Few cultural commentators put the dagger in my heart repeatedly like Wendell Berry seems to be able to do. There are some voices that, having read them, haunt you with their ceaseless echoes swirling in the chamber of your mind and heart. Wendell Berry is like Nathan speaking to David, waking him from his own delusion and fantasy. In many ways, Wendell Berry is that cultural prophet, warning our nation’s citizenry of its crippling vices and crying out for healthier, less consumer-crazed lives. Berry is a poet, novelist, essayist and a deeply committed conservationist, whose primary concern is conserving what it means to be a healthy humanity, being human with the place where we live in creation. In a highly globalized, specialized society, Berry sees people being stripped of their sense of place, humanity’s relationship with the land and the unraveling of culture that ensues as a result. He writes, “The concept of country, homeland, dwelling place becomes simplified as “the environment” –that is, what surrounds us. Once we see our place, our part of the world, as surrounding us, we have already made a profound division between it and ourselves.” (The Unsettling of America, p.22). 
Berry confounds both those who place themselves on the Left and on the Right. He is incredibly consistent in his stance on the sanctity of life, and has, in my opinion, penned one of the most concise and eloquent arguments for the pro-life position that I have ever read. You can read it here.
There will be much more to say about the writings and insights of Mr. Berry. He covers a vast array of issues that speak to the particularities of what it means to be human in our day and time. For now let me leave you with this, from his book, The Unsettling of America. Here he is commenting on the pitfalls of an age of specialization and the dependence of the consumer. “In our time the rule among consumers is to spend money recklessly. People whose governing habit is the relinquishment of power, competence, and responsibility, and whose characteristic suffering is the anxiety of futility, make excellent spenders. They are the ideal consumers. By inducing in them little panics of boredom, powerlessness, sexual failure, mortality, paranoia, they can be made to buy (or vote for) virtually anything that is “attractively packaged.” The advertising industry is founded upon this principle.”
Berry confounds both those who place themselves on the Left and on the Right. He is incredibly consistent in his stance on the sanctity of life, and has, in my opinion, penned one of the most concise and eloquent arguments for the pro-life position that I have ever read. You can read it here.
There will be much more to say about the writings and insights of Mr. Berry. He covers a vast array of issues that speak to the particularities of what it means to be human in our day and time. For now let me leave you with this, from his book, The Unsettling of America. Here he is commenting on the pitfalls of an age of specialization and the dependence of the consumer. “In our time the rule among consumers is to spend money recklessly. People whose governing habit is the relinquishment of power, competence, and responsibility, and whose characteristic suffering is the anxiety of futility, make excellent spenders. They are the ideal consumers. By inducing in them little panics of boredom, powerlessness, sexual failure, mortality, paranoia, they can be made to buy (or vote for) virtually anything that is “attractively packaged.” The advertising industry is founded upon this principle.”
The image Berry paints of anxious, paranoid, powerless and dependent consumers is haunting and looks less than human- less than the dignity for which we were created (Genesis 1.26-28). Thinking through the solutions and the challenges of re-orienting one’s life away from such blind-dependence is really tough, really sobering. More later…
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