The Cultivation of a Person

In a world of hyper speed there is little time, if any, for contemplation. The cultivation of a "self" is a concept that is foreign to most. Are we content to be static creatures that never take the time to contemplate our own purpose? Are we content not growing or should we take the time to cultivate our personhood? If the answer is yes, then what is the standard?

A Hatred for the Past

The latest techno-gadget will immediately render the previous gadget obsolete and there will not be time to give any thought to this new item before it becomes a relic of the past. And who is to say that this new item has any value or is necessary for the cultivation of a person? And who is to say that there will not be any negative effects to the created order?

Who really cares, it's new and we will say 'wow' and then we will discard it into the past.

Simplicity and clarity; two virtues that have been left behind in order to make time for stadiums, megachurches, shopping and plastic.

John Owen

To suppose that whatever God requireth of us that we have power of ourselves to do, is to make the cross and grace of Jesus Christ of none effect.

N.C. Wyeth

Leave the TV and the radio behind
Wonder what you'll find

Are we eroded beyond fertility, are we corrupted beyound restoration?
Have we greatly over estimated the nobility of man?
Is our pathos all consumming?

Mary Sarton

Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self.

Thomas Moore

The many great gardens of the world, of literature and poetry, of painting and music, of religion and architecture, all make the point as clear as possible: The soul cannot thrive in the absence of a garden. If you don't want paradise, you are not human; and if you are not human, you don't have a soul.

Aldo Leopold

There is as yet no social stigma in the possession of a gullied farm, a wrecked forest, or a polluted stream, provided the dividends suffice to send the youngsters to college. Whatever ails the land, the government will fix it.

(Or maybe deified science)

Aldo Leopold

Our grandfathers were less well-housed, well-fed, well-clothed than we are. The strivings by which they bettered their lot are also those which deprived us of [Passenger] pigeons. Perhaps we now grieve because we are not sure, in our hearts, that we have gained by the exchange. The gadgets of industry bring us more comforts than the pigeons did, but do they add as much to the glory of the spring?

Jason Fried

You don't need to outdo the competition. It's expensive and defensive. Underdo your competition. We need more simplicity and clarity.

Rev. 4:11

"Worthy are you, our Lord and our God to receive glory and honor and power; for You created all things and because of Your will they existed and were created."

Thomas Merton

“Those who seek to build a better world without God are those who, trusting in money, power, technology and organization, deride the spiritual strength of faith and love and fix all their hopes on a huge monolithic society, having a monopoly over all power, all production, and even over the minds of its members. But to alienate the spirit of man by subjecting him to such monstrous indignity is to make injustice and violence inevitable. By such means we may indeed increase economic production but in doing so we will only make the world worse.”

When we fail to cultivate a community, a family, a friend, a craft, a plant, the soil, art, nature, a conversation, a story, an animal, a life; we have been reduced to nothing but inept, habitual consumers. The number one form of entertainment in the U.S. is shopping; we seek a life that is promised at our local cathedrals of consumption. Maybe we should call ourselves Mallites.

The Whole Horse

March 2007 | Tune In :: Meditation

One of the primary results — and one of the primary needs — of industrialism is the separation of people and places and products from their histories. To the extent that we participate in the industrial economy, we do not know the histories of our families or of our habitats or of our meals. This is an economy, and in fact a culture, of the one-night stand. “I had a good time,” says the industrial lover, “but don’t ask me my last name.” Just so, the industrial eater says to the svelte industrial hog, “We’ll be together at breakfast. I don’t want to see you before then, and I won’t care to remember you afterwards.”

In this condition, we have many commodities, but little satisfaction, little sense of the sufficiency of anything. The scarcity of satisfaction makes of our many commodities, in fact, an infinite series of commodities, the newer ones invariably promising greater satisfaction then the older ones. And so we can say that the industrial economy’s most marketed commodity is satisfaction, which is repeatedly promised, bought, and paid for, but never delivered. On the other hand, people who have much satisfaction do not need many commodities.

The persistent want of satisfaction is directly and complexly related to the dissociation of ourselves and all our goods from, our and their, histories. If things do not last, are not made to last, they can have no histories, and we who use these things can have no memories. We buy new stuff on the promise of satisfaction because we have forgot the promised satisfaction for which we bought our old stuff.

—Taken from Wendell Berry’s “The Whole Horse” in The Fatal Harvest Reader, (Island Press)

Americans

Are Americans so involved in progress, speed, competitveness, consumption, commercialism and entertaining ourselves to death, that we are unable to truly live and enjoy life?
Are we too busy worshiping the creation that we have forgotten the Creator?
Have we forgotten that we are creatures who owe homage to Someone else?
Are we in awe of anything?

Questions

Do you believe that capitalism is immoral? Why?
Do you believe that an industrial economy is immoral? Why?
Do you think that an electronic media has a negative effect on our culture? Why?
Do you think that the "church" is unaware that the water in which it swims is severely polluted? Explain?

Dwight Eisenhower 1961

As we peer into society's future, we-you and I, and our government-must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

New Century Club for Women, their prayer from 1923-1964

Keep us, O God, from pettiness; Let us be large in thought, in word, in deed.
Let us be done with fault-finding and leave off self-seeking.
May we put away all pretense and meet each other face to face, without self-pity and without prejudice.
May we never be hasty in judgment and always generous.
Let us take time for all things; make us grow, calm, serene, gentle.
Teach us to put into action our better impulses; straightforward and unafraid.
Grant that we may realize it is the little things that create differences; that in the big things of life we are as one.
And may we strive to touch and to know the great common person's heart of us all, and oh, Lord God, let us not forget to be kind. Mary Stewart

Wendell Berry

There is the bad work of pride. There is also the bad work of despair - done poorly out of the failure of hope or vision.

Despair is the too-little of responsibility, as pride is the too-much.

The shoddy work of despair, the pointless work of pride, equally betray Creation. They are wastes of life.

For despair there is no forgiveness, and for pride none. Who in loneliness can forgive?

Milton

she (nature), good cateress,
Means her provision only to the good
That live according to her sober laws
And holy Temperance.

A Natural Model for the Survival of Agriculture

The earth never attempts to farm without livestock; she always raises mixed crops; great pains are taken to preserve the soil and to prevent erosion; the mixed vegetable and animal wastes are converted into humus; there is no waste; the processes of growth and the processes of decay balance one another; ample provision is made to maintain large reserves of fertility; the greatest care is taken to store the rainfall; both plants and animals are left to protect themselves against disease.
An Agricultural Testament 1940
Sir Albert Howard

1928 Book of Common Prayer

Deliver us, we beseech thee, in our several callings, from the service of mammon, that we may do the work which thou givest us to do, in truth, in beauty, and in righteousness, with singleness of heart as thy servants, and to the benefit of our fellow men..

Shaker Motto

Hands to work, hearts to God.

Aristophanes 422BC

Let each man exercise the art he knows.

Wendell Berry on stewardship of the Earth

Our destructiveness has not been, and it is not, inevitable. People who use that excuse are morally incompetent, they are cowardly, and they are lazy. Humans don’t have to live by destroying the sources of their life. People can change; they can learn to do better. All of us, regardless of party, can be moved by love of our land to rise above the greed and contempt of our land’s exploiters.

Edmund Spencer

Full little knowest thou that hast not tride,
What hell it is in suing long to bide:
To loose good dayes, that might be better spent;
To wast long nights in pensive discontent;
To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow;
To feed on hope, to pine with feare and sorrow.
. . . . . . . . .
To fret thy soule with crosses and with cares;
To eate thy heart through comfortlesse dispaires; 13
To fawne, to crowche, to waite, to ride, to ronne,
To spend, to give, to want, to be undonne.
Unhappie wight, borne to desastrous end,
That doth his life in so long tendance spend! Mother Hubberds Tale. Line 895.


What more felicitie can fall to creature
Than to enjoy delight with libertie,
And to be lord of all the workes of Nature,
To raine in th’ aire from earth to highest skie,
To feed on flowres and weeds of glorious feature. Muiopotmos

Beware of Darkness

Watch out now, take care
Beware of the thoughts that linger
Winding up inside your head
The hopelessness around you
In the dead of night
Beware of darkness

George Harrison (not the greatest philosopher but I like these lines)

Edmund Spencer

An illustration from Edmund Spencer's The Shepherd's Calendar

We think, we believe and we know; but if we do not act on it, do we think? Do we believe? Do we know?

Christina's World

"Christina's World" is beautiful and foreboding, sublime and twisted. Christina is strong but frail and unable to reach her destination due to her own infirmities. She will perish with her home insight unless the lord of the house humbles himself and comes to rescue her.

Dostoevsky

If there is no eternal perspective then everything is permitted.

Amiel

I realize with intensity, that man in all that he does that is great and noble is only the organ of something higher than himself.

An Old Prayer

Sin's deformity is stamped upon me,
darkens my brow,
touches me with corruption:
How can I flaunt myself proudly?
Lowest abasement is my due place,
for I am less than nothing before thee.
Help me to see myself in thy sight,
then pride must wither, decay, die, perish.
Humble my heart before thee,
and replenish it with thy choicest gifts.

Isaiah 5:8

Woe to those who add house to house and field to field, until there is no more room, so that you have to live alone in the midst of the land!

Manifest plainness,
Embrace simplicity,
Reduce selfishness,
Have few desires,

Save one; seek ye first the Kingdom of God.

Henry David Thoreau

I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.

Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.

Henry David Thoreau went to the woods to confront what was real and to leave superficiality behind. Today man is not even aware of the superficiality of his tragic life, nor the fact that he is about to be consumed my the monster of narcissism.

Jonathan Edwards

"If every event has a cause, then so do free human choices. God is the first cause of everything, therefore God must be the cause of our free choices."

If the infinite-personal God of the Bible does not exist then all thinking is futile and all ethical judgments are null and void. We are left with the thinking of Jean Paul Sartre; "man is but a useless passion" or from Shakespear, "Life is a tale told by an idiot full of sound of fury and signifying nothing".

Connecting Dots

What connects the topics listed below?
The dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico; farm practices on the Great Plains; the depletion of the Ogallala aquifer; antibiotic resistance; dying rural towns; rising obesity rates; cancer; urban sprawl and oil wars.

David Cronenberg 1906

The idea of a mass audience was really an invention of the Industrial Revolution.

Andre Gide 1869-1951

Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.

The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of the cheap price is forgotten.

John Ruskin

There is scarcely anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse, and sell a little more cheaply. The person who buys on price alone is this man's lawful prey.

When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.

To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion, all in one.

Every increased possession loads us with new weariness.

Louis Nizer

A man who works with his hands is a laborer; a man that works with his hands and brain is a craftsman; but a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart is an artist.

John Ruskin

Architecture is the art which so disposes and adorns the edifices raised by man, that the sight of them may contribute to his mental health, power and pleasure.


When we build let us think that we build forever. Let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for; and let us think, as we lay stone on stone, that a time is to come when those stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say, as they look upon our labor and wrought substance of them, "See! This our father did for us."

Is Industrialism Immoral?

Industrialism is a philosophy based upon an idea that resources have no limits and that our ability to consume has no limits. I believe this idea to be naive and narcissistic but is it immoral?
Is it immoral to consciously deplete resources and to degrade creation without making a return for future generations? Is it immoral to destroy cultures for temporal gain?

It is not a sin to be naive but it is to be narcissistic, materialistic, greedy and destructive.

Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry said, “To cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster its renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival."

Do We Live in an Insane Culture?

An Insane Culture

Is narcissistic, existential, secular, hypocritical, naval gazing and dull

Lacks direction

Creates dependency

Consumes but does not cultivate

Mines the earth without ever enriching it

Has an electronic community that does not require commitment

A plethora of information but lacking in wisdom

Numerous options without anytime to enjoy them

Places restrictions on individuals in the name of social justice

Has a social justice system without a foundation

Attempts to replace the family with the state

Does not discipline its' children

Has an economic system based on nonrenewable resources

Is arrogant, whether right or left

Fast

Non-creative

Anonymous

Anti-reflective

Anti-spiritual

Celebrates diversity without unity

An insane culture like that of the West should be called an anti-culture because with rare exception it does not cultivate anything.

An insane culture is bent on destruction in every realm; spiritual, social, economic, political, agricultural, the arts and judicial.

Russell Baker

"Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things.

Russell Baker

An educated person is one who has learned that information almost always turns out to be at best incomplete and very often false, misleading, fictitious, mendacious - just dead wrong.
Russell Baker

Steve Byrnes

“Any idiot can build a PowerPoint Presentation and just about every idiot does.” Steve Byrnes

Wendell Berry

I said a while ago that to agrarianism farming is the proper use and care of an immeasurable gift. The shortest way to understand this, I suppose, is the religious way. Among the commonplaces of the Bible, for example, are the admonitions that the world was made and approved by God, that it belongs to Him, and that its good things come to us from Him as gifts. Beyond those ideas is the idea that the whole Creation exists only by participating in the life of God, sharing in His being, breathing His breath. “The world,” Gerard Manley Hopkins said, “is charged with the grandeur of God.” Some such thoughts would have been familiar to most people during most of human history. They seem strange to us, and what has estranged us from them is our economy. The industrial economy could not have been derived from such thoughts any more than it could have been derived from the golden rule.

If we believed that the existence of the world is rooted in mystery and in sanctity, then we would have a different economy. It would still be an economy of use, necessarily, but it would be an economy also of return. The economy would have to accommodate the need to be worthy of the gifts we receive and use, and this would involve a return of propitiation, praise, gratitude, responsibility, good use, good care, and a proper regard for the unborn. What is most conspicuously absent from the industrial economy and industrial culture is this idea of return. Industrial humans relate themselves to the world and its creatures by fairly direct acts of violence. Mostly we take without asking, use without respect or gratitude, and give nothing in return.

To perceive the world and our life in it as gifts originating in sanctity is to see our human economy as a continuing moral crisis. Our life of need and work forces us inescapably to use in time things belonging to eternity, and to assign finite values to things already recognized as infinitely valuable. This is a fearful predicament. It calls for prudence, humility, good work, propriety of scale. It calls for the complex responsibilities of caretaking and giving-back that we mean by “stewardship.” To all of this the idea of the immeasurable value of the resource is central.

The Earth Belongs to God

The Earth belongs to God; look at what we have done to His creation.

Love Without Truth

Love without truth is compromise;
Truth without love is ugly.
Francis Schaeffer

To Be Sane

"To be sane in a mad time
is bad for the brain, worse
for the heart."

Wendell Berry