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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Fascinating article by environmentalist
Wendell Berry. I don't know if many folks have the </FONT><FONT
face=Arial size=2>big world environmental/economic picture in view well
enough </FONT><FONT face=Arial size=2>to think about these things.
And I still expect the U.S. government to be able to focus primarily on
altruistic motives (or even long-term self interest rather than on short-term
self-onterest) at about the same time other governments of the world do so--
that is, never. But definitely worth thinking about. Especially
as it appears that there are some few things every one of us can do here-- not
just the usual discussion of what "other people" should do-- people
who have more power than the discussers do, or who have more money than the
discussers do. </FONT><FONT face=Arial size=2>Sounds like he
probably agrees with me that we should use less oil too.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Julie</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Wendell Berry is a farmer, writer, conservationist
and teacher<BR>who lives in Henry County, Kentucky. His books include
(among<BR>others) HOME ECONOMICS (1987; ISBN 0865472750); THE<BR>UNSETTLING OF
AMERICA: CULTURE & AGRICULTURE<BR>(1996; ISBN 0871568772); ANOTHER TURN OF
THE CRANK<BR>(1996; ISBN 1887178287); and THE GIFT OF GOOD LAND<BR>(1983; ISBN
0865470529).<BR><BR>If you find the Rachel newsletter useful or
interesting,<BR>please forward it to a friend suggesting that they
start<BR>their own free E-mail subscription.<BR><BR>To stop receiving the Rachel
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RACHEL-NEWS<BR><BR>=======================Electronic
Edition==================<BR>.
.<BR>.
RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH NEWS
#734
.<BR>.
---September 27,
2001---
.<BR>.
HEADLINES:
.<BR>.
THOUGHTS IN THE PRESENCE OF
FEAR
.<BR>.
==========
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.<BR>=====================================================<BR><BR><BR>THOUGHTS
IN THE PRESENCE OF FEAR<BR><BR>We interrupt our series on the environmental
movement to reprint<BR>a short essay written by Wendell Berry in response to
the<BR>atrocities in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania
September<BR>11.<BR></DIV></FONT>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>This article first appeared on OrionOnline.org, the
web magazine<BR>of ORION and ORION AFIELD, in a feature called "Thoughts
on<BR>America: Writers Respond to Crisis." The number of contributing<BR>writers
continues to grow. See <A
href="http://www.oriononline.org">http://www.oriononline.org</A>.<BR><BR><BR>Thoughts
in the Presence of Fear<BR><BR>by Wendell Berry<BR><BR>I. The time will soon
come when we will not be able to remember<BR>the horrors of September 11 without
remembering also the<BR>unquestioning technological and economic optimism that
ended on<BR>that day.<BR><BR>II. This optimism rested on the proposition that we
were living<BR>in a "new world order" and a "new economy" that would "grow"
on<BR>and on, bringing a prosperity of which every new increment would<BR>be
"unprecedented."<BR><BR>III. The dominant politicians, corporate officers, and
investors<BR>who believed this proposition did not acknowledge that
the<BR>prosperity was limited to a tiny percent of the world's people,<BR>and to
an ever smaller number of people even in the United<BR>States; that it was
founded upon the oppressive labor of poor<BR>people all over the world; and that
its ecological costs<BR>increasingly threatened all life, including the lives of
the<BR>supposedly prosperous.<BR><BR>IV. The "developed" nations had given to
the "free market" the<BR>status of a god, and were sacrificing to it their
farmers,<BR>farmlands, and communities, their forests, wetlands,
and<BR>prairies, their ecosystems and watersheds. They had accepted<BR>universal
pollution and global warming as normal costs of doing<BR>business.<BR><BR>V.
There was, as a consequence, a growing worldwide effort on<BR>behalf of economic
decentralization, economic justice, and<BR>ecological responsibility. We must
recognize that the events of<BR>September 11 make this effort more necessary
than ever. We<BR>citizens of the industrial countries must continue the labor
of<BR>self-criticism and self-correction. We must recognize
our<BR>mistakes.<BR><BR>VI. The paramount doctrine of the economic and
technological<BR>euphoria of recent decades has been that everything depends
on<BR>innovation. It was understood as desirable, and even necessary,<BR>that we
should go on and on from one technological innovation to<BR>the next, which
would cause the economy to "grow" and make<BR>everything better and better. This
of course implied at every<BR>point a hatred of the past, of all [past]
innovations [which] ,<BR>whatever their value might have been, were discounted
as of no<BR>value at all.<BR><BR>VII. We did not anticipate anything like what
has now happened.<BR>We did not foresee that all our sequence of innovations
might be<BR>at once overridden by a greater one: the invention of a new
kind<BR>of war that would turn our previous innovations against
us,<BR>discovering and exploiting the debits and the dangers that we
had<BR>ignored. We never considered the possibility that we might be<BR>trapped
in the webwork of communication and transport that was<BR>supposed to make us
free.<BR><BR>VIII. Nor did we foresee that the weaponry and the war
science<BR>that we marketed and taught to the world would become
available,<BR>not just to recognized national governments, which possess
so<BR>uncannily the power to legitimate large-scale violence, but also<BR>to
"rogue nations," dissident or fanatical groups and individuals<BR>whose
violence, though never worse than that of nations, is<BR>judged by the nations
to be illegitimate.<BR><BR>IX. We had accepted uncritically the belief that
technology is<BR>only good; that it cannot serve evil as well as good; that
it<BR>cannot serve our enemies as well as ourselves; that it cannot be<BR>used
to destroy what is good, including our homelands and our<BR>lives.<BR><BR>X. We
had accepted too the corollary belief that an economy<BR>(either as a money
economy or as a life-support system) that is<BR>global in extent,
technologically complex, and centralized is<BR>invulnerable to terrorism,
sabotage, or war, and that it is<BR>protectable by "national
defense."<BR><BR>XI. We now have a clear, inescapable choice that we must make.
We<BR>can continue to promote a global economic system of unlimited<BR>"free
trade" among corporations, held together by long and highly<BR>vulnerable lines
of communication and supply, but now recognizing<BR>that such a system will have
to be protected by a hugely<BR>expensive police force that will be worldwide,
whether maintained<BR>by one nation or several or all, and that such a police
force<BR>will be effective precisely to the extent that it oversways
the<BR>freedom and privacy of the citizens of every nation.<BR><BR>XII. Or we
can promote a decentralized world economy which would<BR>have the aim of
assuring to every nation and region a local<BR>self-sufficiency in
life-supporting goods. This would not<BR>eliminate international trade, but it
would tend toward a trade<BR>in surpluses after local needs had been
met.<BR><BR>XIII. One of the gravest dangers to us now, second only
to<BR>further terrorist attacks against our people, is that we will<BR>attempt
to go on as before with the corporate program of global<BR>"free trade,"
whatever the cost in freedom and civil rights,<BR>without self-questioning or
self-criticism or public debate.<BR><BR>XIV. This is why the substitution of
rhetoric for thought, always<BR>a temptation in a national crisis, must be
resisted by officials<BR>and citizens alike. It is hard for ordinary citizens to
know what<BR>is actually happening in Washington in a time of such
great<BR>trouble; for all we know, serious and difficult thought may
be<BR>taking place there. But the talk that we are hearing from<BR>politicians,
bureaucrats, and commentators has so far tended to<BR>reduce the complex
problems now facing us to issues of unity,<BR>security, normality, and
retaliation.<BR><BR>XV. National self-righteousness, like
personal<BR>self-righteousness, is a mistake. It is misleading. It is a
sign<BR>of weakness. Any war that we may make now against terrorism will<BR>come
as a new installment in a history of war in which we have<BR>fully participated.
We are not innocent of making war against<BR>civilian populations. The modern
doctrine of such warfare was set<BR>forth and enacted by General William
Tecumseh Sherman, who held<BR>that a civilian population could be declared
guilty and rightly<BR>subjected to military punishment. We have never repudiated
that<BR>doctrine.<BR><BR>XVI. It is a mistake also -- as events since September
11 have<BR>shown -- to suppose that a government can promote and
participate<BR>in a global economy and at the same time act exclusively in
its<BR>own interest by abrogating its international treaties and<BR>standing
apart from international cooperation on moral issues.<BR><BR>XVII. And surely,
in our country, under our Constitution, it is a<BR>fundamental error to suppose
that any crisis or emergency can<BR>justify any form of political oppression.
Since September 11, far<BR>too many public voices have presumed to "speak for
us" in saying<BR>that Americans will gladly accept a reduction of freedom
in<BR>exchange for greater "security." Some would, maybe. But some<BR>others
would accept a reduction in security (and in global trade)<BR>far more willingly
than they would accept any abridgement of our<BR>Constitutional
rights.<BR><BR>XVIII. In a time such as this, when we have been seriously
and<BR>most cruelly hurt by those who hate us, and when we must
consider<BR>ourselves to be gravely threatened by those same people, it
is<BR>hard to speak of the ways of peace and to remember that Christ<BR>enjoined
us to love our enemies, but this is no less necessary<BR>for being
difficult.<BR><BR>XIX. Even now we dare not forget that since the attack on
Pearl<BR>Harbor -- to which the present attack has been often and
not<BR>usefully compared -- we humans have suffered an almost<BR>uninterrupted
sequence of wars, none of which has brought peace<BR>or made us more
peaceable.<BR><BR>XX. The aim and result of war necessarily is not peace
but<BR>victory, and any victory won by violence necessarily justifies<BR>the
violence that won it and leads to further violence. If we are<BR>serious about
innovation, must we not conclude that we need<BR>something new to replace our
perpetual "war to end war"?<BR><BR>XXI. What leads to peace is not violence but
peaceableness, which<BR>is not passivity, but an alert, informed, practiced, and
active<BR>state of being. We should recognize that while we
have<BR>extravagantly subsidized the means of war, we have almost
totally<BR>neglected the ways of peaceableness. We have, for example,<BR>several
national military academies, but not one peace academy.<BR>We have ignored the
teachings and the examples of Christ, Gandhi,<BR>Martin Luther King, and other
peaceable leaders. And here we have<BR>an inescapable duty to notice also that
war is profitable,<BR>whereas the means of peaceableness, being cheap or free,
make no<BR>money.<BR><BR>XXII. The key to peaceableness is continuous practice.
It is<BR>wrong to suppose that we can exploit and impoverish the
poorer<BR>countries, while arming them and instructing them in the
newest<BR>means of war, and then reasonably expect them to be
peaceable.<BR><BR>XXIII. We must not again allow public emotion or the public
media<BR>to caricature our enemies. If our enemies are now to be some<BR>nations
of Islam, then we should undertake to know those enemies.<BR>Our schools should
begin to teach the histories, cultures, arts,<BR>and language of the Islamic
nations. And our leaders should have<BR>the humility and the wisdom to ask the
reasons some of those<BR>people have for hating us.<BR><BR>XXIV. Starting with
the economies of food and farming, we should<BR>promote at home, and encourage
abroad, the ideal of local<BR>self-sufficiency. We should recognize that this is
the surest,<BR>the safest, and the cheapest way for the world to live. We
should<BR>not countenance the loss or destruction of any local capacity
to<BR>produce necessary goods.<BR><BR>XXV. We should reconsider and renew and
extend our efforts to<BR>protect the natural foundations of the human economy:
soil,<BR>water, and air. We should protect every intact ecosystem
and<BR>watershed that we have left, and begin restoration of those that<BR>have
been damaged.<BR><BR>XXVI. The complexity of our present trouble suggests as
never<BR>before that we need to change our present concept of
education.<BR>Education is not properly an industry, and its proper use is
not<BR>to serve industries, neither by job-training nor
by<BR>industry-subsidized research. It's proper use is to enable<BR>citizens to
live lives that are economically, politically,<BR>socially, and culturally
responsible. This cannot be done by<BR>gathering or "accessing" what we now call
"information" -- which<BR>is to say facts without context and therefore without
priority. A<BR>proper education enables young people to put their lives
in<BR>order, which means knowing what things are more important than<BR>other
things; it means putting first things first.<BR><BR>XXVII. The first thing we
must begin to teach our children (and<BR>learn ourselves) is that we cannot
spend and consume endlessly.<BR>We have got to learn to save and conserve. We do
need a "new<BR>economy," but one that is founded on thrift and care, on
saving<BR>and conserving, not on excess and waste. An economy based on<BR>waste
is inherently and hopelessly violent, and war is its<BR>inevitable by-product.
We need a peaceable
economy.<BR><BR>################################################################<BR>
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