A Good Book: The Unsettling of America
On a recent podcast Andrew Huberman recommended reading the works of Wendell Berry. I had never heard of him. But I did some research and found this interview, Going Home with Wendell Berry, which prompted me to buy, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture. Originally published in 1977, it remains today one his most well known and influential pieces of literature. In addition to being an author, Wendell Berry is an environmental activist, and has been a farmer in rural Kentucky since the mid 1960s. These credentials I think give him a unique perspective that’s hard to find.
In the 46 years since it’s publication, the tragedy of The Unsettling of America, as Wendell Berry puts it, “is that it is true.” The problem, which he masterfully articulates, is that in a world based on capitalism and competition, where exploiters and salesman abound, the promise of future progress and economic growth never actually delivers for the masses.
“If competition is the correct relation of creatures to one another and to the earth, then we must ask why exploitation is not more succesful than it is. Why, having lived so long at the expenses of other creatures and the earth, are we not healthier and happier than we are? Why does modern society exist under constant threat of the same suffering, deprivation, spite, contempt, and obliteration that it has imposed on other people and other creatures? Why do the health of the body and the health of the earth decline together? And why, in consideration of this decline of our worldly flesh and household, our “sinful earth,” are we not healthier in spirit?”
He later goes on to say:
“It is not necessary to have recourse to statistics to see that the human estate is declining with the estate of nature, and that the corruption of the body is the corruption of the soul. I know that the country is full of “leaders” and experts of various sorts who are using statistics to prove the opposite: that we have more cars, more super-highways, more TV sets, motorboats, prepared foods etc., than any people ever had before - and are therefore better off than any people ever before. I can see the burgeoning of this “consumer economy” and can appreciate some of its attractions and comforts. But that economy has an inside and an outside; from the outside there are other things to be seen.”
The growing disconnect between humans and their intuition that he describes throughout the book continues to deepen by every relevant metric to this day. The gap in income inequality. The degradation of our land. Life expectancy. Drug use, overdoses and loneliness. And an overall sense of increasing unrest have all moved in the wrong direction. In the four plus decades since its publication, Wendell Berry’s thesis remains as true now as ever before.
If you don’t have the time or desire to read this book then I implore you to at least read the interview mentioned above, Going Home with Wendell Berry.
This podcast episode with regenerative farmer Will Harris, who speaks with the same ferocity as Wendell Berry does, also pairs well with the book or the interview. (Fun fact: Jen and I met Will Harris on his farm in Blufton, Georgia last valentine’s day).
