Fire and Knowledge

If one deplores the destructiveness and wastefulness of the economy, then one is under an obligation to live as far out on the margin of the economy as one is able: to be economically independent of exploitive industries, to learn to need less, to waste less, to make things last, to give up meaningless luxuries, to understand and resist the language of salesmen and public relations experts, to see through attractive packages, to refuse to purchase fashion or glamour or prestige. If one feels endangered by meaningless, then one is under obligation to refuse meaningless pleasure and to resist meaningless work, and to give up the moral comfort and the excuses of the mentality of specialization.

One way to do this—the way I understand—is to reject the dependences and the artificial needs of urban life, and to go into the countryside and make a home there in the fullest and most permanent sense: that is, live on and use and preserve and learn from and enrich and enjoy the land. I realize that to modern ears this sounds anachronistic and self-indulgent, but I believe on the ground of experience that it is highly relevant, and that it offers the possibility of a coherent and particularized meaningfulness that is beyond the reach of the ways of life of “average Americans.” My own plans have come to involve an idea of subsistence agriculture—which does not mean I advocate the privation and extreme hardship usually associated with such an idea. It means, simply, that along with my other occupations I intend to raise on my own land enough food for my family. Within the obvious limitations, I want my home to be a self-sufficient place.

–Wendell Berry, “Some Thoughts on Citizenship and Conscience” in The Long-Legged House (1969), pp. 87-88