The Way of Ignorance: And Other Essays

Poet, philosopher, essayist and farmer, Berry brings together a brilliant collection of essays to critique contemporary America's cultural obsession with bigness and corporate domination. Berry's insightful critique is balanced by a call for a return to local scales of economy and ecology. To reach that goal we, each one of us, are in need of transformative thought and action. This is no small task given personal and social institutions, but it is essential for healing and developing an authentic notion of "the good." Perhaps the most important step in this transformation is that we accept the "wisdom of humility" as a guide to break free from the shackles of arrogant ignorance that so predominates in our modern political/economic/social institutions. In particular, the essays entitled "The Way of Ignorance," "Quantity vs. Form," and "The Burden of the Gospels" are sheer brilliance, to be read again and again. Wendell Berry is a national treasure. Kyle Gardner, author of Medicine Rock Reflections

The Way of Ignorance and Other Essays is an anthology of writings by cultural critic Wendell Berry - one of Smithsonian magazine's 35 People Who Made a Difference - about topics ranging from what freedom is really being discussed when one speaks of "free market" or "free enterprise", to the costs of so-called rugged individualism in a democratic commonwealth, to sharp-laced observations on the Kerry campaign, and much more. Written in plain terms, The Way of Ignorance takes a cold, hard look at the doubletalk and doublethink that saturates modern American airwaves, stripping them down to bare conundrums, all with a heavy dose of the author's practical evaluation. An enthusiastically recommended, thought-provoking cross-examination of modern society.

The Way of Ignorance is a plea for humility. Wendell Berry asks the simple question, "Can great power or great wealth be kind to small places?" and knows that the earnest believer-in-what-could-be will have to live with heartbreak. "By living as we do, in our ignorance and our pride, we are diminishing our world and the possibility of life." The purity of Berry's vision enables him to speak with a voice that is radical and simple. He restores us to our forgotten common sense. He opens our eyes to the beauty of small places and calls us to tend to their uncompromising complexities. He bids us hold tight to the irreplaceable. Berry's plea for humility extends to all, from overly confident scientists and self-assured political leaders to the "many Christians who are exceedingly confident in their understanding of themselves in their faith." "When Jesus speaks of having life more abundantly . . . He is talking about a finite world that is infinitely holy, a world of time that is filled with life that is eternal. His offer of more abundant life, then, is not an invitation to declare ourselves as certified `Christians,' but rather to become conscious, consenting, and responsible participants in the one great life . . . To [this offer] we have chosen to respond with the economics of extinction." "Violence, in short, is the norm of our economic life and our national security. The line that connects the bombing of a civilian population to the mountain `removal' by strip-mining to the gullied and poisoned field to the clear-cut watershed to the tortured prisoner seems to run pretty straight." In a time of arrogance and high-risk miscalculation, technological, economic and military overreaching, Berry is there to call us back - back to our senses. "If we find the consequences of our arrogant ignorance to be humbling, and we are humbled, then we have at hand the first fact of hope: We can change ourselves." I recommend The Way of Ignorance.

Wow! I am blown away again by Wendell Berry's thoughts and way of seeing the world. His ideas should be shouted from the rooftops. First of all, his writing conveys the strength of friendship. He respects and honors his friend, Wes Jackson, throughout the book and especially in the essay "The Way of Ignorance". I ordered the tape of this talk which he gave at Wes Jackson's Land Institute at the Prairie Festival in 2004. There is so much of value in this book, but the other essay I would highly recommend is "Renewing Husbandry". The best way to review Berry's work is to quote him. "The most forceful context of every habitat now is the industrial economy that is doing damage to all habitats. We can't preserve neighborliness or charity or peaceability or an ecological consciousness, or anything else worth preserving, at the same time that we maintain an earth-destroying economy. Nothing ultimately flourishes in our present economy but selfish aims, and these are often mutually contradictory. We have to have a sort of pity for the CEO of a polluting corporation who desires wealth, healthy children, and a vacation in the restorative purity of nature. And surely we have to extend the same pity to those whio are sure that "it takes a village to raise a child" but who forget that it takes a local culture and a local economy to raise a village." And. "Harmony between our human economy and the natural world-local adaption-is a perfection we will never finally achieve but must continously try for. There is never a finality to it because it involves living creatures who change. The soil has living creatures in it. It has live roots in it, perennial roots if it is lucky. If it is the soil of the right kind of farm, it has a farm family growing out of it."

This book is disturbingly honest. The honesty oozes from the pages of these analytic and interpretative literary compositions. It's a bracing honesty that I am not always prepared for -- but have come to expect from this septuagenarian agrarian. In my favorite of these essays - "The Burden of the Gospels", Mr. Berry muses: But what, for example, are we to make of Luke 14:26: "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple." This contradicts not only the fifth commandment but Jesus' own instruction to "Love thy neighbor as thyself." It contradicts his obedience to his mother at the marriage in Cana of Galilee. It contradicts the concern he shows for the relatives of his friends and followers..." And then with stunning clarity offers the following: " We may say with some reason that such apparent difficulties might be resolved if we knew more, a further difficulty being that we don't know more. The Gospels, like all other written works, impose on their readers the burden of their incompleteness. However partial we may be to the doctrine of the true account or "realism," we must concede at last that reality is inconceivably great and any representation of it necessarily incomplete." Wendell Berry has subtitled this essay "An unconfident reader"... I suggest that this sums up the whole of this collection of essays. Berry is unconfident as he reads the American landscape of theologizing, politics, commerce, conservation, and thought. Unconfident -- but as always, uncompromisingly honest in his reading. +Aaron K.