Fire and Knowledge

How many deaths of other people’s children by bombing or starvation are we willing to accept in order that we may be free, affluent, and (supposedly) at peace? To that question I answer pretty quickly: None. And I know that I am not the only one who would give that answer: Please. No children. Don’t kill any children for my benefit.

–Wendell Berry, “The Failure of War” in Citizenship Papers (2003), p. 29

Eating industrial meat takes an almost heroic act of not knowing or forgetting.

–Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma (2006), p. 84

I think “Debating The Year of Living Biblically” in Slate might be one of the most entertaining debates I’ve ever read. (Though I’m not sure if this can really be called debating…) I love Matt Labash’s refreshing honesty and humor. And of course A. J. Jacobs responds in kind. I wish more debates had this kind of friendliness and candor. Though probably nothing would be “resolved” that way, either. A shame.

The modern totalitarian state … mobilized the masses. The people themselves were swept up in the enthusiasm, becoming a tyrannical force in their own right. This was made possible by the invention of broadcast media, which, when combined with modern propaganda techniques, allowed the state to cultivate and reproduce the kind of fanaticism and conformity that we see in small groups but on the scale of an entire society. Thus mass society was born: the bastard child of broadcast media and groupthink.

–Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter, Nation of Rebels: Why Counterculture Became Consumer Culture (UK Edition, 2004), p. 25

The greatest possibility of evil in self-medication is the use of too-small doses, so that, instead of clearing up the infection, the microbes are educated to resist penicillin and a host of penicillin-fast organisms is bred out which can be passed on to other individuals and perhaps from there to others until they reach someone who … penicillin cannot save.

In such a case the thoughtless person playing with penicillin treatment is morally responsible for the death of the man who finally succumbs to infection with the penicillin-resistant organism. I hope this evil can be averted.

–Sir Alexander Fleming (1881–1955), the discoverer of penicillin. Quoted in Carl Zimmer, Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea, p. 215

I spent a lot of time looking at the science of nutrition, and learned pretty quickly there’s less there than meets the eye, and that the scientists really haven’t figured out that much about food. Letting them tell us how to eat is probably not a very good idea, and indeed the culture — which is to say tradition and our ancestors — has more to teach us about how to eat well than science does.

–Michael Pollan in “A Conversation with Michael Pollan,” Grist Magazine.

I’ve written a short essay over at DG Blog on The Importance of News.

Let us have the candor to acknowledge that what we call “the economy” or “the free market” is less and less distinguishable from warfare. For about half of this century we worried about world conquest by international communism. Now with less worry (so far) we are witnessing world conquest by international capitalism. Though its political means are milder (so far) than those of communism, this newly internationalized capitalism may prove even more destructive of human cultures and communities, of freedom, and of nature. Its tendency is just as much toward total dominance and control. Confronting this conquest, ratified and licensed by the new international trade agreements, no place and no community in the world may consider itself safe from some form of plunder.

–Wendell Berry, “The Failure of War” in Citizenship Papers (2003), p. 27