awake & reading: the agrarian standardA snapshot of this essay reads,
"I believe that this contest between industrialism and agrarianism now defines the most fundamental human difference, for it divides not just two nearly opposite concepts of agriculture and land use, but also two nearly opposite ways of understanding ourselves, our fellow creatures, and our world."Read it, and let's discuss! All are welcome.
4 comments:
There is most definitely a division and I feel (and have felt for some time now) that I am standing on the wrong side of the chasm.
I think that anyone who takes seriously what Berry has written will have some questions to ask of themselves.
The questions that I am asking myself are:
- Do I believe that in God's view there is a proper and improper way to treat Creation?
- If so, how in line with the proper treatment of the earth is my entire life? Right down to the socks that I'm wearing. What did it take for them to be made and what kind of effect did their production have on the local economy and ecosystem wherever they came from?
- Realistically, if I really believe that Industrialism leads necessarily to displacement and abuse, what can I do about it? I don't live in an Agrarian community and I don't know the first thing about finding one or surviving in it once I got there. This is an honest confession, not an admittal of defeat or an ignorant acceptance of things having to be the way they are simply because they are.
Good article. I really liked Berry's explanation of the agrarian sense of abundance. Excellent.
I found one interesting contrast Berry makes with the prevailing and best-selling thinking found today: Berry spurns the movement from colonial countries to global companies as some sort of devolution, while New York Times best selling journalist Tom Friedman in "The World is Flat" trumpets the movement from colonial countries to global corporations ... as a sort of evolution.
Industrialization does have a tendency to treat people, creatures and places as objects to be used, which is hardly healthy for the world: its people, creatures or places.
After reading portions of Friedmans' work, I wondered how I may be contributing to the implicit statement many (but not all) corporations make regarding the value of their employees: "The cheaper the better." By continuing to work in an environment which perpetuates this, am I helping or hurting the advancement of the human race?
Not to get too melodramatic, but we each have a responsibility. That is just one of the reasons why I have recently decided to look for a new job. Outsourcing, something which my company has done and will probably continue to do, seems to me to objectify the employee, and I have a hard time squaring that with God's creation of man in His image. So I search for an environment, something new, something different, something better.
B, you're right to ask questions of yourself. I've been asking myself a few recently. Trying to work through what I'm comfortable with, what I in this democratic and free society, say by working wherever I decide to work.
Nate,
I don't think your emphasis on individual responsibility is melodramatic at all. It is vital to the health of a local, regional, national and global society. Now I'm going to risk being melodramatic: I think in the U.S. we have been trending toward a deadly combination of the individual's complete lack of responsibility to society that is fueling and in return being fueled by a brand of hyper-consumptive industrialism that has no option but to exploit the planet and its people if it's going to continue serve to the only God it knows: Growth.
That's amazing that you're considering changing jobs because you disagree with your employer's practices. I really admire that. That is a great example of how seriously we should all be taking these issues we're talking about. Because individual steps in the right direction will eventually combine and become a march, a stampede, away from Industrialism, or at least, away from an Industrialism that considers itself free of responsibility.
On the subject of this essay, I posted a thought in connection to Good Friday. Check it out.
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