The Ecological Crisis as a

Crisis of Character

By Wendell Berry

In The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture

Outline

• Split between what we think

and what we do

• Specialization

• Failure of the system

• Solutions

Split between what we think and what we do• Hypocrisy of conservation organizations• For individuals, our behavior is often a “practical”

compromise, the price of modern convenience• Behavior of organizations and governments as

result of private behavior

Specialization:the disease of the modern character1. Specialists

2. Responsibilities abdicated to specialists 2 concerns: make money, entertain yourself

3. Yet, we are unhappy

Specialization:the disease of the modern character4. Very little is done well, and

no one can do anything for themselves

5. Community disintegrates

Failure of the system

• Self-interest instead of cooperation• Problems are never solved• Institutional solutions are not solutions because

they don’t get at the real causes.• We need private solutions in our own lives to

become public solutions.• Rights versus responsibilities

How far our mindset has gone – lack of responsibility

Degenerative RegenerativeSustainable

From: Hemenway, Toby, “How Permaculture can Save Humanity and the Planet – but Not Civilization,” University of Minnesota, Jan. 7 2010.

By living responsibly,

we take back control and

escape our dissatisfaction.

Solutions…

No more organized conservationists– Sierra Club: “…to explore, enjoy, and protect

the nation’s scenic resources…”– We are not detached from nature.

Responsible

conservationists

Individuals can

implement and enact

the change we need

http://www.norcalblogs.com/sustainable/2009/07/permaculture-guild-farming-rou.html

The Ecological Crisis as a

Crisis of Agriculture

By Wendell Berry

In The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture

Outline

• Critique of conservationists

• Participation with nature

• Importance of wilderness

• Where we are now

• Critique of Richard E. Bell, former Assistant Secretary of Agriculture

Conservationists’ traditional approach

• Terrarium View of the World– Land as a possession, an object

• Divide land into categories…

http://decideforyourself.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/tar-sands.jpg

An organic lawn?

http://naturallawnfertilizers.com/

A fertilized lawn?

http://www.nutrigreenlawncare.com/services

http://cropexcel.com/services

Participation with Nature

• “I belong to the chain of being too, as a participant not an observer (nature is not television!) and the question isn’t to use or not to use but rather how to use.”– David Budbill

Instead, conservationists unnecessarily efface themselves.

Importance of wilderness

1. Memory of our cultural roots

2. Humility – to submit rather than to conquer

3. To preserve wilderness for comparison

Kindly use?

• Recognize that land is complex and diverse

• Treating every part of land with intimate knowledge

Instead we have:• Householder to

consumer• Farm to factory

“the substitution of energy for knowledge,

of methodology for care,

of technology for morality”

Former Assistant Secretary of Agriculture Richard E. Bell (under Secretary Butz):

• “…true agripower … generates agridollars through agricultural exports.”

• “Agripower should not be a political tool. Feeding people … is too serious a matter to be left to political manipulation.”

Bell (cont.):

• “Years ago, farm operations were highly diversified, but today, farmers are concentrating on fewer and much larger crop or livestock enterprises…”

• “Specialization and growth are aided by the ready availability of purchased inputs.”

• Praises “economy of size”• Praises specialization

Bell (cont.):

• “Agripower is, unquestionably, an even greater force than petropower in man’s survival in the future. Man can and has survived without petroleum, but he cannot live without food.”

Conclusion:

Agripower ignores the truth.

Conclusions

• Estrangement of consumer and producer• Consumers eat worse• Producers farm worse• Institutionalization of waste – topsoil, water,

fossil fuel, human energy

Conclusions

• “Innocent” and ignorant consumers– unnecessary processing and packaging– waste tons of organic matter

• Hypocritical conservationists – lifestyles have more impact than their organizations

• Crisis of culture