6 ms·

Wendell Berry has died

• toomuchtodo 27d ago
  https://archive.today/rAr8f https://archive.today/rAr8f https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendell_Berry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendell_Berry
• schoen 27d ago
  I was assigned to read some of his work in high school. Among (many) other things, he wrote a fair amount of criticism of technology and computers. https://classes.matthewjbrown.net/teaching-files/philtech/berry-computer.pdf https://classes.matthewjbrown.net/teaching-files/philtech/be... I was always struck that one of the letters in opposition to Berry's view was written by Nathaniel Borenstein, the co-inventor of MIME. It was an odd experience for me because it was coming from such a different worldview that I generally felt I couldn't relate to what Berry was saying at all. (I could contrast that with some of Cliff Stoll's writings about his skepticism of computers, which are always coming from a culturally familiar place and are at least readily comprehensible for me.) I also have a book Berry wrote as a rejoinder to E. O. Wilson's Consilience (called Life is a Miracle). I put the two next to each other on my bookshelf!
• silver92bullet 27d ago
  This is really sad to see. I didn't agree with him on much but his viewpoints and arguments definitely made me consider my assumptions about technology. It helped me reconsider whether it was always good for us as humans to make things easier and more convenient via technology. He helped me realize that sometimes to be human is to go through the process to see the fruit of your labor.
• grantpitt 27d ago
  I learned of Berry just this last year. His book 'The Unsettling of America' really had an impact on me. He was a leader who lived what he preached. RIP.
• Curiositry 27d ago
  I have only read a handful of Berry's books, mostly novels and short story collections, but several of them are among of my all-time favorites: thoughtful, moving, humane, and surprisingly funny. They're especially enjoyable when read aloud. Berry was one of the few celebrities I hoped to one day meet in person.
  • grigri907 25d ago
    I think he'd be offended by the title of celebrity, but I know exactly what you mean. There was a documentary done on him several years ago, in part driven by Nick Offerman, in which Berry agreed to participate only if they didn't show his face.
• nephihaha 27d ago
  Wendell Berry is practically unknown in the UK, and I tried to introduce his work to a book group a couple of years ago. Unfortunately due to the nature of the book group, we had new members who hadn't read it and another who seemed more interested reading George Monbiot than Wendell Berry (a shame since Monbiot is overexposed and has little personal experience of working the land). Quote from Wendell Berry on big business and big government: 'The corporate mind at work overthrows all the virtues of the personal mind, or it throws them out of account. The corporate mind knows no affection, no desire that is not greedy, no local or personal loyalty, no sympathy or reverence or gratitude, no temperance or thrift or self-restraint. It does not observe the first responsibility of intelligence, which is to know when you don't know or when you are being unintelligent. Try to imagine an official standing up in the high councils of a global corporation or a great public institution to say "We have grown too big," or "We now have more power or money than we can responsibly use," . . . -- and you will see what I mean. . . .'
  • 2b3a51 25d ago
    Perhaps Tir by Carwyn Graves would engage the interest of the Monbiot generation and lead them into a slightly different framing (and introduce some Welsh)? (Your quote reminded me of Thomas Hobbes)
• greenie_beans 27d ago
  this one hit me hard! why do i work in technology
  • thataccount 25d ago
    Quiet desperation?
    • greenie_beans 25d ago
      nah, i live a very fulfilling life outside of work. i just found programming enjoyable to do, instead of freelance copywriting which legitimately made me wanna die and never write again. decided that programming was a good source of income that wouldn't starve my writing life
• burnt-resistor 26d ago
  Adjacent to the noble savage myth, the good ol' days illusion meets the grass is greener on the other side. Just 4 generations ago, when people worked a low tech, hand-to-mouth agrarian existence without powered equipment, proper nutrition, or antibiotics, they were at constant risk of starvation from a single low yield harvest. It's a very hard life.
  • talon8635 26d ago
    Reading McCullough bio of Truman and Caro bio of LBJ lead me to the same conclusion. It was brutal, and most who saw any means of escape seized it I’m compelled by the romantic nostalgia, but I know I personally couldn’t cut the mustard
    • burnt-resistor 26d ago
      My grandfather nearly starved to death on his parent's farm a couple of times during the Dustbowl and he contracted a disease while in an immunocompromised state due to malnutrition that left its mark throughout his bones. Later, he helped his mother buy a combination general store and house to support herself.
      • internet_points 25d ago
        The catastrophes caused by the Dustbowl would be an argument against modern mechanized farming: https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/dust-bowl-cause.htm#:~:text=mechanized%20farming%20techniques https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-scienc... https://explaininghistory.org/2026/03/11/the-dust-bowl-an-environmental-catastrophe-that-deepened-the-depression/#the-capitalist-transformation-of-plains-agriculture https://explaininghistory.org/2026/03/11/the-dust-bowl-an-en...
        • elomnusk 25d ago
          Is that the fault of mechanization or the fault of capitalistic greed?
• ChickeNES 25d ago
  Why would I care about some anti-tech person? As someone who grew up in a rural area, with family that ran a hobby farm, descended from sharecroppers, there's nothing to romanticize. Edit: but really, I can't see any possible reason to read this person's writing over, say, something about Norman Borlaug. Never heard of this person before now, HN never contextualizes obits, didn't come here just to fight.
  • maliker 25d ago
    Yes, like every homesteader, Berry is a bit of a LARPer. Even his sparse lifestyle relies on a lot of products and services developed in technological society. He's still a good read though.
    • jollyllama 25d ago
      [flagged]
      • buildsjets 25d ago
        I hate people, but I love gatherings. Ironic, isn't it?
      • ChickeNES 25d ago
        I thought HN discourages canned responses like yours? Do you have a response to the actual dependency argument?
    • grigri907 25d ago
      I mean, he was a career farmer (and writer and teacher) not a homesteader. He had his pet issues with technology but he never advocated for isolating oneself from society. I wouldn't call it LARPing if someone just figures out the life he wants to live and then does it for 90 some-odd years.
      • hunterpayne 25d ago
        I grew up on a farm about 100 miles from where this guy lived. I have never heard of him until now. The type of farming he did wasn't used on working farms since before he (1930s) was born. And there aren't any working farms along the Kentucky river. So yes, he was a LARPer. PS Its distilleries that are along the river and the land there is far too hilly to grow row crops.
• pwillia7 25d ago
  Do yourself a favor and read Jayber Crow -- One of my all time favorite books and really the book that got me back into fiction after a long time away https://www.amazon.com/dp/1582431604?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback https://www.amazon.com/dp/1582431604?lv=shuf&channelId=500&p... > “If you could do it, I suppose, it would be a good idea to live your life in a straight line - starting, say, in the Dark Wood of Error, and proceeding by logical steps through Hell and Purgatory and into Heaven. Or you could take the King's Highway past the appropriately named dangers, toils, and snares, and finally cross the River of Death and enter the Celestial City. But that is not the way I have done it, so far. I am a pilgrim, but my pilgrimage has been wandering and unmarked. Often what has looked like a straight line to me has been a circling or a doubling back. I have been in the Dark Wood of Error any number of times. I have known something of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, but not always in that order. The names of many snares and dangers have been made known to me, but I have seen them only in looking back. Often I have not known where I was going until I was already there. I have had my share of desires and goals, but my life has come to me or I have gone to it mainly by way of mistakes and surprises. Often I have received better than I deserved. Often my fairest hopes have rested on bad mistakes. I am an ignorant pilgrim, crossing a dark valley. And yet for a long time, looking back, I have been unable to shake off the feeling that I have been led - make of that what you will.”
  • jessmartin 25d ago
    Start with Jayber Crow. Then read Hannah Coulter. Then the whole Port Williams collective will open before you like a beatific field.
  • tmseidman 25d ago
    Totally agreed. My copy has been through the ringer.
  • ternaryoperator 25d ago
    Reminds me of Andre Malraux’s remark that an unfortunate aspect of death is that it makes a life look like a journey to a known destination.
• Preston67 25d ago
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• Preston67 25d ago
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• thataccount 25d ago
  [flagged]
  • fhdkweig 25d ago
    accelerated?
    • thataccount 25d ago
      as in hastened.
      • stonogo 25d ago
        The implied question there is "what the hell are you talking about?"
        • thataccount 25d ago
          If you can't figure it out on your own, my telling you won't assist you any further.
        • fhdkweig 25d ago
          I thought maybe he meant "excellent" but an autocorrect error mangled it, which still seemed wrong but reasonable. But yes, now I am thinking "what the hell are you talking about?"
        • Jtsummers 25d ago
          It's a troll account. Don't feed them, just downvote, flag, and move on. Engaging with trolls is a good way to waste your life.
          • thataccount 25d ago
            Calling people troll accounts who are not, in fact, trolls, is, I suppose, a really convoluted way of being a troll, or at the very least gas lighting. Rest assured, my comments are made in earnest.
• henryrobbins00 25d ago
  I read The World-Ending Fire (Wendell Berry), Hackers (Steven Levy), and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Robert Pirsig) around the same time. I was struck by how similar Berry, Pirsig, and the early MIT hackers thought about Quality work. I gave a talk about it at an images & algorithms class I took in undergrad. It's reassuring to see Wendell Berry was an influential figure to many others in this space. RIP.
  • MithrilTuxedo 25d ago
    Stephen Levy's Artificial Life ended up being my first and only religious experience.
    • henryrobbins00 25d ago
      I can't believe I haven't read this already. Can't wait.
  • kulahan 25d ago
    I’m not sure I’m quite ready to take on 3 books to figure this out - can you explain a little bit what you mean about quality work? Consider my interest piqued!
    • m463 25d ago
      I read zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance years ago and I still think "what IS quality?" edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirsig's_Metaphysics_of_Quality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirsig's_Metaphysics_of_Qualit... lol
      • tclancy 25d ago
        Oh Phaedrus, need anyone tell us?
    • henryrobbins00 25d ago
      I'm afraid I won't do this justice, as it's been a while since I've thought deeply about these ideas, but here is an attempt! For me, Pirsig put it best: "Quality is the goal of Art." I too struggled to understand Pirsig's full metaphysical hierarchy of Quality, but this quote gets at the core of the similarities I saw in these books. Pirsig was concerned with teaching his students writing and maintaining his motorcycle. Berry was concerned with doing fulfilling and meaningful work on the farm. The MIT hackers were concerned with finding The Right Thing: "the unique, correct, elegant [program]." All of these individuals were concerned with some notion of Quality. Interestingly, they all viewed what they were doing as a form of art. A colleague remarked, "Sounds like art," to Pirsig upon hearing his ideas on Quality, to which he responded, "Well, it is art." Levy identifies "You can create art and beauty on the computer." as one of the tenets of The Hacker Ethic. "[A]ll serious computer programs are expressions of an individual." This was the first clue to me that they were all talking about the same thing. Like art, Quality is more a description of a process than product. And the Quality way of working that all three books discuss is very much the same. For me, it is exactly the defining characteristics of the artistic process. Through their work, an artist expresses themselves. They make contact with their medium, be that motorcycle, field, code, or painting. They make choices. Their medium responds. Both evolve with each other. The process is inherently experimental. Importantly, their medium imposes limitations and constraints. I gave this talk back in 2024, two years after I took the course. At the time, I was frustrated with my lack of artistic output post-graduation. These readings made me realize my creative/artistic outlet had just changed for the time being. I took a lot of solace in that. Recently, I've been trying to understand how AI fits into my picture of Quality programming. If you've come this far, you might be interested to see some of my image & algorithm work [1]. The decluttering, exaptation exhibition was the culmination of the class and an independent study. I should also mention Shop Class as Soulcraft (Matthew B. Crawford) as another book that influenced my thinking. [1] https://henryrobbins.com/artwork/ https://henryrobbins.com/artwork/
• stevenfoster 25d ago
  Over on Substack it feels like the whole platform is in mourning and the tributes are beautiful. RIP.
• bmmayer1 25d ago
  "So, friends, every day do something that won’t compute" RIP.
• inciampati 25d ago
  He was a friend of many people in my community. I met him a few times at public lectures. But his way of thinking has had a profound impact on my life. I rejected his rejection of technology. I think he didn't appreciate the power of information technology to support exactly the dreams he held. If people can understand each other, if they can learn from the whole world how to care for their bit of earth, surely that's a good thing? Because he rejected technology he never learned of free, open source, culture. He didn't appreciate that there is another path to liberation of humans from the machines that dominate us—that we embed them in our communities, bend them to our will, and reject exploitation. There's still hope... I however am permanently touched by his perspective on the land as our foundation. I was so inspired that I helped start a farm on the Kentucky River. It's a journey, but we are on our way to implement a little reflection of his vision near where he dreamed us these beautiful dreams of past and future.
  • whoamii 25d ago
    As per One Hundred Years of Solitude: progress tends to destroy as much as it creates.
    • MithrilTuxedo 25d ago
      That's not Schumpeter? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_destruction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_destruction
  • deleted 25d ago
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• trgn 25d ago
  rip, sad day for my homestate, he's a giant here. and for me too, as he's one of those rabbit hole authors, revealing a Truth (capital T). berry is in the same lineage as somebody like muir, and it really pains me to say, but i really wonder how relevant those individualist back to nature (and i dont say this necessarily dismissively, just dont know how to put it) imperatives really are. the world is technological, the necessities of life are commoditized, production and markets are global. how can there be any turning away from it, apart from it being a fetishistic practice, or just eccentric affectation. just think, portable nuclear reactors next to every data center soon. the march goes on. i had similar feeling with kaczinsky, who had similar views on sanctity of nature and impact of modernity, in a way the diagnosis is incredibly correct, but the regimen ~ a return to a more anarchic, hyperlocal, individualistic relation with it ~ completely misplaced. the terroir, does it even exist, has it ever even existed in america?
  • grantpitt 25d ago
    You might find Albert Borgmann a helpful voice here. He describes 'focal things and practices' which push back against the commodification of nearly everything. So, for example, making a meal and eating it with others at a table, reading a book with a friend, singing or playing an instrument, etc. Much more actionable about what can be done, reclaiming agency in a world that feels completely inevitable.
    • trgn 25d ago
      thanks, will look him up.
  • rglover 25d ago
    > the terroir, does it even exist, has it ever even existed in america? Not in the romantic sense and I'd imagine mostly ending in an Into the Wild kind of fate if at all. That said, if you're living in a more rural area, it's not terribly difficult to cultivate a little patch of that experience for yourself. It will never be picture perfect, but you can selectively engage with technology (and society) to an extent that you protect—at the very least—the little allotment you find yourself responsible for stewarding. It requires a reorientation away from a default validation of a highly technical society (both in the literal sense and the Jacques Ellul [1] sense). But until they replace all of the countryside with data centers, it's still within reach. May require some creativity and sweat but it's still out there. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Technological_Society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Technological_Society
• senderista 25d ago
  A life well lived. https://classes.matthewjbrown.net/teaching-files/philtech/berry-computer.pdf https://classes.matthewjbrown.net/teaching-files/philtech/be...
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• nathanallen 25d ago
  > We must address ourselves seriously, and not a little fearfully, to the problem of human scale. What is it? How do we stay within it? What sort of technology enhances our humanity? What sort reduces it? The reason is simply that we cannot live except within limits, and these limits are of many kinds: spatial, material, moral, spiritual. The world has room for many people who are content to live as humans, but only for a relative few intent upon living as giants or as gods -- Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture.
• jondlm 25d ago
  I've been carrying one of his poems around in my pocket recently. I'll leave it here for y'all. Maybe it'll find someone else as it found me when I needed it most: > To go in the dark with a light is to know the light. > To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight, > and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings, > and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.
• kulahan 25d ago
  The last dude is scared of nuclear tech despite it fitting neatly into Berry’s rules except for him being anti-big-tech.
• creimers 25d ago
  I first read Berry as a student of agronomy in university and have been deeply moved and impressed by his work ever since. Coming from a (European) family of farmers I have always felt a profound connection to his characters and stories. He will be remembered.
• msisk6 25d ago
  Years ago I gifted a bunch of computers and stuff to the Orion Society and they gave me some Wendell Berry books in kind. Sort of ironic I first read his books because of my donation of technology.
• Guthwine 25d ago
  I traveled to the Wendell Berry Center numerous times over the last few years - he and his family were a wonderful boon on the local community there. One of my favorite quotes of his, from What Are People For? “Rats and roaches live by competition under the law of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy. It is impossible not to notice how little the proponents of the ideal of competition have to say about honesty, which is the fundamental economic virtue, and how very little they have to say about community, compassion, and mutual help.”