Wendell Berry has died

I rejected his rejection of technology. I think he didn't appreciate the power of information technology to support exactly the dreams he held. If people can understand each other, if they can learn from the whole world how to care for their bit of earth, surely that's a good thing? Because he rejected technology he never learned of free, open source, culture. He didn't appreciate that there is another path to liberation of humans from the machines that dominate us—that we embed them in our communities, bend them to our will, and reject exploitation. There's still hope...

I however am permanently touched by his perspective on the land as our foundation.

I was so inspired that I helped start a farm on the Kentucky River. It's a journey, but we are on our way to implement a little reflection of his vision near where he dreamed us these beautiful dreams of past and future.

https://classes.matthewjbrown.net/teaching-files/philtech/be...

I was always struck that one of the letters in opposition to Berry's view was written by Nathaniel Borenstein, the co-inventor of MIME.

It was an odd experience for me because it was coming from such a different worldview that I generally felt I couldn't relate to what Berry was saying at all. (I could contrast that with some of Cliff Stoll's writings about his skepticism of computers, which are always coming from a culturally familiar place and are at least readily comprehensible for me.)

I also have a book Berry wrote as a rejoinder to E. O. Wilson's Consilience (called Life is a Miracle). I put the two next to each other on my bookshelf!

berry is in the same lineage as somebody like muir, and it really pains me to say, but i really wonder how relevant those individualist back to nature (and i dont say this necessarily dismissively, just dont know how to put it) imperatives really are. the world is technological, the necessities of life are commoditized, production and markets are global. how can there be any turning away from it, apart from it being a fetishistic practice, or just eccentric affectation. just think, portable nuclear reactors next to every data center soon. the march goes on.

i had similar feeling with kaczinsky, who had similar views on sanctity of nature and impact of modernity, in a way the diagnosis is incredibly correct, but the regimen ~ a return to a more anarchic, hyperlocal, individualistic relation with it ~ completely misplaced.

the terroir, does it even exist, has it ever even existed in america?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1582431604?lv=shuf&channelId=500&p...

> “If you could do it, I suppose, it would be a good idea to live your life in a straight line - starting, say, in the Dark Wood of Error, and proceeding by logical steps through Hell and Purgatory and into Heaven. Or you could take the King's Highway past the appropriately named dangers, toils, and snares, and finally cross the River of Death and enter the Celestial City. But that is not the way I have done it, so far. I am a pilgrim, but my pilgrimage has been wandering and unmarked. Often what has looked like a straight line to me has been a circling or a doubling back. I have been in the Dark Wood of Error any number of times. I have known something of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, but not always in that order. The names of many snares and dangers have been made known to me, but I have seen them only in looking back. Often I have not known where I was going until I was already there. I have had my share of desires and goals, but my life has come to me or I have gone to it mainly by way of mistakes and surprises. Often I have received better than I deserved. Often my fairest hopes have rested on bad mistakes. I am an ignorant pilgrim, crossing a dark valley. And yet for a long time, looking back, I have been unable to shake off the feeling that I have been led - make of that what you will.”

RIP.

Berry was one of the few celebrities I hoped to one day meet in person.

Edit: but really, I can't see any possible reason to read this person's writing over, say, something about Norman Borlaug. Never heard of this person before now, HN never contextualizes obits, didn't come here just to fight.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendell_Berry

Quote from Wendell Berry on big business and big government: 'The corporate mind at work overthrows all the virtues of the personal mind, or it throws them out of account. The corporate mind knows no affection, no desire that is not greedy, no local or personal loyalty, no sympathy or reverence or gratitude, no temperance or thrift or self-restraint. It does not observe the first responsibility of intelligence, which is to know when you don't know or when you are being unintelligent. Try to imagine an official standing up in the high councils of a global corporation or a great public institution to say "We have grown too big," or "We now have more power or money than we can responsibly use," . . . -- and you will see what I mean. . . .'