I was absolutely floored by Wendell Berry’s essay ‘Faustian Economics’ in the May issue of Harper’s Magazine. I’ve simply never had an author articulate my frustrations and misgivings so incisively.
Currently, the article is available online to subscribers only, but it is my hope that the piece will be released into the public soon after the issue is taken off the news racks. For now, chew on these excerpts:
Our national faith so far has been: “There’s always more.” Our true religion is a sort of autistic industrialism. People of intelligence and ability seem now to be genuinely embarrassed by any solution to any problem that does not involve high technology, a great expenditure of energy, or a big machine.
I see this in the clean technology field all the time. In fact, it could be argued that ‘clean technology’ as an industry is largely centered around circumventing this shared sense of embarrassment.
I often wonder whether my time wouldn’t be better spent pursuing and supporting the field of ‘appropriate technology’ more adamantly for this reason, among others. Deep down, I’m more of the opinion that several ‘clean technologies’ would be more successful if they were scaled down (instead of scaled up) and ‘appropriated’ to the community or individual level. Another argument for open-source and fair use agreements, but I digress…
More excerpts!
That human limitlessness is a fantasy means, obviously, that its life expectancy is limited. There is now a growing perception, and not just among a few experts, that we are entering a time of inescapable limits. We are not likely to be granted another world to plunder in compensation for our pillage of this one. Nor are we likely to believe much longer in our ability to outsmart, by means of science and technology, our economic stupidity. The hope that we can cure the ills of industrialism by the homeopathy of more technology seems at last to be losing status. We are, in short, coming under pressure to understand ourselves as limited creatures in a limited world.
Again, what’s done is done. Instead of relying on technology to save us ‘just in time’ (despite our escalating consumptiveness), we need to work towards conserving and regenerating the planet’s natural capital. This means striving for maximum efficiency throughout the entire process chain of an industry or technology. This means acting and living with limits.
To recover from our disease of limitlessness, we will have to give up the idea that we have a right to be godlike animals, that we are potentially omniscient and omnipotent, ready to discover “the secret of the universe.” We will have to start over, with a different and much older premise: the naturalness and, for creatures of limited intelligence, the necessity, of limits. We must learn again to ask how we can make the most of what we are, what we have, what we have been given. If we always have a theoretically better substitute available from somebody or someplace else, we will never make the most of anything. It is hard to make the most of one’s life. If we had two lives, we would not make much of either. Or as one of my best teachers said of people in general: “They’ll never be worth a damn as long as they’ve got two choices.”
To be honest, I could quote a couple more passages in full, but I’m afraid that would be unfair to both Wendell Berry and Harper’s. I will say that there’s much, much more to this substantial essay and I wholeheartedly recommend that you read it in its entirety by whatever means necessary.
As for me, I’d like to thank Mr. Berry for his insightful words and Harper’s for its continued excellence.
