Some REAL Wendell Berry poetry. Excerpts from...
Some Further Words
Let me be plain with you, dear reader.
I am an old-fashioned man. I like
the world of nature despite its mortal
dangers. I like the domestic world
of humans, so long as it pays its debts
to the natural world, and keeps its bounds.
I like the promise of Heaven...
...I don't like machines,
which are neither mortal nor immortal,
though I am constrained to use them.
(Thus the age perfects its clench.)
Some day they will be gone, and that
will be a glad and a holy day.
I mean the dire machines that run
by burning the world's body and
its breath.
When I see an airplane
fuming through the once-pure sky
or a vehicle of the outer space
with its little inner space
imitating a star at night, I say,
"Get out of there!" as I would speak
to a fox or a thief in the henhouse.
When I hear the stock market has fallen,
I say, "Long live gravity! Long live
stupidity, error, and greed in the palaces
of fantasy capitalism!" I think
an economy should be based on thrift,
on taking care of things, not on theft,
usury, seduction, waste, and ruin.
~Wendell Berry
[Read the whole, wonderful, thoughtful poem here.]
75 comments:
Respectfully, Wendell Berry isn't rowing with both oars in the water.
I know, his disposition and sensibility resonate with a lot of people, but that's not proof that they should embrace his ramblings. It's real tempting to blame all that's wrong with the world on modern technology, but we must remember that, in the Bible, the first murderer was a farmer.
The problem with man is the sin in our hearts, not the tools in our hands, and Berry's bitching at airplanes is a positively pre-Christian waste of our time.
"pre-Christian"?
If we're looking forward to a day where there is no more greed, no pollution, no hatred, what's wrong with longing - and working toward - a little of that now?
Some day they will be gone, and that will be a glad and a holy day.
Amen, right?
I remember one of the pleasant surprises in the days following the horrible events of 9/11 was that the skies were silent - no airplanes roaring overhead.
For at least some of us, one of the joys of heaven would be that there are no planes roaring overhead. You have a problem with that, bubba?
There's nothing wrong with desiring a world full of virtue and free of sin: the problem is thinking that this world can be achieved by getting read of industrial technology -- that the problem has any connection whatsoever with the level of our technological development. The problem is the sin in our hearts, not the tools in our hands.
It is pre-Christian to think that we can achieve holiness by wearing the right clothes, eating the right food, or -- in Berry's case -- using the right tools working the right jobs.
"Some day [airplanes] will be gone, and that will be a glad and a holy day."
Amen, right?
Wrong, unless you want to argue that holiness is any way related to the presence or absence of airplanes, which must come as a surprise to anyone who believes that Judas' betrayal, Peter's denial, and Pilate's cowardice predated the Wright brothers' birth by nearly two millennia.
If I had to guess, I doubt there will be airplanes in Heaven, but I think that's a very, very minor issue, and there's something deeply wrong with the sort of person who actually looks forward to Heaven because of the absence of airplanes.
Ah, but there won't be pollution in heaven (I'd reckon), there won't be toxins, and these are no minor thing.
It's Christian to think that we ought to live a-right and in harmony with God's Creation, wouldn't you think?
Regardless, I do. You're welcome to your vision of heaven, I'll stick with mine.
A few clarifications. Bubba said:
It's real tempting to blame all that's wrong with the world on modern technology
1. Berry hasn't blamed the woes of the world on technology.
2. Berry only said that he didn't like machines, which is not to blame our woes on them.
3. The context of the poem has to do with humanity's fallen nature. Berry says in part of the poem I didn't excerpt:
I don't believe that life
or knowledge can be given by machines.
The machine economy has set afire
the household of the human soul,
and all the creatures are burning within it
4. The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our starmachines, but in ourselves.
5. Greed, avarice, envy, carelessness, laziness, irresponsibility... ALL these contribute to us partaking in a way of life that is not sustainable (perhaps most especially, irresponsibility).
6. It is these sins that Berry rails against, if he's railing against anything.
If you weren't able to discern this from the parts I excerpted, I apologize for failing to represent Berry well. The whole poem is there at the link for your reading pleasure.
Dan, it's not as if an airplane is a polluting machine that happens to fly: it's a flying machine that happens to pollute. Air pollution and noise pollution are secondary and undesired consequences of the airplane that further innovation can reduce.
To argue that there won't be airplanes in heaven because they pollute would lead one to conclude that there won't be food either, because eating results in pollution from defecating. We live in a fallen universe where tradeoffs are inevitable; it is possible that, in the world that will be created for our physical, glorified bodies, such tradeoffs won't be necessary: there might be a place for both gourmet chefs and aviation enthusiasts to enjoy perfected versions of the hobbies they so loved.
And it seems to me that the Agricultural Revolution -- which I presume both you and Berry support -- isn't living wholly harmoniously with nature. The Agricultural Revolution transformed countless acres of wilderness to farmland; the Industrial Revolution transformed farmland to cities and suburbs. The difference is one of degree not of kind.
If the difference is more substantial, explain to me this: why is it okay to pollute with campfires but not with lawnmowers?
Why is it okay for mankind to use fire and the wheel, but not both together (i.e., in the steam engine and in the internal combustion engine)?
Why is it okay to change the genetic makeup of an entire species through millenia of selective breeding but not through direct genetic manipulation?
Again, these are all differences in degree, not in kind. If Berry was arguing for a return to barbaric hunting and gathering without any tools at all, at least he'd be more consistent in his illness than in arguing for a return to 18th-century farming techniques.
As it is, from the very first farmers to the most modern engineer, man has been doing the same thing since the dawn of civilization: using his mental faculties to innovate, to develop new techniques and new tools to meet his needs and desires. One could argue that the benefits in industrial innovation haven't been worth the cost, but it's still the case that all we've changed is the landscape in which moral choices are made: the Christian life is no more difficult -- and no easier -- in a modern megalopolis than it is on the smallest subsistence farm.
And I would remind anyone who thinks that a return to pre-industrial technology should be imposed by the government, that any effort to so constrain human behavior, including human innovation, would require endowing the state with massive power that borders on the tyrannical: so, I hope I never hear such goofy ideas from anyone who wants to wrap himself in the banner of small-government conservatism.
Thanks for the clarifications, Dan. I actually did trudge through what I suppose can be called a poem -- and I find it funny that a man who so praises pre-modern living would write such a rambling work, without any concept of form, meter, of even rhyme -- and while I'm glad you personally don't think that technology has ruined man, I don't think one can reasonably draw the same conclusion from Berry's writing.
Even the passage you quote doesn't seem to treat modern technology as a morally neutral thing:
The machine economy has set afire
the household of the human soul,
and all the creatures are burning within it
If the fault is in ourselves and not our tools, wouldn't Berry be writing that our souls have tarnished the machines, not the other way around?
About science he writes:
Its thoughtless invasions
of the nuclei of atoms and cells
and this world's every habitation
have not brought us to the light
but sent us wandering farther through
the dark.
If Berry treats modernity as morally neutral, why does not only bring us to the light (which I agree it doesn't do) but furthermore sends us deeper into darkness?
He doesn't treat modern technology as morally neutral, and it should be clear why he doesn't: if he were to admit that the problem is with our souls rather than our tools, his constant cry against modern tools would be more clearly seen as the distraction that it is.
You write:
Greed, avarice, envy, carelessness, laziness, irresponsibility... ALL these contribute to us partaking in a way of life that is not sustainable (perhaps most especially, irresponsibility).
I agree, but I frankly think sustainability is a largely unknowable concept that is used to bludgeon modern civilization.
It's largely unknowable because the future isn't static and is largely unknowable and can often involve unexpected disasters, from the 2004 tsunami that killed literally hundreds of thousands of people to Pompeii.
Assuming the universe is static, a civilization of humble farmers limited to renewable resources and 14th-century farming techniques has a quite sustainable lifestyle.
But if there's an asteroid the size of Texas headed toward this planet, the modern civilization with all its evil misuse of coal and oil has a much better chance of doing something about the oncoming ELE.
At some point the sun is probably going to run out of nuclear fuel. The civilization that has colonized other star systems will survive; the civilization that hasn't, won't.
Thanks for the thoughts, Bubba.
You noted...
"isn't living wholly harmoniously with nature. The Agricultural Revolution transformed countless acres of wilderness to farmland"
To the degree that either the Ag or Industrial Revolution grow at sustainable levels, that's okay. To the degree that it's not sustainable - meaning everyone couldn't live that way at that pace - it's a bad thing. I mean, isn't that just reasonable?
Would you be glad if your neighbor were dumping toxins in your ground where you grow a garden? Would you be glad if the toxins from our collective personal autos were requiring you to stay inside ten days a year? If they were fouling your fishing hole to the point where you could no longer safely eat the fish?
I don't really understand those arguing against living sustainably. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding you.
You also said:
I would remind anyone who thinks that a return to pre-industrial technology should be imposed by the government, that any effort to so constrain human behavior, including human innovation, would require endowing the state with massive power that borders on the tyrannical
We already have a system that imposes negative realities. We have a system that encourages and subsidizes the personal auto, the large corporations that might not be as inclined to act responsibly, that encourages US to act irresponsibly.
It's not as if we're discussing a choice between freedom and oppressive gov't interference. We already have that.
I'm advocating lessening gov't's incentives to be irresponsible and increases incentives to be responsible. I'm also advocating personal choices that would be responsible regardless of what the gov't might do.
I'm not against living sustainably, Dan: I'm just not sure it's obvious what sort of behavior is sustainable at the civilizational level, and because of that I suspect the term is often use to criticize modern industrial society.
Look, there are probably quite a few small Indonesian villages whose people lived lives that many with your sensibility would appluad as quote-unquote "sustainable." Some of these villages and their inhabitants did not survive the 2004 tsunami, so in what sense does the word "sustainable" match reality? It doesn't, and if this planet were in a comet's path -- and it may well be -- the technological know-how necessary to preserve civilization and countless species is the precise opposite of the so-called appropriate technologies that lunatics like Wendell Berry think are so necessary for right livin'.
Because I don't think sustainability can reliably defined, I don't trust its use in criticizing modern society.
I would agree that the United States is not the small-l libertarian mecca that it could be (and arguably should be), but, in terms of intrusion and control by a tyrannical government, the state of affairs that we have now is not equivalent to what would be necessary to achieve Berry's Luddite ideals, or to achieve distributism or a host of other crackpot theories that look good only on paper.
I'm advocating lessening gov't's incentives to be irresponsible and increases incentives to be responsible. I'm also advocating personal choices that would be responsible regardless of what the gov't might do.
I'm for lessening government's power to offer incentives, period, and I too agree that responsible personal choices are good, but I think we disagree on what's responsible.
For instance, I see nothing wrong with a person becoming an aerospace engineer and an awful lot right with it, because we live in a violent universe and our civilization is currently utterly dependent on our little blue speck not getting hit by cosmic debris of a significant size. Wendell Berry and other people who fetishize living like an 18th-century farmer are content to ignore the universe in which we live, except for whatever small county they happen to call home. That sort of behavior is analogous to an ostrich's burying its head in the sand, and I see nothing responsible about that.
The problem with that sort of laissez faire approach is an unregulated economy would be one that fails to reflect true costs and therefore, capitalism would not have its chance to work.
If we didn't subsidize gas and roads and autos, True costs of gasoline would be closer to $10-15/gallon. If our economy reflected that true cost, then capitalism would have its chance to self-modulate. But we are quite far from having true costs figure in to our prices - even moreso if we were fully unregulated - and the results would be hellish.
I'm afraid I don't follow you: you say that subsidies don't allow the economy to reflect the true costs of goods and services, but full unregulation would be worse? That "an unregulated economy would be one that fails to reflect true costs"?
Huh?
Oh come on guys, no one has actually READ Berry. He is, after all, unreadable. He sometimes has decent quotes, and his mad farmer poems are good even, but everything else, ummm, sucks. So who would have a clue what he thought about industrialism and salvation? If he knows, he certainly doesn't know how to communicate it.
Careful, Miss Goddess. Criticize me, but not St Wendell...
"you say that subsidies don't allow the economy to reflect the true costs of goods and services, but full unregulation would be worse? That "an unregulated economy would be one that fails to reflect true costs"?"
I'm saying that we're not paying actual costs for many things, gasoline included. I'm saying that I believe that capitalism can work better when something closer to actual costs are what the product costs.
I'm saying unregulated capitalism will have the tendency to reduce prices below their actual costs. Just as subsidizing prices associated with the personal auto does. I'm saying BOTH that unregulated capitalism AND subsidized gas pricing has the effect of reducing the cost of the personal auto below actual cost.
We need some mechanism in place to make sure something close to actual costs are paid (the damage done by the personal auto in the numbers that we drive is so vast and complicated that it'd be nigh unto impossible to calculate the actual cost).
Gov't regulation would be one way to do so. I'm open to other suggestions to that end.
Three different things, so I will do three different comments:
First: St. Wendell writes Vogon poetry. It stinks. He has some unusual and clever things to say, and that has carried him and given him a cult following. Because he is anti-status quo, anti-industrialism, and clever in his literary devices in expressing that, we all like him and by sublimination must needs hold him to be a great poet.
He is not.
If he wrote that same insipid, convoluted blank verse in a "poem" about why Bush should be re-elected or in praise of Haliburton, not one of his fans would recognize it as great poetry.
Poetry would stand on its own regardless of the subject of the poem. His wouldn't.
Bubba:"The problem with man is the sin in our hearts, not the tools in our hands, and Berry's bitching at airplanes is a positively pre-Christian waste of our time."
Not pre-Christian, but rather pre-Constantine.
I preface this comment with the observation that there are NO extant copies of any Christian literature that positively predate the time of Constantine. All are copies made, compiled, revised, edited, and in many if not most cases, composed by his church officials. That is, we really have no idea what Christian beliefs were before Constantine.
What Constantine added to the Christian paradigm was structure of a 'kingdom' in the Roman sense. It's inhabitants were to hold themselves unworthy to be ruled by the emperor no matter how pure their service.
How very convenient for the king, don't you think? This lead to the idea that our worth, our spirituality, our salvation is all a matter of our 'soul'. What we do outwardly is of no consequence since it will fall short of divine perfection anyway.
For the person(s) holding the keys of the kingdom, this is most convenient. They can demand abject sacrifice from the people no matter how much the people have already done. And they themselves can live in utter debauch with untainted 'souls'.
To this day that paradigm of Christianity leads some to bespeak of condition of their Christian "soul" while their hand and the tools in them wreak all manner of havoc and misery.
Bubba:"The Agricultural Revolution transformed countless acres of wilderness to farmland; the Industrial Revolution transformed farmland to cities and suburbs."
The notion behind the Agricultural Revolution (from Jethro Tull to the Green Revolution of the '60's) was to alleviate hunger. It has never done anything of the sort, rather at each stage of the "revolution" it has only created more hungry people.
This current post no doubt doesn't pose to go into the details of this, most of Dan's readers will have heard it from one source or the other, but in reality there is no technological revolution nor industrial revolution. All that appears to be so is only the wanton consumption of fossil fuel in one form or the other.
Take away the fossil fuel (and the rapidly dwindling supply of extractable uranium) and what appears to be this great quantum leap in the human experience dissolves into thin air.
We have been enjoying a 200 year drunken party in our million year history. It is soon to be over and we have one hell of a hangover coming.
It creeps up on us all but unawares. Did you know that this year the USA became the first country ('country' here is an important designation) where farmers were not the majority workers? This doesn't mean 50% of the people work in farming, but that more people work in farming than any other single type of work. There are more cab drivers in the US than farmers.
So what?
Well, also this year about half of all the things manufactured in the world were made in China. Half in all the world! It has been done by means of nearly enslaving a large part of the population, polluting the air and water beyond belief, and raping the natural resources beyond restoration in that country.
Technology has never solved any problem, it has only created larger and larger rugs under which to sweep them. The world is fast running out of rug space. No need to worry, Bubba, about having technology to divert an asteroid or fly colonists away from a dying sun. At the rate we are going, we won't survive nearly long enough to need it.
No one has actually read Berry? Who does CG think she's kidding? He is one of the most popular of Southern authors--as poet, novelist, and essayist. Dan is most fond of his poetry. I like Berry most as an essayist and critic of contemporary American culture. This past July I met people who seemed mostly to know and love Berry for his Port Royal novels.
And Bubba is the one who is a waste of time, "pre-Christian" or no.
Dan goes to share something that is meaningful to him and all he gets is a rambling rant.
Well, actually, I'm most fond of his essays, secondly fond of his fiction and then his poetry, but it's all great in my opinion. CG, Eleutheros and Bubba are all welcome to their own opinion.
They'd be wrong to think ill of Berry's logic or writing, but they're welcome to their opinion.
You might notice, Michael, that I said that Berry's complaining about airplanes was a waste of our time. I didn't say that about Wendell Berry himself, as I don't believe that any human being, no matter how goofy or dangerous his ideas, is a waste of time. You might have noticed that, but then again you might not have.
El, I'm glad to see we agree on the quality of Wendell Berry's poetry, but that's about all we apparently agree on.
I do not share your deeply rooted pessimism regarding modern technology.
But to clarify, I wasn't simply referring to the British Agricultural Revolution, but the original move to agriculture ten thousand years ago (or so), when mankind first moved from hunting and gathering to the more sedentary life of farming and herding. Most of the complaints Berry makes about the factory in its being unnatural can also be made about the farm -- the difference is one of degree, not kind -- so Berry's position seems incompletely defined at best, truly inconsistent at worst.
You yourself give an example of this seeming inconsistency: I noticed that last year you wrote what I think to be an unintentionally hilarious blog entry that argued that, because of the Haber process, we are "manufactured by machines" in a very real sense.
I wonder whether you don't also believe that -- because our food is or depends on plant life, because plants depend on sunlight, and because the sun generates light and heat from nuclear fusion -- all humankind is the byproduct of nuclear waste. If the Haber process means we're Borg, surely our dependence on the sun means we're Peter Parker or Matt Murdock.
But more importantly, we depended on machines long before the Haber process. Since farming was developed many millennia ago, most of our food production involves some sort of machine: from the plow to the scythe, our food supply has long since depended on machines -- simple machines, perhaps, but machines nevertheless.
If you want to criticize the Haber process because it depends on a non-renewable energy source, that's one thing. If you want to criticize it because we cannot innovate sufficiently to find other energy sources to maintain our current quality of life, that's one thing, though I would love to know why Eleutheros the Oracle is trustworthy on such matters. But to complain about the Haber process simply because it is artificial while presumably affirming older agricultural techniques is inconsistent.
That is, of course, unless I missed something and shovels and plows do in fact grow on trees.
El, on Christianity and Constantine, I should make clear that I do not believe that "What we do outwardly is of no consequence since it will fall short of divine perfection anyway."
I affirm that our works fall short of perfection, but they are still important as a consequence of faith. They do not save, but they sanctify: they are not essential for being adopted into God's family, but they are necessary for growth into maturity as God's adopted son.
There are some immature Christians who unfortunately do believe that God has no greater plans for us other than saving us, or that works aren't part of His plan for those He has saved, but these beliefs are in opposition to the New Testament.
And, if I may say so, I cannot understand what justifies your writing the following two sentences, one after the other:
"That is, we really have no idea what Christian beliefs were before Constantine.
"What Constantine added to the Christian paradigm was structure of a 'kingdom' in the Roman sense."
If you believe that we "really have no idea" what Christian beliefs were pre-Constantine, you cannot logically know with any certainty what Constantine added to Christianity. Your asserting the former gives the reader absolutely no reason to believe you're right about the latter: I personally don't believe you're right, and I even think you overstate things about the state of pre-Constantinian NT manuscripts, but you also undercut your own position.
Bubba:"If you believe that we "really have no idea" what Christian beliefs were pre-Constantine, you cannot logically know with any certainty what Constantine added to Christianity."
I'm having a hard time viewing this as anything but a non-sequitur.
We know what Constantine's Christianity was like because we have extant documents that date from nearly that time.
We have indirect evidence that before Constantine's time Christianity existed in a very wide variety of forms based on copies of other Christian writings such as the Nag Hamadi and other similar writings. We still don't know from direct evidence what was believed and practiced pre-4th century, but there is evidence that there was something and it often didn't resemble 4th Century Roman Christianity much at all.
Hence, we have a pretty good idea of the major things Constantine added.
That's a little more sensible, though still arguable, and I would disagree that we cannot be confident about the pre-Constantinian contents of the NT canon. The way you originally wrote it, it sounded like you denied our ability to know anything about pre-Constantinian Christianity, and that denial would logically preclude being able to discern with confidence what Constantine added and what was authentic to the canon.
Bubba:"That is, of course, unless I missed something and shovels and plows do in fact grow on trees."
You are engaging in the argumentum ab absurdum. On the one hand, as I've said, it is unaddressable. On the other hand, it means one is throwing in the towel, conceding the point, when they engage in it. That is: "I don't have any points to make other than taking things to the absurd extreme, otherwise I'd make those points rather than the absurdum ones."
It would be very much like being concerned over a 300lb friend who eats six double cheese burgers every day and having the him retort, "Oh, I've seen you eat a cheese burger, too, so there's no difference at all in our habits."
But yes there is, there is a great deal of difference between eating one cheeseburger a month and eating six a day. A deadly difference.
The plow I use (Vulcan #13) is over 100 years old and there's no reason to suppose it can't be used for another 200 years. While the shovels I use were probably made using oil or coal, the can be made using charcoal and since one lasts for decades, the trees from which the charcoal is made would have grown back by that time. So in a very real sense, yes, my shovels do grow on trees.
I could use those tools next year, and the next year, for a great considerable length of time before I had to figure out where the next ones are coming from.
Your oil powered world, on the other hand, is one tankful away from grinding to a complete halt.
The dangerous thing, and alas the prevalent thing, is denial based on some Star Trek future that we will figure out before the fossil fuel runs dry. Fuel cells and fusion are the energy of the future. They will always be the energy of the future. Meanwhile we are headed for one of those brick walls that pop up in the Road Runner cartoons and the only plan we have is the Acme thinking cap that will inspire us to come up with some brilliant solution just before we hit the wall. We don't know what that solution is now, but we are so clever as a species (man on the moon and all that) that we just know we'll come up with something.
All that cleverness has only one name. Oil. Subtract that from the equation and what have we accomplished over the past century that will last beyond the end of oil?
What you call a lack of pessimism others of us call delusion.
Dan:"They'd be wrong to think ill of Berry's logic or writing, but they're welcome to their opinion."
I fear, Dan, that you and Michael miss the point, or perhaps are side-stepping it.
Bubba, for example, appears to not agree with or appreciate Berry's sentiments. That's one thing. He also appears to esteem Berry's writing abilities as poor.
I (and perhaps CG) am actually in line with Berry's sentiments, most of them. That is, if you have the time and patience to mine them out from the Vogon poetry and ponderously thick prose. But just as a writer he's pretty smelly.
Some of us separate the two.
Now, for all any of us knows for certain, you may actually find the writing to be accomplished. But I tend to doubt it. I tend to think from reading your and Michael's writings that his writing gets pulled along toward the laurels by clinging onto the hem of the garment of someone whose sentiment you admire.
That is, if Berry wrote in exactly the same style but was advocating a position you found wrong or loathsome, would you STILL think that the writing (per se) was good?
I think his reasoning is excellent and he expresses that reasoning exceedingly well. If I disagreed with his reasoning, then, no, I probably wouldn't appreciate his well-wrought expressions nearly as much.
But I happen to appreciate both. If he wrote in his excellent style and advocated nuclear devastation or some such, I may still appreciate his writings, but would be much less inclined to read them.
Why would you think that we are so uncultured as to think that we'd think his writing style beautiful only because it agrees with our line of thinking? From my readings, the vast majority of critics agree with me that Berry is an excellent writer (which, of course, is no accurate measure of quality, but still...).
Could it just be that you're jealous that Tennessee has naught to offer to compare in writing style and grace...?
["oh no he didn't!"]
Here, here are some PJ O'Rourke quotes. O'Rourke is a writer whose opinions and reasoning I disagree with regularly and yet, somehow, I manage to enjoy his writing. It's not too hard to acknowledge the finesse of a writer that one disagrees with.
You may not read them regularly, since they're espousing doctrine that you find foul, but you can still acknowledge their writing chops if they got 'em.
Very little is known of the Canadian country since it is rarely visited by anyone but the Queen and illiterate sport fishermen...
Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power...
Even very young children need to be informed about dying. Explain the concept of death very carefully to your child. This will make threatening him with it much more effective.
We clasp the hands of those that go before us,
And the hands of those who come after us.
We enter the little circle of each other's arms
And the larger circle of lovers,
Whose hands are joined in a dance,
And the larger circle of all creatures,
Passing in and out of life,
Who move also in a dance,
To a music so subtle and vast that no ear hears it
Except in fragments...
excerpted from a poem whose name I forget and can't find, by W Berry
======
When despair for the world grows in me, and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be -- I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought or grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free...
excerpted from "Peace of Wild Things," a poem by W Berry
======
He came from killing. He had felt the ground shaken by men and what they did. Where he was coming from, they thought about killing day after day, and feared it, and did it. And out of the unending, unrelenting great noise and tumult of the killing went little deaths that belonged to people one by one. Some had feared it and had died. Some had died without fearing it, lacking the time. They had fallen around him until he was amazed that he stood--men who in a little while had become his buddies, most of them younger than he, just boys.
excerpted from "Lest We Forget," a story found in the book "Fidelity" which is very likely the best book of short stories ever written (or, it may be that "Come Watch With Me," ALSO by Berry, is the best book of short stories ever written...tough call)
=====
What's not to adore? Berry's writing is at once beautiful and momentous and erudite and humorous and calls us to search our hearts. It is wonderful, life-changing writing.
And anyone who disagrees is very obviously a doo doo head and likely hell-bound. But, by all means, disagree...
Dan:"Could it just be that you're jealous that Tennessee has naught to offer to compare in writing style and grace...?"
I suppose, then, that we are to count Kentuckians as a people easy to please. [sigh] There's no accounting as to what is to pass for a virtue.
Dan:"And anyone who disagrees is very obviously a doo doo head and likely hell-bound. But, by all means, disagree..."
OK. You've convinced me. Pointless rambling with truncated sentances, no rhythm, no rhyme, is poetry. You've not only convinced me, you've inspired me!
Long since now the gravel had ceased to crunch beneath the tires.
The sofa springs long settled now.
The saga unwound as it had twice each moon when the vagabonds returned.
News of the outside world.
Whether the room abated its breath
Or whether it nodded
The long afternoon could not tell.
But it waited for the trump.
The finale.
The most ponderous bit of news
"Then at Long John Silver's
Mary Vee had some French fries,
But I didn't have any ......"
And you though Tennessee had no poets of Berry's stature!
El, I want to make clear that I think there is at least some validity in the concern that technological innovation may not allow us to maintain our present standard of living. I believe the universe was made for our good, but not necessarily our convenience, and it may not be the case that there are viable alternative sources for energy as oil and fission become less viable. The presumption that innovation will prevail is arrogant.
But the operative word in the paragraph above is "may", and the opposite presumption is similarly arrogant: while it denies man's ability to innovate beyond petroleum, it implies that at least one man understands the universe so well that he can predict the future with absolute confidence. As Michael Crichton noted in a 2003 speech to CalTech, "in 2000, France was getting 80% its power from an energy source that was unknown in 1900." Nuclear physics and quantum physics are still very much in their infancy, such that even those on the bleeding edge of these fields cannot say with any certainty whether these fields will lead to new, better energy sources.
We're running out of useful uranium? Its radioactivity was only discovered in 1896, so on what basis can you say with such hard certainty that there are no fuel sources to replace uranium?
In dismissing as delusion everyone who fails to share your fatalism, you're overstating your case, and by doing so I believe you actually weaken your position. If a man is throwing everything at a contrary position, including the kitchen sink, his overeagerness undermines the perception that he's a rational, disinterested observer.
It is one thing, for instance, to criticize modern society because of an overuse of machines; it's another thing altogether when your critical of apparently any use of machines, per se, even though as a farmer you are yourself dependent on machines, albeit simple machines.
The guy who eats one cheeseburger a month can employ a lot of arguments aginst eating six a day, but he is no position to invoke vegan arguments that the consumption of meat and dairy products is inherently immoral.
El, in that blog entry which I cited, you criticize those who rely on the Haber process by saying, "in a real sense you were manufactured by machines using an industrial process to fix the nitrogen of which you are composed."
But here, you defend the tools on which you yourself rely, as charcoal from trees can be used in their manufacture: "So in a very real sense, yes, my shovels do grow on trees."
Never mind that the oil upon which the Haber process currently relies was originally organic matter eons ago: people who use tools you don't like were manufactured by machines while the tools which meet your approval practically grow on trees.
To say that this overstates your position is a gross understatement: you would be a lot more persuasive if your rhetoric was a lot more reasonable.
Bubba:"Never mind that the oil upon which the Haber process currently relies was originally organic matter eons ago"
Bubba, you have an amazing capacity for the non sequitur.
Oil was once organic material ... and this has what to do the insustainability of oil?
The history of the industrial age and its energy consumption is not one of depleting a resource and then going on to the next one. We did not burn all the trees and then switch to coal, and then burn all the coal and switch to oil. Rather there was a level of technology and energy use based on wood (charcoal). With the advent of coal we did not just substitute coal for wood, we developed a whole other technology and level of energy use. Same with the use of oil. We didn't use oil to run the boilers of steam engines but rather invented a whole other technology for its use.
During the "wood age" the world could have gone on a lot longer status quo, wood was not running out. When coal came, the level of energy use and the population increased so that it was not possible to go back to using wood.
During the coal age the world could have gone on a lot longer status quo, coal was not running out. But when oil came, the level of energy use and the population increased so that it was not possible to go back to using just coal.
This is not same song, next verse. We are NOT at a place where there is plenty of oil for years and years to come but we are looking into some new and marvelous type of energy that will give rise once again to increased energy use and increased population.
Oil is running out. The status quo can't be maintained. This has never happened before in the era of technology. Never.
So many of ask, Dan has asked it, as oil begins to be very scarce in a few years, what are you going to replace it with. The only reply is some general mumblings about 'we've always found a solution, and we always will, clever beings that we are.'
Pay attention this time: We've NEVER been here before. People who were developing coal stoves could go home to a wood fire on the hearth if it didn't work out. People who were developing electric furnaces could go home to a coal stove it if didn't work out. If we don't develop some successful alternative to oil, when it runs out, there's nothing to go home to.
Don't you see how very different this is?
What I mean, Bubba, is this: Cut off my farmstead from the products on industry and we'd go on unabated for years. Perhaps even forever.
Cut you off from oil and electricity and all the products derived from them, and how long would you last?
All the empty blather about someone had to make the shovel and oil was organic material at one time is all dust in the wind, or as Shakespeare said, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." When in a very short time energy becomes prohibitively expensive, your world comes to and end. There's nothing in the pipeline to stave it off.
If there is, as all such deniers have been asked, what is it?
El, I think the context shows that my comment wasn't a non sequitor. My point was not that, because oil was once organic matter, it is inexhaustible.
My point was to highlight the silliness of your assertion that your shovels grow on trees "in a very real sense" because they can be made from charcoal derived from wood: something very similar can be said about petroleum.
I'll reiterate that you make good points, but you do those excellent observations harm when you strain to imply that your shovels are hardly less natural than apples while demonizing the Haber process by comparing those who depend on it to the Borg.
That we are currently so crucially dependent on oil is a legitimate cause for concern, and you're right to criticize those who glibly assert that, because we've always innovated to solve technological problems, we always will. Such unblinking confidence is arrogant.
But your unblinking pessimism is, I believe, similarly arrogant.
"We are NOT at a place where there is plenty of oil for years and years to come but we are looking into some new and marvelous type of energy that will give rise once again to increased energy use and increased population."
"Oil is running out. The status quo can't be maintained."
"When in a very short time energy becomes prohibitively expensive, your world comes to and end. There's nothing in the pipeline to stave it off."
It's possible that you're right, but you cannot have enough knowledge to know you're right with the certainty you display.
I'm not an outright denier of peak oil: I'm simply trying to remain humble enough to know that the future cannot be easily predicted, and I think that you would better server your side by not eschewing such humility yourself.
Bubba:"My point was to highlight the silliness of your assertion that your shovels grow on trees "in a very real sense" because they can be made from charcoal derived from wood: something very similar can be said about petroleum."
Yes, a non sequitur. The wood for the charcoal to forge iron or steel into a shovel blade will grow back on a quarter acre in a year (coppice wood, I'll include the math if you like) and the shovel will last 30 years or perhaps 100 years.
Petroleum requires millions of years. For all practical purposes it is non-renewable.
I'm not talking about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, I'm talking about the energy required to make a shovel and how easily renewable that is. And petroleum and how that once it's gone, you have no means of ever getting any more.
Bubba:"I'm simply trying to remain humble enough to know that the future cannot be easily predicted.."
Humble or proud doesn't enter into my posit. Foolish and wise would be more the paradigm I'm looking for.
To wit: The cow here on the farm is quite healthy and productive. We depend on her a bit. But she could die or go dry with no warning at all. In fact, it is eventually inevitable. What we did several years ago was set up a 401-Cow fund and fully funded it over the next several months. It is enough to buy another cow. I earnestly hope we never have to use it. I hope it sits there for 30 years untouched. I hope the cow has a heifer and we raise up another milk cow from her same excellent line.
But, being naught but humble homesteaders, we don't know that will happen. So we prepare for the eventuality.
If we followed your paradigm of 'humility' though, we'd say to ourselves, "Hey, that cow could live and be productive another 15 years, and who knows, in that time the need for the milk might be replaced by something else. Ya never know! So there's no need to have a cow fund, that would be un-humble thinking we knew what the future was like."
Such thinking, such lack of foresight, is not proud or humble, it is foolish.
You know, you MIGHT not need to prepare for old age, they might develop an anti-aging drug before you are old. But from the way thinks look from here, it's looking more and more like we will all grow old.
You know, fossil fuels on which every aspect of our modern culture depend MIGHT not run out, or an alternative MIGHT be developed out of thin air, 7/8th of the world's food MIGHT not disappear in the absence of chemical fertilizers, but from where we sit now, that's where we are headed.
So do we say, "Ya know, I bet 'they' come up with something at the 11th hour and it will turn out to not be a problem after all..." and otherwise do not prepare for it. Or do we put a few dollars in that cow fund ...
Are you even actually reading what I wrote, or do you skim it just enough to make it look like your ranting is tailor-made to the conversation at hand?
For the second time I've tried to make clear that I think you make very good points. I'll go one step further and agree with you that it is foolish to trust in technological innovation to the degree that we don't simultaneously prepare for the worst-case scenario.
But you are so combative that it's hardly worth making the effort to point out where I agree with you.
Bubba:"Are you even actually reading what I wrote, "
I read every third word and then compose my own prose using those words and pretend that's what you wrote. I though that was obvious. It's a technique I learned from the way Dan interprets the Bible.
"But you are so combative that it's hardly worth making the effort to point out where I agree with you."
I would much prefer that you point out where you disagree, otherwise I stand to gain nothing.
What a discussion. I must admit, I didn't wade through it all. However, I liked the discussion about what makes a good poem. I struggle with that one. Is great art just great form or is it great content? I suspect that it is both. I have for some time been quite bothered by an essay by Eudora Welty entitled, Must the Novelist Crusade. In it she shys from a certain kind of social responsibility. Berry embraces that responsibility, almost to the detriment of his art. I think there is a balance.
I would much prefer that you point out where you disagree, otherwise I stand to gain nothing.
El, regarding this comment thread, my biggest disagreement concerns the rhetoric you employ to defend your position: I believe it's excessive and indicative of arrogance, and I believe I've already made this complaint crystal clear.
Yes, bubba. Overly aggressive/confrontational rhetoric can make conversation difficult, can't it? May I quote you on that?
Bubba:"El, regarding this comment thread, my biggest disagreement concerns the rhetoric you employ to defend your position: "
If we were discussing whether it's better to buy a Chevy or Ford, or whether the French fries were better at McD or Burger King, you might have a point.
But sometimes discussions on Dan's blog touch subjects on which the general population is in a thick fog and subject to brainwashing. The same sort of rhetoric appropriate to discussing French fries cannot reach through that fog.
For example, people believe as an emotional response that in the end we will techno-tweak our way out of some very grave problems. They resist any information, math, or logic that that lays that position bare to scrutiny. Look at your own argument on the subject, the essence of it is that my responses are arrogant. Do you not recognize an emotional response when you see one?
Reaching through a fog will always be a little rougher than talking about French fries.
Yes, bubba. Overly aggressive/confrontational rhetoric can make conversation difficult, can't it? May I quote you on that?
Only on the condition that you either apologize for repeatedly calling me a liar, or you persuasively refute the evidence I offered that, your insistence to the contrary notwithstanding, you don't respect the entire Bible and you do affirm extrabiblical doctrines.
El, I don't see how you can simultaneously try to rationalize and deny your arrogant rhetoric.
You have a tendency to throw everything at a position you don't like, no matter how internally inconsistent the sum total of those rhetorical weapons are.
Bubba, I believe our most recent go around about lying went thusly:
You have said that I don't believe in the Bible, saying things such as:
Dan provides ample evidence that he doesn’t believe everything in the Bible.
and:
which would mean that, by his own definition, the Old Testament itself contains blasphemies.
and:
And yet Dan doesn’t hesitate to take this posture of a Christian who loves and reveres the entire Bible and is wary of introducing any extrabiblical doctrine.
I corrected you, multiple times, saying that I don't believe everything literally-interpreted in the Bible. But that doesn't mean that I don't believe in the Bible nor that I think that the OT "contains atrocities" - if you're implying that I think God commits atrocities, nor that I don't love the Bible.
You and others have repeatedly made the assertions and insinuations that I don't believe nor do I love the Bible. How you can know what I think is beyond me. After repeated corrections (I do, in fact, love and believe the Bible), you and others have repeated these misrepresentations. I have now begun to call those accusations Lies.
It IS a lie to suggest that I don't love the Bible and that I don't believe the Bible.
If you were saying and intimating that I don't believe the Bible literally read, I'd agree with you. But that's not what you've been indicating.
Demonstrate that I'm wrong about your lies and I will apologize. Did you MEAN to say that I don't believe the Bible, literally-interpreted, gives us a sound representation of God? If so, then I apologize. But that's not what you were saying, I believe.
And clearly, you said I "take the posture" of one who loves the Bible and who is wary of adding extrabiblical doctrine in an attempt to suggest that I DON'T love the Bible and that I'm NOT wary of extrabiblical doctrine.
Do you agree with me then that I DO love the Bible and that I DO believe the Bible? If so, then great. I could then apologize for misunderstanding your repeated assertions that seem to indicate just that and we can move on as people just having a discussion where we might sometimes disagree instead of in combat mode. I'd like nothing more.
Dan, I would ask for more precision on your part.
You have said that I don't believe in the Bible, saying things such as:
"Dan provides ample evidence that he doesn’t believe everything in the Bible."
See that phrase "everything in"? It's important. I said you provide evidence that you don't believe everything in the Bible, and you say that I assert that you "don't believe in the Bible."
You do. You clearly do believe in the Bible. JUST NOT ALL OF IT.
It's not just a matter of interpreting literally or figuratively. I quoted this passage before, and I do so again.
This is your speculation about the meaning of a passage in Deuteronomy which you believe command atrocities:
“What does it mean? Well, it could stand as testimony of humanity’s desire to get God’s endorsement on even the most heinous of actions. Or a note that we can justify even the most horrible crimes, if it’s ‘god’s will.’”
That's not a speculation that involves reading the passage as figurative, it's a speculation that requires dismissing the passage as a deceitful insertion by wicked men who are trying to justify atrocities by lying that God commands it.
Am I misreading that passage? Do you no longer consider it a valid possibility?
If I'm reading it correctly and you still stand by it, I cannot honestly conclude that you love that passage in Deuteronomy.
I don't see how a person can love a passage of Scripture if he thinks it "could stand as testimony of humanity’s desire to get God’s endorsement on even the most heinous of actions."
And even in the context of what I quoted, you admit that you don't revere that passage.
If you don't love every part of the Bible, it is no lie for me to say, you don't love every part of the Bible.
bubba said:
"If I'm reading it correctly and you still stand by it, I cannot honestly conclude that you love that passage in Deuteronomy...
If you don't love every part of the Bible, it is no lie for me to say, you don't love every part of the Bible."
This, bubba, is a lie. It is a twisting of words. I love the Bible. Period.
Are there troubling parts of the Bible? Sure. I'd hope that you'd agree that passages that seem to suggest a god that calls for genocide are troubling.
It does not preclude me from loving the bible any more than extremely troubling parts in the movie, "The Mission" would keep me from loving that movie.
Do you have no parts of the Bible or any other work that you love that you find troubling? It is troubling to think of Loving my enemy. It is troubling to think of turning the other cheek. It is troubling to run across passages that taken literally suggest that god sometimes commands genocide!
Lord have mercy on your soul if you don't find that troubling.
And so, yes, you are still misrepresenting my position.
I will not apologize for calling your words "lies," when, in fact, they are not true.
Prove to me - somehow! - that I DON'T love the Bible and you will have your apology. Crawl in my mind using your great psychic powers and read my thoughts with your godlike omniscience and you'll see what's there. And, if you can do all that, then surely you can also use your godlike powers to "force" me to see that I actually hate the Bible. Then the apology will come flowing for having ever doubted that you know what I think better than I do.
Dan, you write this about the presence of troubling passages in the Bible.
It does not preclude me from loving the bible any more than extremely troubling parts in the movie, "The Mission" would keep me from loving that movie.
I'm somewhat familiar with the movie in very broad outlines, but I haven't seen it. I must ask:
Do you think the troubling parts were added to the movie by someone other than the director? Do you think they should be excised from the movie? Do you think the movie would be better without those scenes?
Rather than respond to your entire comment, I think focusing on this comparison might explain why I draw the conclusions I have about you. I would appreciate an answer to my questions, and I'll happily explain their relevance in return.
Do you think the troubling parts were added to the movie by someone other than the director? Do you think they should be excised from the movie? Do you think the movie would be better without those scenes?
I think they were part of the story being told by the story-writer. I think the director correctly left them in there. I think the overall message of the movie dictates against the scenes of horror that were included in it.
I will say again, inasmuch as you're saying that I don't take the Bible literally, you are correct. If that was the intent of your comments about my not believing all the Bible (Dan doesn't believe all the Bible LITERALLY), you would be correct and I'd apologize if that's your intent.
However (and you can correct me if I'm wrong), if your intent was to show that "Dan doesn't believe in the Bible (how can he believe all of it if he doesn't believe part of it?)", then that would be a mischaracterization of my beliefs.
I believe that both the creation story and the stories of god commanding genocide are part of the Bible (there they are, I can see them). I do not believe either literally represents reality.
So, shall I apologize? Are you merely saying that I don't take the Bible literally on every page? Or, are you trying to say something else?
[And I apologize to anyone who may be concerned that I've turned off-topic, but since I was unwelcome at Neil's place where this thread began, I invited anyone who wanted to sincerely address my views to come by here. On-topic: WENDELL BERRY ROCKS!!]
Also, Bubba, I'm still wondering if you find any parts of the Bible troubling.
I do find some passages of Scripture difficult, but I assume that the problem is with me and not with Scripture: I accept on faith that the Bible is as God intended, and my trouble with certain passages is due either to my fallibility or my vestigial sinfulness.
I take the same approach to the Bible that you take to your movie:
I think they were part of the story being told by the story-writer. I think the director correctly left them in there.
But it seems to me that you don't take that approach with every difficult passage in the Bible. You speculate that some passages in Deuteronomy were inserted by wicked men who wanted to justify atrocities by deceitfully portraying them as divine commands: if I have misunderstood you, you have yet to even attempt to correct me on this.
I'll agree that there is some wiggle-room for interpretation -- that two men who love the entire Bible equally can sometimes draw different conclusions -- but that margin isn't limitless. At some point, an interpretation can go too far to be consistent with a love for the entire Bible.
Your speculation does exactly that.
There are other problems with your speculation: it runs contrary to Matthew 5, where Jesus upheld the written law to the smallest penstroke, and there is no passage in the Bible that suggests that parts of Deuteronomy are corrupted as you speculate.
(You once wrote "we need to watch out that we don’t add stuff that the Bible doesn’t teach." So much for all that.)
But the biggest problem is, you think parts of the Bible are corrupted. You speculate that the reason these supposed corruptions should remain is so that they "stand as testimony of humanity’s desire to get God’s endorsement on even the most heinous of actions."
But it's not as if you affirm that those passages are God's revealed will.
I don't think anyone can believe that something is a corruption and still love that thing. You speculate that passages of the Bible are corruptions, so I do not believe that you love those passages, notwithstanding your emphastic assertion to the contrary.
You might love a lot of the Bible: it might even be fair to say you love most of the Bible. But if you believe parts are corruptions, you don't love those parts, and thus it's not true to say you love the entire Bible.
Bubba said:
But it seems to me that you don't take that approach with every difficult passage in the Bible. You speculate that some passages in Deuteronomy were inserted by wicked men who wanted to justify atrocities by deceitfully portraying them as divine commands
That is my speculation, one of them. Yes. Why I thusly speculate, though, is because I find other passages in the Bible - a dominant theme of the Bible, in fact - to be opposed to atrocities such as genocide. And so, I strive to reconcile the two passages.
But I do so recognizing that I'm a fallible human who can not hope to have perfect understanding on everything. That being the case, I go with what I think I know to be true: That it is always a wrong to engage in genocide. Verses in the Bible that suggest otherwise do so against the dominant message of the Bible, it seems to me and I think most people.
And so, those passages I could try to explain as someone's limited attempt to make an explanation - much as the Genesis story is - or, perhaps there's some other explanation that I haven't grasped. I'm not saying that that speculation of mine is the Word of God. I'm speculating that the Word of God is that we ought not engage in genocide and setting passages aside that seem to suggest so.
We have verses in the Bible telling us clearly that eating shrimp is an abomination and we are commanded not to do so. We have other verses that clarify for us: Eating shrimp is NOT an abomination and we MAY eat it. We have to reconcile the two viewpoints.
Because I embrace the more holistic, more NT explanation does not mean that I reject the OT description of eating shrimp, just that for whatever reason, we now have a clearer explanation and that old one was incorrect.
So, I'm NOT "adding stuff that the Bible doesn't teach," (as you incorrectly implied). I'm going with what I think is the clearer, better teaching of being opposed to genocide instead of the older, less valid teaching that god sometimes orders genocide.
You also said:
But the biggest problem is, you think parts of the Bible are corrupted.
Once again, this is a misrepresentation of my words. I've never said the Bible is corrupted, nor have I said that I THINK the bible is corrupted. Those are YOUR WORDS, not mine. Why do y'all feel it necessary to listen to a fella say, "I think A" and then say, "So, what you're saying is you think X! Aha!"
If you THINK (not being omniscient and all) that's what I'm saying, you might say, "But when you say A, doesn't that mean that you also think X?", instead of jumping to assumptions that you have no way of knowing?
No. I don't think the bible is corrupt when it describes a six day creation (even though I don't think that's literally correct), nor when the Bible says eating shrimp is an abomination (even though it's not), nor when the Bible seems to say that god has ordered genocide.
See, once you've decided that my "A" actually means "X," then that lets you make further assumptions that, being based on a false presumption, are even further from the truth. Statements like this:
I don't think anyone can believe that something is a corruption and still love that thing.
In your mind, because I don't interpret the Bible literally and it is far enough removed from your take on it, then that MUST mean that I think the Bible (or parts thereof) are corrupt and THAT, in turn, MUST mean that I don't love the Bible.
You're taking leaps of logic that my statements don't support.
Dan, I like the devotional sent out by the Moody Bible Institute and a couple of days ago I was reading their suggested passage of Gen. 12:1-9. Their key verse to go along with it was Galatians 3:8 The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: "All nations will be blessed through you."
Their points to ponder at the end were:
Why does it matter that we see the gospel in the pages of the Old Testament as well as the New Testament? Some people hear and believe the myth that the God of the Old Testament is vengeful while the God of the New Testament is merciful. Seeing the gospel as far back as Genesis teaches us about the consistent character of God. Additionally, the Old Testament prophecies, fulfilled in Jesus Christ, prove the reliability of the gospel.
This says what I believe and in a better way than I could. My desire and I feel it is some of the others that disagree with you, is that you could connect the Old and New Testament in such a way as to give you a better understanding of the consistent character of God.
Dan, would you mind telling me what specific passages you have in mind when you write this?
I'm going with what I think is the clearer, better teaching of being opposed to genocide instead of the older, less valid teaching that god sometimes orders genocide.
I can point to the specific NT passages that supercede OT kosher regulations, but I'm not familiar with the passage that says that not only is genocide bad, but that we should ignore the OT passages that command it.
And it really should be just that specific: after all, you criticized Neil for affirming the Bible's divine authorship because "God never called the 66 books of the Bible ‘his word.’"
By that standard, your passage must be pretty emphatic if it's comparable to Matthew 15, Acts 10, and Hebrews 13 in their superceding kosher regulations.
To be clear, I don't think the Bible condones atrocities: I just don't think the OT commands atrocities, either. But if Dan wants to recommend "setting passages aside" for not conforming to the rest of Scripture, and if he's so zealous about avoiding extrabiblical doctrines, then he must have a blockbuster reason to think those supposed commands to commit genocide have been superceded.
For my personal education and edification, I want to see what passages he would cite.
An answer to the previous question would be enlightening, but it is somewhat off-topic.
To the main point of my being called a liar, I think I should emphasize that words mean things.
"Entire." I have made clear time and again that I don't think you love the entire Bible, and I've made a point to emphasize that adjective. You keep dropping that adjective even when you accuse me of misconstruing your position.
"Literal." The opposite of "literal" is "figurative" and you've yet to offer a persuasive theory to what a figurative interpretation of the supposed atrocity passages could be. It's not that I take every passage of the Bible literally and you don't: I accept every passage as authoritative, and you don't, and I'm tired of you abusing the word "literal" when it's not relevant to the discussion.
"Corruption." Most importantly, Dan, you seem to concede that you speculate that sinful men inserted passages that commanded atrocities to justify those atrocities by deceitfully portraying them as divine commands: am I wrong on this?
If I'm right, I really don't care whether or not you personally use the word "corruption" to apply to your speculation: the idea necessarily entails that the Bible has been corrupted.
If your speculation isn't an example of the Bible being corrupted, I fail to see what would possibly qualify.
You write:
I don't think the bible is corrupt when it describes a six day creation (even though I don't think that's literally correct), nor when the Bible says eating shrimp is an abomination (even though it's not), nor when the Bible seems to say that god has ordered genocide.
If you believe that any of these passages were the work of sinful men trying to justify atrocities by deceitfully attributing them to God, then I still think it's accurate to describe your position as this: parts of the Bible have been corrupted.
If you don't like that conclusion, you should rethink your theory about the source of the passages you find so difficult: accept that they are the revelation of a holy God and not sinful men.
Well, not every topic is as clear as the change in food rules.
As you say, you don’t think that genocide is a good thing, but clearly, the Israelites in the OT appeared to have been commanded to wipe out entire cities, including the children. If the Bible is taken literally, anyway.
This is what the Lord of Hosts has to say, “Go, now, attack Amalek, and deal with him and all that he has under the ban. Do not spare him, but kill men and women, children and infants, oxen and sheep, camels and asses.” ~1 Samuel 15
Now, you would be correct to say that there is not a corresponding passage in the NT (as with the food laws) where Jesus says, “You used to sometimes be ordered to commit genocide. But now, I’m telling you, don’t commit genocide.”
Does that mean that we think the Bible endorses genocide? I don’t think so.
Jesus DID say, “You have heard it said, ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,’ But I say to you, offer no resistance to one who is evil. When someone strikes you on your right cheek, turn the other one to him as well.” Jesus DID say, “You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.”
Paul echoed Jesus in saying, “Do not be overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good.”
Most of us here do not confuse genocide with anything at all to do with “goodness.” So, I’m not sure what you’re looking for. You agree that genocide is not a good thing, nor is it endorsed by the Bible. That’s what I’m saying, too.
I’m just saying that, when there appears a passage that seems to endorse genocide, we can know that it does not fit in with the larger body of teaching within the Bible. It is not a matter of my “not liking genocide” (who does?) and therefore dismissing scriptures that endorse it. It’s a matter of my seeing the plain teachings of the Bible – OT and NT – that would dictate against genocide and saying that the few verses that sound like they endorse genocide can’t really mean that.
Similarly with Jesus and the food laws. Jesus told us clearly:
I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do so will be called least in the kingdom of heaven.
But then promptly sets about dismissing at least one very specific set of laws – what we can and can’t eat. So, when Jesus says, “not the smallest letter will pass from the law…” we can know that he didn’t mean that every OT law was valid. He must have meant something else.
And we can debate about what that “something else” might be, but clearly, he DID set aside part of the law – quite deliberately.
Similarly, we can debate what the OT passages that show god commanding genocide mean, but clearly we are not to participate in genocide.
That’s all I’m saying and I don’t think you disagree so I’m not sure what your problem is with my dismissing those passages as not applicable, since you do, too.
"I have made clear time and again that I don't think you love the entire Bible, and I've made a point to emphasize that adjective."
And I'm telling you that you are not omniscient enough to know what I do and don't love. I love the ENTIRE Bible. It would be ridiculous to say of a war movie, "ooh, I love that scene where the children are blown up and have their arms ripped from their bodies!" But one could easily love the entire movie.
You, sir, are not God. You, sir, do not know what I do and don't love and if you suggest that I don't love the Bible, then you are a liar, contemptible and diabolic in nature.
mom2 said:
"My desire and I feel it is some of the others that disagree with you, is that you could connect the Old and New Testament in such a way as to give you a better understanding of the consistent character of God."
Since this post seems a little more sincere and a not snarky, I'll reply, mom2. My snarky answer would be, "Right back at ya!" but I won't do that except as a joke.
I just want to thank you for passing on some information in a sincere effort to help me. I appreciate the thought.
I also want to point out that it would be a mistake to assume that I'm one that sees "two" gods in the Bible - a NT God of love and an OT God of vengeance.
I love the way God is portrayed in both the Old and New Testaments. God is a God of mercy (love) AND justice. It is because God is a God of love that God wants justice. God in the OT and NT consistently hates oppression, God consistently demonstrates God's love for everyone and especially the marginalized, the poor, the suffering, the foreigner.
God, as portrayed in the OT and NT is a cool, awesome God. Because of that, when we find one verse or a patch of verses that seem to portray god as genocidal, or as a god that would command kidnapping or rape or slavery, that we must say that, "This is not God, as God is portrayed in the Bible. This is the exception and not fitting with the teaching of the whole."
Thanks again, I'll be sure to check it out.
Peace.
Dan:
You, sir, are not God. You, sir, do not know what I do and don't love and if you suggest that I don't love the Bible, then you are a liar, contemptible and diabolic in nature.
I hate to call you down off so high a horse, but if you are going to quite literally demonize me, you should at least get my accusation right.
Once again, I do not say that you "don't love the Bible." I suspect that you don't love the ENTIRE Bible. How many times must I use this adjective before you notice it?
You're right that, not being God, I am not omniscient and cannot read minds, but I can draw conclusions from what you write.
You seem to take that right for yourself, deacon. Can you read minds? No. Are you God? No.
Does that stop you from accusing me of lying through my teeth? NO.
In passing I will note that the Scriptural reasons you give for dismissing a literal reading of I Sam 15 are hardly persuasive, and I doubt they would stand the scrutiny you gave Neil's assertion that the Bible is divinely authored.
Yes, Paul wrote to overcome evil with good, but to say that that proves genocide and/or I Sam 15 is evil IS BEGGING THE QUESTION.
Most of us here do not confuse genocide with anything at all to do with “goodness.”
That's hardly an appeal to Scripture: or is Most-of-us some epistle that I overlooked?
Appealing to "overcome evil with good" is particularly noxious because, in the very next passage, Paul writes that the government is an agent of God's wrath. And you missed this in your quoting I Sam, but God gave His reasons for destroying the Amalekites:
Thus says the Lord of hosts, "I will punish the Amalekites for what they did in opposing the Israelites when they came up out of Egypt. Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey." - I Sam 15:2-3, emphasis mine
You're having to ignore the context of Paul's command in order to dismiss I Sam 15.
And you still don't explain, if we're not supposed to take I Sam 15 literally, just what in the world is the figurative interpretation?
And you don't offer a figurative interpretation -- again, words mean things, and the opposite of "literal" is "figurative" -- of I Samuel 15. If we're not supposed to take it literally, what does it mean to take the passage figuratively?
Is it a parable? A metaphor? A kind of mythological story (like, some would say, Job and Jonah) even if the passages preceding and following it should be taken literally?
Bubba said:
Once again, I do not say that you "don't love the Bible." I suspect that you don't love the ENTIRE Bible. How many times must I use this adjective before you notice it?
I responded at least once already if not multiple times:
"And I'm telling you that you are not omniscient enough to know what I do and don't love. I love the ENTIRE Bible."
How many times must I use this adjective before you notice it? I love the entire Bible. I love Genesis to Revelation. It's a Good Book.
Did you notice my example I gave: One need not say "Boy I loved that scene of horrible mutilation" to have loved a movie or book about war. Your argument is bogus. You are wrong, wrong, wrong to say that I don't love the Bible.
I'm done discussing it, until such time that you can offer proof that I don't love the Bible. (The entire Bible.) So don't bother repeating falsehoods that you can't hope to prove.
Now, to something with at least a little meat on it, you are absolutely correct to note that nowhere in the bible does it command us NOT to engage in genocide.
This would be one reason why I would say that the Bible is one vital source of God's Word, but it's not the only source. God is the only source for God's Word in its entirety.
I think we can take just the verses I have shown and make a damned good case against genocide. How can you possibly love your enemy if you're killing them all - including their children?
That seems to be self evident to me: When we love some group of people, we don't destroy them all.
It's not a direct command but rather something that is just a bit obvious.
But in addition to the Bible, we can use our God-given reasoning to sort things out as well. Plain ol' reason would dictate that IF we accept it as a truism that we ought to love our enemy, THEN we will not engage in genocide against them.
And again, since you agree that genocide is wrong (even though the Bible never commands us not to), I'm unsure of your point here.
As to this:
And you still don't explain, if we're not supposed to take I Sam 15 literally, just what in the world is the figurative interpretation?
I don't know that our only two options are literally and figuratively. The Bible's writers wrote down a history of sorts. But the writing conventions of the time did not dictate that one must write history as it literally happened (as we supposedly at least try to do today). So, I'd suggest that would be one possible way to look at it - that it was written in a mythological or epic manner.
Just as the story on which the movie "300" was based did not involve actual giants, ogres and other creatures depicted in the movie. They add the creepy monsters to make it even more of an epic story.
Now, I'm not saying that is definitely what has happened with stories of genocide in the OT. I'm saying what I've said all along: That I don't know WHY those stories are there - I'm not omniscient enough to know. All I know is that, according to the rest of the Bible, it is a poor depiction of God to draw god as genocidal. Do you not agree?
And that's the last time I'm answering that question.
"When I hear the stock market has fallen,
I say, "Long live gravity! Long live
stupidity, error, and greed in the palaces
of fantasy capitalism!" "
I'm not sure if he is criticizing the very idea of the stock market, or what the stock market has supposedly become...but even Jesus seemed to support the idea of investing money, as seen in the parable of the talents. And the stock market is not just a place where the greedy white-haired old man gets rich, it's where teachers can put money into their retirement plan, or where the middle-class working man can store just a bit of money on the side to help them out in the long run. Is Social Security better? Where politicians "borrow" from people's retirement accounts?
Well, I would tend to disagree with that take on the parable of the talents. I don't think the Bible speaks approvingly at all of investing - especially of taking interest at great rates of return (which is the American ideal).
I do agree that the parable of the talents pointed to a greater truth, but I personally don't believe Jesus would use an earthly example with which he disagreed, unless he spoke disapprovingly of those actions.
Your opinion does fascinate me Dan. Just a couple of questions:
1) Investing is essentially more open ownership to multiple people. Do you believe businesses should only be privately owned - by one person or just a few individuals? To me, this seems worse. Then we really have wealth in the hands of the few, rather than allowing the average Joe to take ownership.
2) At what point is a rate of return immoral? We invested in a 529 plan for our son for college, nothing much, just a little bit here and there, but the rates could go as high as 10-15%. Should we take that money out and just keep it at home? I also have a retirement account. Should I hope my rate of return isn't too high?
3) What do you think about home ownership? Should I sell at the same price that I bought? If so, I should probably stay in the same place, as every other house is increased in price. But again, how would home ownership be possible without others investing? If I don't keep my money at a bank - and I do realize you didn't explicitly say banks are bad, so this question may be moot - where do banks get the capital to lend for mortgages?
Dan, I too would be interested to know why you think this:
I don't think the Bible speaks approvingly at all of investing - especially of taking interest at great rates of return (which is the American ideal).
For one thing, while the Bible criticizes usury, that's lending at high interest rates. Purchasing a stock isn't lending, it's buying: buying a share in the company on the promise of receiving a share of any profits that may accrue. Those profits aren't guaranteed, and they're not the result of stockholders having the legal right to demand a return; they're the result of the company being profitable, typically by offering goods or services that are valuable to other people.
Chance is right that public stock ownership decentralizes wealth, so that it's actually a step toward the distributist ideal that many Berry acolytes affirm. More than that, it creates a business relationship between people who have wealth and people who know how to manage wealth: it allows even people with good ideas to connect to the capital to bring those ideas to the market, even if they themselves have modest means. In the broadest sense, the stock market benefits society.
Certainly, I don't think the modern economy is perfect. For one thing, the "limited liability corporation" is no longer reserved for large, risky ventures like dams and canals that would benefit everyone and are thus sponsored by the state. Those businesses that become LLC's face limited risks while facing potentially unlimited profit -- the most the owners stand to lose is precisely what they invested -- and that distorts the company's behavior in favor of risky decisions.
At the same time, the idea of punitive damages distorts behavior in the other direction. In both cases, we've moved away from the ancient, Biblical principle of lex talonis -- proportional justice. The two kinda-sorta balance each other out, and I have no idea how to bring society out of using both, but I'm not entirely happy with the situation.
But I see nothing wrong morally, prudentially, or biblically with stocks, with offering stocks to the investing public, or by having a well maintained market in which to offer those stocks.
On another note, there are a couple noteworthy things about Mr. Wendell Berry of Kentucky criticizing the stock market, starting with the fact that the NYSE is arguably as old as the state government of Kentucky itself. But the most noteworthy thing, I think, is that he wants the stock exchange to fail because he thinks that it's only natural for it to do so, as natural as gravity, but it seems to me that some of his complaints about economics are fundamentally rejections of market economics' description of society and the material universe. Market economics is descriptive, not prescriptive, and its principles of scarcity, supply and demand, the economies of scale, and the division of labor are as real and as immutable as gravity and thermodynamics.
For a group that insists on living in full awareness of how things really are, the agrarians and the like seem in deep denial of the very real mechanisms behind the free market they seem to loathe.
Yeah, I reckon we/I just don't believe that bit of theory. It strikes me as a bit closer to alchemy than science most times, and a bit closer to faith-based rather than fact-based, most times.
Here's a bit more from Berry on Economics and our assumptions.
I'll have to own up right now that I'm not fluent in the language of economics. I have had courses and read multiple authors on the topic, but capitalism as a science just doesn't strike me as sound thinking. I certainly recognize some of its tenets have merit (We ARE motivated by self-interest and/or greed, that greed CAN be directed to have some positive results, etc), but I just don't buy capitalism unfettered as a good idea.
Berry notes:
This optimism rested on the proposition that we were living in a "new world order" and a "new economy" that would "grow" on and on, bringing a prosperity of which every new increment would be "unprecedented"....
The "developed" nations had given to the "free market" the status of a god, and were sacrificing to it their farmers, farmlands, and communities, their forests, wetlands, and prairies, their ecosystems and watersheds. They had accepted universal pollution and global warming as normal costs of doing business.
Here's yet another source for Berry on the economy.
I'm a limited man of limited genius. I don't understand everything and am therefore quite able to be wrong on topics. When I read about economic systems, all I know is that Berry (and Logsdon, Thoreau, Nearing, etc) make sense to me when they describe ideal economics. I can see how what they advocate would work.
On the other hand, the unfettered capitalism advocates make very little sense to me when they make their cases. I don't see how what they advocate can possibly work and can possibly be moral in the process. They leave out too many vital bricks in their wall of logic for it to be sound, in my mind at least.
Yeah, I reckon we/I just don't believe that bit of theory. It strikes me as a bit closer to alchemy than science most times, and a bit closer to faith-based rather than fact-based, most times.
Why's that, Dan? Have you read Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics or Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson and decided that what they're selling is more alchemic than scientific?
Consider the classic market-economics assertion that price ceilings cause shortages. The theory is that an artificially low price simultaneously increases the demand for a product and decreases the supply of a product: more consumers are willing and able to buy the product because it's cheap, and fewer producers are willing or able to offer the product because they would do so either at a loss or at least for less of a profit.
This idea is straightforward compared even to the Newtonian principle that gravitation is inversely proportional to the square of the distance.
This idea requires nothing more than common sense to grasp, unlike the more bizarre observations of modern physics, that light in a vaccuum travels at a finite, unchanging speed and displays the behavior of both a particle and a wave; and that matter can be converted to energy, at a ratio of the square of this finite, unchanging speed.
And, unlike the theories about the origins of the universe, life, and man -- theories that justify your ridiculing six-day creationists as overly literal, and I note that as one who is open-minded about how precisely Genesis fits with history -- this simple principle of economics is reproducible: we can see and measure time and again the shortages that follow from price controls.
Market economics offers simple and elegant explanations for the economic behavior that we observe and even allows us to make very good predictions about what will happen when the state or other actors distort market forces.
So why dismiss market economics as faith-based? Do you have a reason more solid than an inclination or sensibility? Can you offer an alternative explanation for economic activity that is as elegant and more accurate in its predictions?
If you can't, I cannot understand why you would spend multiple blog entries on what the Bible says about economics, implying that the Bible's teachings have implications on economic policy, without learning about the sphere of economics as it actually behaves -- without learning the rules that govern and predict economic behavior and limit what is actually possible in using the means of economic policies to achieve ends like justice and prosperity.
In criticizing anarcho-Communism, Murray Rothbard made an excellent observation that would apply to anyone who would advocate particular economic policies while eschewing the study of economics itself.
"It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a 'dismal science.' But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance."
I've read Sowell (although not that particular book) and I've found his answers simplistic and that they fail to take into account some basic realities. He strikes me as an intelligent man who has bought into a bag of goodies and who then strives to make his system make sense with what he believes.
I'm not unread on the subject. I've read Smith, Sowell, Friedman, Rand, etc. It's just when I read the Sowells of the world, their belief system takes more faith in the Market than I'm willing to place.
Can you offer an alternative explanation for economic activity that is as elegant and more accurate in its predictions?
What I was trying to indicate is that I feel much less capable in explaining what makes sense to me than others I've read. So, yes, I think Wendell Berry's linked articles are a more elegant way to look at economics and its predictions. I think Gene Logsdon's writings are a more reasonable way to consider economics.
Or Art Gish. Or John Ikerd. Aldo Leopold. Dorothy Day. These sorts of folk.
The main problem I have with unfettered capitalism is that it fails to encourage personal and corporate responsibility. It lacks a sustainable plan. Unfettered capitalism, in fact, encourages IR-responsibility and UN-sustainability.
Seems to me.
Read these folk, who explain it better than I, and then we can more common ground on which to talk.
I'm not really sure what to say to someone who links to Wendell Berry and then criticizes Thomas Sowell's writing as simplistic. It is Berry, in my opinion, who fails to acknowledge the economies of scale and the benefits of specialization beyond the most local economy. (Why Berry advocates a local economy rather than sufficiency on an individual level eludes me, but then I still think the difference between traditional technology and modern technology is largely one of degree, not kind.) And I believe it is Berry who tries to fit the square pegs of his policy preferences into the round holes of freedom and stability.
At any rate, you attacked the Sowell's writing and reiterated that you think market economics requires more faith than you have, but that's hardly a substantive response to what I wrote. I do hope you can elucidate why you distrust the market economy without resorting to nothing more than a list of recommended reading.
Someone like Logsdon I mind far less than Berry, at least going from the abstract you linked. I have no problem with people encouraging others to live some particular way of life and offering suggestions for how to do so: it's just that Wendell Berry so villifies the free market -- which is nothing more than the aggregate result of individual economic freedom -- and its defenders that I doubt that such modest goals are all he has in mind.
Ditto with you and your complaints about unfettered capitalism. Tell me, who should have the fetters?
(Let us keep in mind Hazlitt's one lesson, that most errors in economics result in focusing on the short-term effects on one group to the detriment of the long-term effect on everyone. A local economy is more expensive than a technologically advanced global economy: it is less expensive to grow wheat in Kansas and ship it to New York or New Orleans than to try to grow it on Manhatten Island. If Berry gets his way and we have a local economy, especially for "necessary goods" like, presumably, bread and milk, who do the higher prices hurt more? The rich or the poor?)
And, Dan, I would like to know why you think the stock market isn't biblical.
In short, I am talking about at least three thoughts:
1. The Bible condemns usury, charging excessive interest. In some places in the Bible, it would seem to condemn interest at all - at least in loans to one's fellow citizens.
2. Jesus' teachings against wealth-seeking. Ones such as:
Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.
Matthew 6
Or the parable of the rich fool who built more and more barns.
3. From a justice point of view, the notion of investing in companies in order to make a profit when perhaps those companies have unjust or unsustainable practices strikes me as wrong insofar as the spirit of biblical teachings go, if not having a direct command not to invest in naughty companies.
And, if you're like me and believe that our systems are oftentimes (perhaps more often than not) unjust, then supporting most companies - for me, at least - is a moral wrong.
ConAgra. Grows corn. Feeds people. Good company, right? OR, is it one that lobbied/paid for Congress to change policies that benefit them to the detriment of their workers and/or the people in Mexico. (ConAgra has flooded Mexico's economy with cheap US corn, which has had the effect of undermining small farmers, putting them out of business.)
Understand: I don't think that ConAgra or Shell Oil or Kroger or whichever large company you want to talk about is evil, with evil intentions setting out to do wrong.
No, I think that they are motivated by self-interest which will push them (by force of law - since they are obliged by law to try to make a profit for their shareholders) to cut corners. So, if it's cheaper, more efficient and more profitable to set up a factory in Mexico - where human rights, labor and environmental laws are more lax - then THAT is exactly what an unfettered market will encourage. There's nothing there to encourage personal responsibilty and a lot to encourage shoddy and irresponsible business practices.
And THIS Christian does not find support for that sort of behavior in the Bible and will not build more and more barns with their money.
Does that make sense?
Post a Comment