I think there should be a balance between modern and old-fashioned living styles, and I don't quite get why Wendell Berry doesn't use a computer himself. If there is a contraption that makes life easier and gives us more time for intellectual activity, why shouldn't we use it? What else do we have on this earth, besides our minds and our hearts, anyway? If we're always busy trying to survive or with tasks that don't provide us the energy or time to think, then what's the point of living? Of course everything that helps lessen the load of survival or responsibility should be used with a good measure of restraint. I don't mean to throw shots at the author here; I'm just trying to think more intimately on the subject of mankind's technological evolution and the passing of time and its affects on society.
What's the difference between society and community, anyway?
Another thing I don't understand is why farming is seen as unpopular. Farmers are the ones that secure our meals. Maybe it's similar to the conception society had of the author leaving New York in the respect that it doesn't fully comply with more "modern" job types. I think farming also has a bad rep. within society, because society doesn't see the understanding involved in it, and thinks that most farmers are not that smart or couldn't be graceful in today's modern world.
While reading, I had an almost epiphany about just how violent mankind is, and for how long its been this way. I knew that we were violent before, but I don't think I really understood how much so. Somehow, seeing it in words and in relation to how we injured the earth, which I found in the essay to mean the world, made it so much clearer to see our kind's tragically unfair and ruinous actions.
One last thing for now.
Why doesn't the government just make recycling a mandatory practice?
We all have a responsibility to take care of what we create as well as what we create it with. What could it hurt if everyone recycled?
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I agree I have no idea why farming is seen as unpopular. It is one of the vertabra that makes up the backbone of our lives. The truth is fads come and go, but farming has been here since the beginning of man kind I believe and I have such a great deal of respect for them. I think that farmer embody exactly what a community is. They depend on one another for a common goal. Your entry just resinated within me it brought up a great point.
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