Rate this book

What Matters?: Economics For A Renewed Commonwealth (2010)

by Wendell Berry(Favorite Author)

4.24 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

1582436061 (ISBN13: 9781582436067)

languge

English

genre

Food & Cookbooks

publisher

Counterpoint

review 1: Wendell Berry is a man born into the wrong century. He, like Richard Weaver, has a unique insight into the ravages of modernity upon a culture. Berry's counter-cultural economics is almost Utopian, though he works hard to steer clear of this label.The book is a collection of essays arguing that we must re-prioritize people, communities, and place over "the economy" and "efficiency." Berry argues that Americans have sold their birthright for a bowl of porridge. We've traded short-term security and comfort for an insecure and mortgaged future. We have turned all enterprise into colonialist mining--destroying the resources in our places and giving the wealth to distant corporations without seeing any real profit on the enterprise.This is the same phenomenon we see at the... more national level--there is no plan for the future. We've decided collectively to mortgage the future for satisfying today's desires.Some will object that Berry is a radical Luddite environmentalist. Yet I think this sort of caricature is unfounded and dangerous, as it refuses to deal with the prophetic voice warning against disaster. If there is anything that Berry loves it is people--not trees, spotted owls, or endangered fisheries.What is at stake is the God given resources unique to each place. Berry's desire is to see man take dominion over his place, husband it, use it, but leave it the same or better than when you found it. Berry believes we've either become exploiters ourselves, or allowed others to exploit God's gifts on our behalf.Berry doesn't use the language of dominion, which is my strongest objection to the book. He's not clear enough on the biblical mandate given at creation as he should be. Yet it is clear that his position is a Christian one.This is an important work, but I fear he'll be ignored as the idealistic, cranky old uncle--just like all prophets.“As for you, son of man, your people who talk together about you by the walls and at the doors of the houses, say to one another, each to his brother, ‘Come, and hear what the word is that comes from the LORD.’ And they come to you as people come, and they sit before you as my people, and they hear what you say but they will not do it; for with lustful talk in their mouths they act; their heart is set on their gain. And behold, you are to them like one who sings lustful songs with a beautiful voice and plays well on an instrument, for they hear what you say, but they will not do it. When this comes—and come it will!—then they will know that a prophet has been among them.”(Ezekiel 33:30-33 ESV)
review 2: Wendell Berry is one of my touchstones and again he didn't fail me in this book. I finished the book saddened however because his thoughts and warnings over the past 20+ years have not been heeded and the effect of Economics on communities and individuals has been much more damaging than he imagined or feared.I would have given the book 5 stars, but there were a couple of essays that I didn't connect with and I skipped over them. The essays I connected with spoke truth and common sense as always."The only true and effective 'operator's manual for spaceship earth' is not a book that any human will ever write; it is hundreds of thousands of local cultures."In the essay "Economy and Pleasure" Berry the effect of Economics under the guise of altruism still has the same ruinous effect on communities and individuals. "This work has been done, and is still being done, under the heading of altruism:Its aims, as its proponents never tire of repeating, are to 'serve agriculture' and 'to feed the world'. These aims,as stated, are irreproachable;as pursued, they raise a number of doubts. Agriculture, it turns out, is to be served strictly according to the rules of competitive economics. The aim is 'to make farmers more competitive' and 'to make American agriculture more competitive'. Against whom, we must ask, are our farmers and our agriculture to be made more competitive? And we must answer, because we know:Against other farmers, at home and abroad. Now, if the colleges of agriculture 'serve agriculture' by helping farmers to compete against one another, what do they propose to do to help the farmers who have been out-competed? Well, those people are not farmers anymore, and therefore are of no concern to the academic servants of agriculture. Besides, they are the beneficiaries of the inestimable liberty to 'seek retraining and get into another line of work'.In the essay "An Argument for Diversity" Berry describes how the best use of things in our lives should be determined. "If we wish to make the best use of people,places, and things, then we are going to have to deal with a law that reads about like this:AS the quality of use increases, the scale of use (that is,the size of operations) will decline, the tools will become simpler, and the methods and the skills will become more complex. That is a difficult law for us to believe, because we have assumed otherwise for a long time, and yet our experience overwhelmingly suggests that it is a law, and that the penalties for disobeying it are severe." less

Download links for: What Matters?: Economics for a Renewed Commonwealth

Advertising