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Wendell Berry



Title: Wendell Berry
Berry isn't a permaculturist exactly, but the following might interest you:
from FOOD AND WATER JOURNAL (VT) Fall, 1998
"In Distrust of Movements" by Wendell Berry (keynote address at the Northeast Organic Farmer's Association (NOFA) summer conference, represent a stinging rebuke to our traditional conceptualization of single-issue "movements." It's also a provocative call for a "nameless movement" that is steeped in personal responsibility, localism, & what Berry calls the "domestic arts."
"I have had with my friend Wes Jackson a number of useful conversations about the necessity of getting out of movements--even movements that have seemed necessary and dear to us--when they have lapsed into self-righteousness and self-betrayal, as movements seem almost invariably to do. People in movements too readily learn to deny to others the rights and privileges they demand for themselves. They too easily become unable to mean their own language, as when a "peace movement" becomes violent. they often become too specialized, as if finally they cannot help taking refuge in the pinhole vision of the institutional intellectuals. They almost always fail to be radical enough, dealing finally in effects rather than causes. Or if they deal with single issues or single solutions, as if to assure themselves that they will not be radical enough. And so I must declare my dissatisfaction with movements to promote soil conservation or clean water or clean air or wilderness preservation or sustainable agriculture or community health or the welfare of children. Worthy as these and other goals may be, they cannot be achieved alone. They cannot be responsibly advocated alone. I am dissatisfied with such efforts because they are too specialized, they are not comprehensive enough, they are not radical enough, they virtually predict their own failure by implying that we can remedy or control effects while leaving causes in place. Ultimately, I think, they are insincere; they propose that the trouble is caused by other people; they would like to change policy but not behavior.
The worst danger may be that a movement will lose its language either to its own confusion about meaning & practice, or to preemption by its enemies. I remember, for example, my naive confusion at learning that it was possible for advocates of organic agriculture to look upon the "organic method" as an end in itself. To me, organic farming was attractive bothe as a way of conserving nature and as a strategy of survival for small farmers. Imagine my surprise in discovering that there could be huge "organic" monocultures. And so I was not too surprised by the recent attempt of the USDA to appropriate the "organic" label for food irradiation, genetic engineering, and other desecrations of the corporate food economy. Once we allow our language to mean anything that anybody wants it to mean, it becomes impossible to mean what we say. When "home-made" ceases to mean neither mor nor less than "made at home," then it means anything, which is to say that it means nothing. The same decay is at work on words such as "conservation," "sustainable," "safe," "natural," "healthful," "sanitary," and "organic." The use of such words now requires the most exacting control of context and the use immediately of illustrative examples.
Real organic gardeners and farmers who market their produce locally are finding that, to a lot of people, "organic" means something like "trustworthy." And so, for a while, it will be useful for us to talk about the meaning and the economic usefulness of trust and trustworthiness. But we must be careful. Sooner or later; Trust Us Global Foods Inc., will be upon us, advertising safe, sanitary, natural food irradiation. And then we must be prepared to raise another standard and move on. As you see, I have good reasons for declining to name the movement I think I am a part of. I call it The Nameless Movement for Better Ways of Doing--which I hope is too long and uncute to be used as a bumper sticker. I know that movements tend to die with their names and slogans, and so I believe that this Nameless Movement needs to live on and on." (excerpt from a 4&1/2 page article. Your local library should be able to find the address for FOOD AND WATER JOURNALif you wish to get a reprint of this article in full)