendell Berry is an opponent of the strain of anti-human enviromentalism that has come to represent an uncomfortably large percentage of the whole, a questioner or dogmatic feminism, a staunch supporter of traditional communities, a damn good writer (essays, novels, poetry), and someone with enough integrity to walk away from the ivory towers of academia on the verge of a comfortable career and risk life as a farmer in the mold of his grandfather just as traditional farming seemed to be all but disappearing. Not to mention the fact that should Shaidle ever have the opportunity to actually debate Berry, I'm confident that she would leave the event far, far more chastened and enlightened than he.
I became a fan of Berry's back in the late eighties, maybe about the same time Shaidle was beginning to renounce The Dead Kennedys and all their works . There was an article in Harpers (which I can't seem to find online, but am sure that I still have someplace in a trunk back home) that outlined his ecological stance. As I recall, it was a polemic against industrial agricultural in that it was as destructive of traditional communities as of the earth itself. Tons and tons of topsoil was being allowed to wash away through indiscriminate plowing in places where it made no sense, and the families who were once needed to tend sustainable farms on a human scale were displaced by expensive machinery that was dependent on foreign fossil fuel. More calories were consumed in plowing, planting, maintaining and harvesting the crops (in gas fumes) than produced as food. I'm not sure if it was Berry or the writer of the article who suggested that Ehrlichian famine was the sure outcome of all this.
I recall a boozy night in a Pittsburgh bar, with me trying to convince a friend that we were surely headed for starvation if we dont wake up. My friend to me..."Whaaaaat?' My friend was right. There was no real evidence for this. Of course, I didn't concede the point that night, but I respected his judgement, and eventually his cynicism and stuff like this (check out the section on agricultural resources) and sheer lack of evidence to support finally convinced me that Berry was simply wrong about some things. Yes, Berry writes like an angel, is a man of courage and conviction whose ethical seriousness and intelligence dwarf my own, and has a red-tailed hawk's eye for the shortcomings of the society we have created, but is far too dismissive of the benefits of the system that doomed the agricultural community that he was born into just in time to watch die.
I once admired Berry to the extent that it worried me. I couldn't find anything to disagree with him on, and you know that just ain't right. As a no longer quite so young a man, I was shaken by his book What Are People For? What indeed? To toil for the allmighty dollar? To drudge the hours away in a cubicle, board room, or assembly line when you could be enriching yourself in the bosom of God's green earth, close to home, close to family, close to all things that matter? Aren't the Amish far better off in most ways than we are? No doubt, no doubt.
But what have the Amish contributed to medicine, music, science, literature, to the process that has given the grandchildren of peasants in many countries the chance to enjoy health, facilities, freedoms, and intellectual opportunities that beggar those of the wealthy of the entire history of humankind? (And what about this headline from the CSM: Want World Peace? Support Free Trade) Not to knock the Amish by any means. They enrich the world in their own way.
And you'd better be careful about knocking Berry, too. No, he is not another Chomsky who rails against the same economic processes he invests in. He doesn't have tens of thousands of gallons of jet fuel burned on his behalf so he can collect checks for speaking dates about the dangers of global warming. He plows with horses rather than tractors and scavenges his forests for firewood because he means what he says. Do I agree with everything he says? Not anymore. Do I respect him. You bet.
A while ago, Berry wrote an essay about why he would not buy a computer. Here's a page which includes that essay, letters attacking him, and his reply. Here are further reflections on the whole matter, and the issue of feminism (he was attacked for reporting that his wife helped him to type his manuscripts).
Re-reading these, it becomes clear that Berry is what many would call a libertarian, but one that respects freedom not so much as a value in itself, but for its use in allowing him to do what he feels is right. He will be damned if he'll have anything to do with the forces that have destroyed and are destroying what he loves. If that means doing back-breaking labor, arguing against things which everybody is for, and being called a "boring old fart" by someone who skims one article about him, so be it. People who write things like this are often called boring old farts.
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Whatever is forseen in joy
Must be lived out from day to day,
Vision held open in the dark
By our ten thousand days of work.
Harvest will fill the barn; for that
The hand must ache, the face must sweat.
And yet, no leaf or grain is filled
By work of ours; the field is tilled
And left to grace. That we may reap,
Great work is done while we're asleep.
When we work well, a Sabbath mood
Rests on our day, and finds it good.
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A Warning to My Readers
Do not think me gentle
because I speak in praise
of gentleness, or elegant
because I honor the grace
that keeps this world. I am
a man crude as any,
gross of speech, intolerant,
stubborn, angry, full
of fits and furies. That I
may have spoken well
at times, is not natural.
A wonder is what it is. |
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