The Art of the Commonplace

I have always been moved by Wendell Berry’s philosophy in Art of the Commonplace. I began reading it last semester in my Ecofeminist literature class with Dr. Sterner and was immediately captured. Berry focuses his essays on agrarian lifestyle and the cultural implications of a global market. Berry begins with an explanation the violent destruction of the earth by colonial settlers. The notion of abundance, which the settlers faced when they reached the Americas and saw vast and seemingly infinite amounts of trees and land, allows for destruction. Instead of creating a small, contained shelter that could be sufficiently heated, the early settlers created no shelter, and produced instead an extremely large fire that was impractical and largely wasteful. White settlers took over the land in a violent, destructive manner that offered no regard for the inherent worth within the land. This means of consumption has in many ways defined our history and the western way of thought. In a previous entry I discussed food in relation to colonialism, patriarchy, and racism. Berry’s essays are perhaps a good place to start in understanding the exploitative nature of colonialism and its deep cultural impact on indigenous cultures and societies. He posits that under capitalism, our relationship with the earth and all of its inhabitants becomes exploitative rather than convivial and collaborative. Consumer culture has become so entrenched with image that food production is but one aspect of a growing problem. There is little authenticity in production under capitalist ideology as all value is placed in monetary gain. Food has become processed, genetically manipulated, and altered so incredibly that there is an entire counter culture against this mode of thinking. Is capitalism that bad? Are we as an industrialized nation so far removed from our relationship with the earth that we fail to recognize our own destruction? In many ways, I think that we are. Berry’s philosophy is at once eye-opening and terrifying, empowering and dumbfounding in its oblique obviousness. I think that his essays have the capacity to provide an important link to the agrarian movement and the mainstream as his philosophy is concise and effective.