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I’ve written a lot about Wendell Berry and how he has influenced me professionally and personally.
Prepare for students
Wendell Berry and the University’s Loss
Wendell Berry’s Things Peace in the Wild
Lack of peace
Wendell Berry’s goal
Meet Wendell Berry
Surprisingly, there are more.
The following is an excerpt from the “Two Thoughts”, which he published in 2003 about the World Trade Center attack. Very roughly, this is an article that explores the two “types of ideas” we have and the effects of using or not using.
I am here Two Thoughts of Educators.
Below is an excerpt from the “two thoughts”. You can buy books at Berry at the Berry Center Bookstore.
“What is often proposed today is that if we only get rid of religion and other leftovers from the original past and are inspired by scientific rationalism, we can invent the new values and morals needed to preserve the natural world.
The proposal is completely reasonable and totally doubtful. It assumes that we can empirically know and rationally understand everything involved, which is the assumption that we have to assume our violation in the first place.
Obviously, we need to use our intelligence. But how much wisdom do we have? What kind of wisdom do we have? And how the best human intelligence works?
See Two Thoughts of Educators
In an attempt to answer these questions, I will for some time assume two different human thoughts: rational thought, and the other, due to the lack of better terms, I will call it compassion. I’m going to say it now and try to remind myself that these terms seem to be allegorical, too neat and too separate – although I also need to say that their separation was not invented by me.
A rational mind is the mind that all of us should try to have without perfect expression. This is the most powerful and influential idea that people think they have. Our schools are mainly for the purpose of educating, disseminating and empowering rational thoughts.
Rational thoughts are objective, analytical and empirical. It constitutes its own achievements only by considering facts; it pursues truth through experiments; it is not preconceived, gains authority, religious belief or feeling. Its ideal product is facts, accurate predictions and “wise decisions”.
You might say that this is the official idea of science, industry and government.
The thought of sympathy differs from the thought of rationality, not by unreasonable, but by refusing to limit knowledge or reality to the scope of reason, fact, or experiment, and by making the servant of reason a servant of what it believes and higher. ”
Berry Center
You can find more information about the Berry Center. According to their website, the Berry Center “founded in 2011, the Berry Center is a nonprofit dedicated to bringing the focus, knowledge and cohesion of our devastating industrial agricultural system into work that brings nature as a standard system and cultural change, without accepting permanent damage to eCosphere and taking into account the human health of the local community.”
