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I’ve been working on a part 2 from my entry about Profit last week and am finding that its taking longer than expected. So, in the absence of original thought, I’m presenting someone who has thought much longer and deeper than I have about many important issues of the day.
For all his socially-conscious thinking, Wendell Berry, more so than any other living writer of the day, seems to eschew the trappings of comfortable political stereotypes. Case in point, although an articulate advocate for environmental issues, he takes to task the Environmental “cause” among others.
As causes, they have been undertaken too much in ignorance; they have been too much simplified; they have been powered too much by impatience and guilt of conscience and short-term enthusiasm and too little by an authentic social vision and long-term conviction and deliberation. For most people, those causes have remained almost entirely abstract; there has been too little personal involvement, and too much involvement in organizations that were insisting that OTHER organizations should do what was right.
I really connect with this. Its why we have our Heroes: real people doing things in their everyday lives to make a difference based on eco-urban convictions. You can ask them, what does eco-urban mean to you? and they can give you real-life examples in their lives that they live out every day. They can articulate a solid social vision–whether its walkable neighborhoods, alternative transportation systems, buying local or the necessity of mixed use and mixed income–and back it up with ways to live it out. The flip side of this often boils down to a thin patina of “good intentions” that rub away to reveal…well…good intentions; if change is going to happen, its not because of a “cause” with a lot of hype and hoopla, its because of individuals who care enough to do something now.
Incidentally, Wendell wrote this in 1970 as a caution to the Environmental Movement… perhaps had his caution been heeded more, we would have seen more progress than we have.
Quote is from “Think Little” in The Art of the Commonplace: the Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry. ShoeMaker and Hoard. 2003. Wendell wrote this in 1970.
Jason
