Dear friend,
Over the last year, the main questions I’ve been meditating on are what it means to be human and how to live a full, beautiful human life in this age. In our culture of optimization and efficiency and scale, it feels like a small act of resistance to embrace human limitations instead of attempting to overcome them, to elevate what is natural and core to our being rather than attempting to engineer the optimal outcome.
Few writers better capture this sentiment than Wendell Berry, the poet-essayist-farmer whose work pokes at my beliefs in the most brilliantly uncomfortable ways. His most (in)famous essay, which gives a good sense of his general orientation toward our modern world, is titled “Why I Am Not Going To Buy A Computer.” At first, I dismissed him as a Luddite who futilely rejected progress. But in recent months, bewildered and disappointed by the world in many ways, I find myself returning again and again to his writing, seeking a truth I am often reluctant to admit to myself: that we have been bought into a cheap vision of prosperity, and that the good life—not in the way we rationally conceive of it, but in a way that feels deeply right in the marrow of our bones—requires resistance to it.
I first encountered his poem, “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front,” in my friend Max’s (wonderfully written and highly recommended) book review. Berry questions whether the “perks” of our contemporary lives—the quick profit, the ready-made—are truly gifts at all. He prods us to consider whether our desire for convenience and ease might actually be weakening us, and that the friction we try to sandpaper with technology is what helps us build resilience. Perhaps it is the sacred inefficiencies of everyday life that give color to it: rambling banter with a neighbor in the corridor; leisurely strolls without a destination in mind; hand washing dishes after dinner, one person passing the plate for the other to dry.
Do something that won’t compute. Following this maxim may mean I will soon become obsolete, outpaced by those who calculate their utils and control their time and carefully calibrate their existence. But I’ve grown contented with that fate. I wish to live and die as I am: wholly, honestly, and messily; constantly awed by life’s imperfection; wasting endless time to save my soul.
With love,
Ash
Wendell Berry
Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion – put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.
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