By Wendell Berry
from The Way Of Ignorance
We are destroying our country - I mean our country itself, our land. This is a terrible thing to know, but it is not a reason for despair unless we decide to continue the destruction. If we decide to continue the destruction, that will not be because we have no other choice. This destruction is not necessary. It is not inevitable, except that by our submissiveness we make it so.
We Americans are not usually thought to be a submissive people, but of course we are. Why else would we allow our country to be destroyed? Why else would we be rewarding its destroyers? Why else would we all - by proxies we have given to greedy corporations and corrupt politicians - be participating in its destruction?...
How do we submit? By not being radical enough. Or by not being thorough enough, which is the same thing...
[In the midst of all our good efforts to save the earth] there lies an odd and embarrassing fact. Who is polluting the river? Well, among others, we are, we members of Save the River, who flush our toilets and use the latest toxic products only a little less thoughtlessly than everybody else. Who is wrecking the inner city? We are, of course, we members of Save the Inner City, who drive our cars and shop at the malls and the chain stores only a little less thoughtlessly than everybody else. It doesn't make any difference that we mostly don't have an alternative to doing as we do; we still share the guilt. In a centralized, specialized, commercialized, mechanized society such as ours, we all are necessarily, and in considerable measure, helping to cause the problems we are helping to deplore and trying to solve.
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