I mentioned in my last post and in class that I have been getting lost in the ideal of spirituality and nature, finding it difficult to draw lines between science, ecology, religion, and spirituality. Not that lines need to be drawn, but figuring out how these concepts interact with each other and reconcile or accentuate their differences is a personal mess I'm trying to muddle through. I guess you could call it spring cleaning.
So, not unexpectedly, Wendell Berry's "Preserving Wildness" got my ball rolling, especially when considering Garrard's characterization of Berry's sacred relationship with nature. As mentioned in my last post, I read Garrard as pretty much a blank slate. (I had read Berry before, but on a totally nonacademic, uncritical level, so I stand by my blank slate.) His discussion of Berry in "Dwelling" only stood out as an area where Christianity is dragged into the already-complicated mix of concepts in Ecocriticism. However, looking back I can't help but feel like Garrard is implying that Berry's Christian ecology (hmmm...could we call it that? Does that exist?) somehow makes his message easily dismissible. Maybe I feel this way because of Garrard's use of quotation marks, or the fact that he argues that Berry's "neo-Jeffersonian utopia" is, well, a neo-Jeffersonian utopia, thus an oppressive system where outsiders are, according to Garrard, "less human" than insiders. Essentially, I do not think Berry's work is exclusively guilty of such oppression; what ideology doesn't, in some way, consider outsiders to be less? In a way, a feminist regards a misogynist to be less human, right?
It seems as if Garrard is simply brushing aside Berry, characterizing him as just another white, Christian farmer who uses his Christian ideology to make sense of oppression.
Instead, I think Berry's incorporation of religion and ecology/agrarianism fosters a sense of equality. For instance, in "Preserving Wildness" Berry surveys the status of humans and nature: "It is a spiritual predicament, for it requires us to be properly humble and grateful; time and again, it asks us to be still and wait. But it is also a practical problem, for it requires us to do things" (518, emphasis in original). Here he is clearly pitting humans, that is everyone inside and outside of the farming/white/Christian communities, against something bigger like nature or god or whatever--not against each other. I see where his use of "properly" here may be somewhat problematic, suggesting some standard set by someone "in charge," but I also see a greater call of unity. Later, Berry's discussion of nature and human sameness and differences also unifies, noting the inherent similarities of all humans. (I have more to say about this, but for the sake of brevity I'll cut it short.)
Also, I'd like to hear thoughts on technology, ecology, and spirituality. Is technology always an opponent to a spiritual nature, as Berry sometimes suggests? (I thought Garrard's remark that Berry even opposes technology in agriculture is somewhat overblown, as Berry recognizes the inevitability of technology and constantly wrestles with ways in which to coexist with it. I mean, come on, the man drives a car.)
More to come on this...
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I have yet to really see any of our readings focus on religion (or related). In fact, I think our readings avoid it, which, for me, is to their benefit. Being anti-religion, most religious arguments falls on my deaf ears.
ReplyDeleteYet, I agree that Garrard does overblow on Berry. I think Berry is just passionate.
I continue to think that Berry's mind is an endlessly synthesizing one, in which nothing is necessarily counted out. He has worked as a member of a group that sought to produce discussion and to some degree reconcile parts of different world religious traditions. He supports Wes Jackson's large-scale political engagement for a 50 year farm bill (cf. their dual article in the New York Times suggesting it). Clearly, such a synthesizing and robust mind as his does not wish to exclude anyone, and if he were in the same room while Garrard and Buell made their criticisms, I'm sure he would drawl out some Kentucky-ready answers for them in short order. My point is, to dismiss him for being an old-fashioned white Christian Kentucky-farmer is wrong. There is a difference between manners and meaning, and I think your point is a good one. Bill McKibben (another White Christian Male) has a great essay called the Christian Paradox that I think appeared in Harper's, that is similar to the piece Berry writes on Xianity and the Environment. One cannot divorce one's metaphysical beliefs from practice in any discipline, be they atheistic, pantheistic, theistic, or other. To say, however, that there is one Buddhist tradition, one atheist tradition, or one Christian tradition that speaks for the religion as a whole, or, in some cases, that is even the dominant one, is reductive. Malcolm X and the black panthers and MLK Jr. were both members of the civil rights movement. That doesn't make the civil rights movement as a whole violent and ignorant, only aspects of it that did not latch on to the true significance of the message. The same goes for religions.
ReplyDeleteGood post Sam...I hope we get to talk about this more.
Rock,
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't say our texts avoid spirituality or religion. Several of our texts entertain the idea of a spiritual relationship with nature. Gerrard even addresses Nazism--obviously a school of thought with religion as a central concern--in his discussion(s) of Heidegger.
I don't consider my self religious or anti-religious. Just curious.
Sam,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you. I don’t think that Berry is against technology per se, but against the way we manage/mismanage technology. In his piece, he calls for the marriage of practicality and spirituality. He writes, “The worst disease of our society is probably the ideology of technological heroism, according to which more and more people willingly cause large-scale effects that they do not foresee and that they cannot control.” He is concerned with the “effects” and “control” of technology and our moral responsibility as “land dwellers” to guard and preserve the land.
Eric, I have to take exception to your implication that Malcolm X was "ignorant." Have you read "The Autobiography of Malcom X"?
ReplyDeleteI do not see Garrard lumping all Christians into one group. He makes a distinction between the fundamentalist, apocalyptic Christians who welcome environmental debacle as hastening the end times and those, like Berry, who are fighting to save the planet.
Thanks for the extra info on Berry's actions. I agree with you that he has a very sympathetic mind (his term) and is also synthetic. Maybe his views on technology are not as simplistic as they may seem at first glance. I respect his attempt to lay out a midle ground between biocentric and destructively anthrocentric positions on human/nature relations.