Sunday, July 03, 2011 7:50:51 PM
The Progressive: Wendell Berry’s 10 “Authentic Reasons for Hope”
Joe Mohr
January 14th, 2011
http://www.wendmag.com/greenery/2011/01/the-progressive-wendell-berrys-10-authentic-reasons-for-hope/
Wendell Berry is a personal hero of mine. He is one of the leading voices in the world for proper land stewardship and conservation. As readers of Wend magazine (print and online) we cannot, in good conscience, travel the land without being stewards of the land. Therefore, we should take every opportunity to read Wendell’s words and learn from them. And why not here at Wend, after all you cannot spell Wendell without Wend!
The following excerpt is taken from the December and January issue of The Progressive in an article Wendell Berry wrote entitled, “The News From the Land.” Listed below are a short list of Wendell Berry’s “authentic reasons for hope.”
1. We can learn where we are. We can look around us and see. If we see, by many observable signs, that during our history here we have lost much that we once had, we will see also that much remains.
2. We all see, furthermore, that we are not helpless. Two great powers, if we align ourselves with them and use them, are in our favor. They are land health and conservation. Land health, Also Leopold wrote, “is the capacity of the land for self renewal.” And: “Conservation is our understanding and effort to preserve this capacity.”
3. Land health we have still with us. In most cases in our state we can prove this just by stopping a gulley. Leopold proved it by reforesting an exhausted farm. Wherever the ground is covered with perennial plants—and we can help with this—it is preserved from erosion, it conserves water, it offers year-round benefits to us and also to other creatures. It has healed. It is well. If the ground is covered by native perennials, it is even better.
4. There is hope in seeing what we need to do, and in doing it. A part of our necessary work in conservation, and there is hope in knowing that conservation is already going on. Conservation in various forms has been an established effort in the United States since at least the beginning of the last century. But it was going on well before that wherever the lans was being used frugally, skillfully, and with affection.
5. There would be hope in effective public leadership, if we had it. But ecological degredation is not …much of a political issue in the nation. And I don’t see help coming very soon from leaders in education. What I do see..is great hope in what I call leadership from the bottom. This is coming from individuals and local groups that, without official permission or support or knowledge, are seeing what needs to be done and doing it. Admirable work in sustainable agriculture, sustainable forestry, local economy, land preservation and restoration, and other kinds of conservation is being done all over the place by unofficial people.
6. Some larger more formal citizens’ organizations are also doing good work. They are worth contributing to, working for, and criticizing when they need it.
7. A number of hope-giving efforts that individual citizens can join are under way.
8. Some things are changing for the better, and there is hope in knowing this. Minds, lives even policies can change for the better. History gives us some reason to think that a whole culture can change for the better. That is what we are hoping and working for.
9. Too much of the talk and politics of conservation consists of slogans such as, “Think globally, act locally,” or even single words such as “green” or “sustainable” or “organic” that act like slogans. Such language finally does harm. It becomes useful, in fact, to land-abusing corporations. What gives hope is actual conversation, actual discourse, in which people say to one another in good faith fully and exactly what they know, and acknowledge honestly the limits of their knowledge.
10. Maybe the finest of all sources of hope are the people for whom the effort of conservation has ceased to be a separate activity, and has come to be at one with their ways of making their living…For them, land health is not something added to their economy, but is their economy’s basis and its result, indistinguishable from it.
Image credit: Robert Shetterly from the inspirational Americans Who Tell the Truth book.
Joe Mohr
January 14th, 2011
http://www.wendmag.com/greenery/2011/01/the-progressive-wendell-berrys-10-authentic-reasons-for-hope/
Wendell Berry is a personal hero of mine. He is one of the leading voices in the world for proper land stewardship and conservation. As readers of Wend magazine (print and online) we cannot, in good conscience, travel the land without being stewards of the land. Therefore, we should take every opportunity to read Wendell’s words and learn from them. And why not here at Wend, after all you cannot spell Wendell without Wend!
The following excerpt is taken from the December and January issue of The Progressive in an article Wendell Berry wrote entitled, “The News From the Land.” Listed below are a short list of Wendell Berry’s “authentic reasons for hope.”
1. We can learn where we are. We can look around us and see. If we see, by many observable signs, that during our history here we have lost much that we once had, we will see also that much remains.
2. We all see, furthermore, that we are not helpless. Two great powers, if we align ourselves with them and use them, are in our favor. They are land health and conservation. Land health, Also Leopold wrote, “is the capacity of the land for self renewal.” And: “Conservation is our understanding and effort to preserve this capacity.”
3. Land health we have still with us. In most cases in our state we can prove this just by stopping a gulley. Leopold proved it by reforesting an exhausted farm. Wherever the ground is covered with perennial plants—and we can help with this—it is preserved from erosion, it conserves water, it offers year-round benefits to us and also to other creatures. It has healed. It is well. If the ground is covered by native perennials, it is even better.
4. There is hope in seeing what we need to do, and in doing it. A part of our necessary work in conservation, and there is hope in knowing that conservation is already going on. Conservation in various forms has been an established effort in the United States since at least the beginning of the last century. But it was going on well before that wherever the lans was being used frugally, skillfully, and with affection.
5. There would be hope in effective public leadership, if we had it. But ecological degredation is not …much of a political issue in the nation. And I don’t see help coming very soon from leaders in education. What I do see..is great hope in what I call leadership from the bottom. This is coming from individuals and local groups that, without official permission or support or knowledge, are seeing what needs to be done and doing it. Admirable work in sustainable agriculture, sustainable forestry, local economy, land preservation and restoration, and other kinds of conservation is being done all over the place by unofficial people.
6. Some larger more formal citizens’ organizations are also doing good work. They are worth contributing to, working for, and criticizing when they need it.
7. A number of hope-giving efforts that individual citizens can join are under way.
8. Some things are changing for the better, and there is hope in knowing this. Minds, lives even policies can change for the better. History gives us some reason to think that a whole culture can change for the better. That is what we are hoping and working for.
9. Too much of the talk and politics of conservation consists of slogans such as, “Think globally, act locally,” or even single words such as “green” or “sustainable” or “organic” that act like slogans. Such language finally does harm. It becomes useful, in fact, to land-abusing corporations. What gives hope is actual conversation, actual discourse, in which people say to one another in good faith fully and exactly what they know, and acknowledge honestly the limits of their knowledge.
10. Maybe the finest of all sources of hope are the people for whom the effort of conservation has ceased to be a separate activity, and has come to be at one with their ways of making their living…For them, land health is not something added to their economy, but is their economy’s basis and its result, indistinguishable from it.
Image credit: Robert Shetterly from the inspirational Americans Who Tell the Truth book.
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