Sustainable Living, Wendall Berry

Industrialism begins with technological invention. But agrarianism begins with
givens: land, plants, animals, weather, hunger and the birthright knowledge of
agriculture. Industrialists are always ready to ignore, sell, or destroy the past in
order to gain the entirely unprecedented wealth, comfort, and happiness
supposedly to be found in the future. Agrarian farmers know that their very
identity depends on their willingness to receive gratefully, use responsibly and
hand down intact an inheritance, both natural and cultural, from the past.
Agrarians understand themselves as the users and caretakers of some things they
did not make, and of some things that they cannot make. Wendall Berry