WB 81-131
1. Was Mark Twain an important influence in your early life? 81 (He was in mine, growing up not too far from Hannibal MO...) Did Twain (Sam Clemens) lack "magnanimity"? 882. Do you think "the need to flow, to move outward," to "light out for the Territory" (83-6) and leave one's homeplace has been on balance a good thing for Americans, for the natural and social environments, and for the stability of life generally? Has it stunted our maturity, eviscerated our communities, impaired our relationships? Or do you think westward expansion and personal mobility have been and are mostly good things?
3. Is Aristotle's analysis of tragic drama a clue to what's wrong with our contemporary communal life? 87
4. Is it unusual to encounter regionalists who are not "provincial"? 89
5. Is WB right about our historical "self-righteousness" and the likelihood that our generation will be judged to have been deplorable? 90
6. Do you agree with WB's assessments of globalism and abstraction as "Territories" of escape from responsibility? 91
7. Do you agree with WB about the proper "context of literature"? 93 Can the same be said about philosophy, and every other humanistic discipline?
8. Do you share WB's interpretation of Emerson's statement about suffering? 94
9. Is going home for you a "return to happiness"? 96 If so, are you sure you're not being "sentimental"?
10. Have you ever inadvertently committed "Damage" like WB's pond? 98f. If so, did you learn an important environmental lesson?
11. Do you share WB's sense of the necessity of collecting stories, just as the earth must collect leaves etc., in order to create and sustain a living culture? 103f. How do you think are we doing, in terms of sustaining our local, national, and global cultures? Do we live in a "diminished country"? 104
12. Are our standards too much set by "television and salesmen and outside experts"? 105
13. Do you regret the absence, in most American places now, of the institution of "sittng till bedtime"? 107
14. Is it bad that "succession has given way to supersession"? 111
15. COMMENT?: "the universities are more and more the servants of government and the corporations"...
Add your questions and comments, especially on The Unsettling of America...
==
One of Wendell's biggest fans. He narrates the audiobook version of World-Ending Fire, quite affectingly.
3. Is Aristotle's analysis of tragic drama a clue to what's wrong with our contemporary communal life? 87
ReplyDeleteThe fulfillment and catharsis that Aristotle described as the communal result of tragic drama is an artificial enactment of the way a mature community survives tragedy in fact. The community wisdom of tragic drama is in the implicit understanding that no community can survive that cannot survive the worst. Tragic drama attests to the community’s need to survive the worst that it knows, or imagines, can happen.
Berry, Wendell. The World-Ending Fire (p. 87). Catapult. Kindle Edition.
Absolutely! Our modern communities are fragile and co-dependent networks of wiring and pipes and no longer based on strong bonds between people. Witness the disaster going on in Jackson MS 8/31/2022 (boiling their water since July, white flight leading to Jackson becoming 80% African American, prejudice and bias leading to a deteriorating public water utility.
5. Is WB right about our historical "self-righteousness" and the likelihood that our generation will be judged to have been deplorable? 90
ReplyDeleteThe probability is overwhelming that we belong to a generation that will be found by its successors to have behaved deplorably. Not to know that is, again, to be in error and to neglect essential work, and some of this work, as before, is work of the imagination. How can we imagine our situation or our history if we think we are superior to it?
Berry, Wendell. The World-Ending Fire (p. 90). Catapult. Kindle Edition.
Every generation could be judged by a future generation to have behaved deplorably. The TV series Mad men (2007-2015) often portrayed the deplorable ways that post second world war generation mistreated the environment not to mention how they treated women. Every small farm family which Wendell idealizes of that generation had a ditch where they dumped all their trash, appliances, even old cars. When the floods came, much of it went down stream. Deplorable is when you know better and still act irresponsibly and who can say when someone, let alone a whole society, knows better than to pollute the environment. Even Wendell Berry sees the role of tobacco growing as a crop that kept the small farm in business even though it was later clear that tobacco was the cause of many health problems. It “did preserve a sort of balance between the interests of industrialism and agrarianism which prevented their inherent difference and opposition from becoming absolute and thus absolutely destructive of the agrarian society…the program worked in the best interests of both…” according to Wendell Barry. My goodness, it used to be a common practice to dump the dirty oil from a car into the storm drains in Chicago. Hindsight is always 20-20.
6. I do agree with Berry's assessment of globalism and abstraction as "Territories" of escape from responsibility especially in our current day and age. With multiple technological advancements such as the internet and social media people from all over the world are connecting to others from different countries, cultures, etc. All the access to knowledge at our fingertips and exposure to not only our local community and government, but those all over the world make the individual feel small and insignificant. This results in two things: First, witnessing tragedies all over the world makes an individual jaded and untrusting, making it difficult to create a unified communal assembly. Second, because the individual is aware of how small and insignificant they are (in comparison with the globe they now have access to), there's little to no faith that anything they do would genuinely make a difference so why even try? All of this is not to generalize all the individuals in the world but they are ideas I've heard and seen in real time and I do think, especially with social media, it makes a difference.
ReplyDelete9. Is going home for you a "return to happiness"? 96 If so, are you sure you're not being "sentimental"?
ReplyDeleteI think for me returning home is more than sentimental I think it actually brings me joy going back home because its away from the business of what Murfreesboro and its alot more laid back and the traffic isnt everywhere, though you could also look at it in the opportunity wise sentiment and realize somewhere like Murfreesboro is alot better off economically and its actually good I'm in Tennessee.