yuck bugs

wendell berry isnt even dead yet and people are already misquoting him. thats a shame, especially when berry doesnt even try to be obtuse, obscurantic or even tricky. berry has a list of things we should take into account, and how we might go about them. its not a manifesto, theyre just ideas. but to misquote something like that is pretty hard to do. i had a professor tell me: "berry said that the key to the environmental movement gaining ground in the 70s and not taking a step backward would have been to put humans on calendars instead of animals." referring to groups like greenpeace,peta, etc. this is true, probably. but to use it in support of an argument for continued urban development is just strange. my prof was using it in an argument saying that a hierarchy exists for humans that is actually fundamentally disconnected from the natural world. we are free to make our own decisions based on best available information, information which will always yield the best results for humans, that will, in turn, be the best result for the earth. this is the gist of his argument, using his words.

Berry would punch him in the face if he heard of himself being used to support the concept of limitless human expansion. its laughable, really. its as absurd as someone like milton friedman defending the welfare state. to assume that we as human's are not pushing the carrying capacity in so many departments would go against both scientific and economic opinions. Its not that we are running out of land. its that were running out of good land, etc. you cant just assume that you can grow forever and that science and industry will pick up the slack. thats what we're doing already, and thats why we have factory farms and monsanto controlling our food supply. to argue that this is a good thing is one position and it can be defended using some sort of business model approach, but to argue that this is a good thing using a quote by wendell berry is asinine. and i told him as much.

But you should just let him tell you that, and not me.