america's naturalist conscience

i've been meaning to post some links to some interesting essays. for the most part, they are not new essays, neither particularly timely nor particularly topical, although, each day, it seems, i come across several more by following the footnotes, but rarely find a composed moment to properly - well, to properly compose. this isn't really quite that idealized moment, all my thoughts gathered, obedient and supine at hand while the skies above wheel and churn in numinous imminency of luminous inspiration, either, but it is a moment, and here we are in it, and i, for one, intend to get some of those essays posted, and wonder how i feel about doing that. you see, as a reader of deep interesting ideas, and well-styled prose, i want my friends and community -- you, Dear Reader -- to share the direct experience of the same stimulus that stimulated me: the essay itself; so that i may then (among other things) weigh the value of the writing in question through the aggregated filtering system of you, Dear Reader, and, factoring in what i know of you, get more holistic perspective than is available to my mind alone. and that is also what i really want as the person, me. but as a blogger, i feel a certain pressure to be more of a filter, to sell you the conscientious genius of, say, Wendell Berry, with firecrackers made of my ideas about summarizing what i have understood him to have said, and then trust you to follow the links. and i don't care to "gist." i don't even like "gist" as a verb. summarizing and paraphrasing and synopsizing may have their place, but seem detrimental to the quality thing that is being referred.

so, Wendell Berry is an excellent writer: his ideas are important. his presentation of those important ideas is achingly graceful.

one might consider his 2007 proclamation in the Courier-Journal that

I did not vote in Kentucky's gubernatorial primary on May 27. I did not vote because there was nobody on the ballot whom I wished to help elect. I could not bring myself to submit again to the indignity of trying to pick the least undesirable candidate; nor did I want to contribute to the "mandate" of a new governor, who would be carried into office by corporate contributions, and whose policies I would spend the next four years regretting or opposing,

later recanted ("Voting is a very serious matter, and I don't like the idea that I would write something that would confirm people in a habitual disinterest in elections."), or his 2001 essay "Thoughts in the Presence of Fear.

the one i have been meaning to post is his 1987 "Why I am NOT going to buy a computer" printed here with some responses to some responses, its content thoughtful and its internet-posted-and-read multimetairony not lost.

whatever you think of those, don't fail also to consider "The Joy of Sales Resistance," and hearken to the manifesto of the Mad Farmer Liberation Front:

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,

vacation with pay. Want more

of everything ready-made. Be afraid

to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head.

Not even your future will be a mystery

any more. Your mind will be punched in a card

and shut away in a little drawer.

When they want you to buy something

they will call you. When they want you

to die for profit they will let you know.