“Be joyful/though you have considered all the facts.”
In this haunting yet optimistic phrase, we’ve been instructed to be joyful, despite the dire and depressing facts our current environmental situation. This phrase resonates deeply with some of my personal beliefs.
On multiple occasions, Wendell Berry strongly asserts that the deterioration of sustainable farming culture can be directly attributed to our capitalist, industrial economy and our unshakeable dependence on fossil fuels (BITT, 60). Berry then goes on to trace the roots of this cultural phenomenon to human ambition (9).
This logic makes a lot of sense to me, but also comes with some pessimistic implications. I believe that this ‘ambition’ is an intrinsic quality of human nature. Capitalist economic structure, both domestically and internationally, links directly to man’s natural competitiveness and our perpetual search for the ‘next best thing’, the thing that is always slightly out of reach, in the interest of greed and self-improvement.
Here’s where I take issue, where I can’t find joy in the facts. By attributing our capitalist economy to human nature, in a way we are accepting that it can’t be changed. It serves as a moral crutch that rationalizes our history of abusing nature, and almost seems to set us on a one-way road to purgatory.
I grappled constantly with this issue, to no avail : How can we possibly take control to change our current situation of environmental abuse, if human nature, by definition, stays constant and cannot be changed?
Perhaps joy can be found with the addition of a little bit of faith in humanity. Perhaps my thoughts would prove more productive if I believed that human nature is capable of changing. Maybe this change shows itself in the type of work we are participating here in Louisville – by working together, we can change the paths of our collective mindset, towards a more hopeful and sustainable future.
As Wendell Berry so aptly summarizes, “Once free of [ambition], we might again go about our work and our lives with a seriousness and pleasure denied to us when we merely submit to a fate already determined by gigantic politics, economics, and technology” (9).
I’m really glad that you’re open to the idea of human nature being malleable. In the beginning of one of her albums, Jewel states that, “What we call human nature is in actuality human habit.” While it’s a bit embarrassing to be quoting Jewel, I think her words hit pretty close to home. The repetition of something can make it feel very natural, almost inalterable; that comfortable feeling doesn’t mean it’s true or right, however. I’m also not entirely convinced that there’s a direct link between capitalism and humanity’s progressive impulse – while that’s certainly one possible outlet for it, other forms are (have to be!) possible as well. I think you allude to that a bit in your remark that, “we can change the paths of our collective mindset;” let’s hope we get a glimpse of some of those options this summer. 🙂