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The Way of Ignorance: And Other Essays

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This book is disturbingly honest. The honesty oozes from the pages of these analytic and interpretative literary compositions. It's a bracing honesty that I am not always prepared for -- but have come to expect from this septuagenarian agrarian. In my favorite of these essays - "The Burden of the Gospels", Mr. Berry muses:

But what, for example, are we to make of Luke 14:26: "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple." This contradicts not only the fifth commandment but Jesus' own instruction to "Love thy neighbor as thyself." It contradicts his obedience to his mother at the marriage in Cana of Galilee. It contradicts the concern he shows for the relatives of his friends and followers..."

And then with stunning clarity offers the following:
" We may say with some reason that such apparent difficulties might be resolved if we knew more, a further difficulty being that we don't know more. The Gospels, like all other written works, impose on their readers the burden of their incompleteness. However partial we may be to the doctrine of the true account or "realism," we must concede at last that reality is inconceivably great and any representation of it necessarily incomplete."

Wendell Berry has subtitled this essay "An unconfident reader"... I suggest that this sums up the whole of this collection of essays. Berry is unconfident as he reads the American landscape of theologizing, politics, commerce, conservation, and thought. Unconfident -- but as always, uncompromisingly honest in his reading. +Aaron K.

This collection of essays centers on the concept of accepting humankind's inevitable ignorance, as an antidote to deadly hubris. As Berry says, "Creatures who have armed themselves with the power of limitless destruction" must not pridefully embrace their limited knowledge. Instead, the "way of ignorance ... is to be careful, to know the limits and efficacy of our knowledge. It is to be humble, and to work on an appropriate scale."

Scale is a recurring theme here as Berry returns to the roots of his thinking in the realm of family farming. His essays touch on environmental destruction, factory farming, the weaknesses of the 'save the blank' movement. But also on The Gospels, the future of the Democratic party, and the value of husbandry in a materialistic world.

I always enjoy Berry's thoughts as I find him one of the clear, non-polarized voices out there. He speaks not just as a conservationist but as a working farmer, not just as a liberal but as a Christian. He points out the faults of the liberal movement as readily as he criticizes the corporate culture. I prefer his book-length work as i feel here he can only briefly touch on subjects. The collection also includes essays that feel a bit redundant or not of as much interest. Still his work here is also humble and to scale, and so the 180 pages can be quickly read and the best of the harvest pulled out for closer attention.

The Way of Ignorance is a plea for humility. Wendell Berry asks the simple question, "Can great power or great wealth be kind to small places?" and knows that the earnest believer-in-what-could-be will have to live with heartbreak. "By living as we do, in our ignorance and our pride, we are diminishing our world and the possibility of life." The purity of Berry's vision enables him to speak with a voice that is radical and simple. He restores us to our forgotten common sense. He opens our eyes to the beauty of small places and calls us to tend to their uncompromising complexities. He bids us hold tight to the irreplaceable.

Berry's plea for humility extends to all, from overly confident scientists and self-assured political leaders to the "many Christians who are exceedingly confident in their understanding of themselves in their faith." "When Jesus speaks of having life more abundantly . . . He is talking about a finite world that is infinitely holy, a world of time that is filled with life that is eternal. His offer of more abundant life, then, is not an invitation to declare ourselves as certified `Christians,' but rather to become conscious, consenting, and responsible participants in the one great life . . . To [this offer] we have chosen to respond with the economics of extinction." "Violence, in short, is the norm of our economic life and our national security. The line that connects the bombing of a civilian population to the mountain `removal' by strip-mining to the gullied and poisoned field to the clear-cut watershed to the tortured prisoner seems to run pretty straight."

In a time of arrogance and high-risk miscalculation, technological, economic and military overreaching, Berry is there to call us back - back to our senses. "If we find the consequences of our arrogant ignorance to be humbling, and we are humbled, then we have at hand the first fact of hope: We can change ourselves." I recommend The Way of Ignorance.

Wow! I am blown away again by Wendell Berry's thoughts and way of seeing the world. His ideas should be shouted from the rooftops. First of all, his writing conveys the strength of friendship. He respects and honors his friend, Wes Jackson, throughout the book and especially in the essay "The Way of Ignorance". I ordered the tape of this talk which he gave at Wes Jackson's Land Institute at the Prairie Festival in 2004.

There is so much of value in this book, but the other essay I would highly recommend is "Renewing Husbandry".

The best way to review Berry's work is to quote him.

"The most forceful context of every habitat now is the industrial economy that is doing damage to all habitats. We can't preserve neighborliness or charity or peaceability or an ecological consciousness, or anything else worth preserving, at the same time that we maintain an earth-destroying economy. Nothing ultimately flourishes in our present economy but selfish aims, and these are often mutually contradictory. We have to have a sort of pity for the CEO of a polluting corporation who desires wealth, healthy children, and a vacation in the restorative purity of nature. And surely we have to extend the same pity to those whio are sure that "it takes a village to raise a child" but who forget that it takes a local culture and a local economy to raise a village."

And.
"Harmony between our human economy and the natural world-local adaption-is a perfection we will never finally achieve but must continously try for. There is never a finality to it because it involves living creatures who change. The soil has living creatures in it. It has live roots in it, perennial roots if it is lucky. If it is the soil of the right kind of farm, it has a farm family growing out of it."

The Way of Ignorance and Other Essays is an anthology of writings by cultural critic Wendell Berry - one of Smithsonian magazine's 35 People Who Made a Difference - about topics ranging from what freedom is really being discussed when one speaks of "free market" or "free enterprise", to the costs of so-called rugged individualism in a democratic commonwealth, to sharp-laced observations on the Kerry campaign, and much more. Written in plain terms, The Way of Ignorance takes a cold, hard look at the doubletalk and doublethink that saturates modern American airwaves, stripping them down to bare conundrums, all with a heavy dose of the author's practical evaluation. An enthusiastically recommended, thought-provoking cross-examination of modern society.

I have read individual pieces by Berry before, but although I own three or four of his collections, I had never before read one in its entirety. Now I'm wondering why, and asking myself how soon I can fit another one into my reading schedule. To say that Berry is a Kentucky farmer doesn't quite capture his work, nor does saying that he is an essayist focusing on issues concerning agriculture and the communities that support and are supported by it (which in some way means all of us). Drawing on great skill and long experience as both a farmer and a writer, Berry manages to come across as simultaneously knowledgeable and humble, blunt and subtle, puzzled and confident. Through essays that range across topics from politics to farming to the Gospels, two dominant themes emerge. First, there is no substitute for local knowledge. Second, there is no way forward for individuals, communities, and nations except with humility in the face of what we do not know. These are timely lessons, and Berry's writing is so powerful yet gentle that the importance of what he says washes over you rather than hitting you in the face. This is not to suggest that Berry pulls punches. He has political views that he is not afraid to voice. He is unstinting in his criticism of the "corporate mind," and the political power that is obedient to it. He deplores the corporatization of agriculture, the reduction of values to financial transactions, and the dominance of the supposed rights of ownership, giving corporations and individuals a free pass to ignore the long-term costs and consequences of their gain-driven actions. It is hard to take issue with what he says about the ultimate reliance of all of our human efforts on healthy land and healthy communities. There are moments of great profundity in the writing of this deeply reflective participant in, and critic of, American life. You don't have to be a farmer to deeply appreciate what Berry says about proper stewardship over land. This is a book that tackles the question of what is ultimately valuable and necessary for communities to thrive. I highly recommend it, though it will disturb the complacent.

Poet, philosopher, essayist and farmer, Berry brings together a brilliant collection of essays to critique contemporary America's cultural obsession with bigness and corporate domination. Berry's insightful critique is balanced by a call for a return to local scales of economy and ecology. To reach that goal we, each one of us, are in need of transformative thought and action. This is no small task given personal and social institutions, but it is essential for healing and developing an authentic notion of "the good." Perhaps the most important step in this transformation is that we accept the "wisdom of humility" as a guide to break free from the shackles of arrogant ignorance that so predominates in our modern political/economic/social institutions. In particular, the essays entitled "The Way of Ignorance," "Quantity vs. Form," and "The Burden of the Gospels" are sheer brilliance, to be read again and again. Wendell Berry is a national treasure.

Kyle Gardner, author of Medicine Rock Reflections

Wendell Berry, an otherwise excellent author, has chosen this venue to rail against progress. He seems to want to lock in the 20th, or maybe even the 19th century and stay there.w