Tuesday, 01 December 2009

• Practice Resurrection: Addressing Societal Illness in Poetry Form

  Very few writers are as acute in diagnosing our cultural and societal illnesses as Wendell Berry.  Berry wrote this poem, The Mad Farmer Liberation Front, in 1973, which you can tell by his references to computer cards, from the days when programs were literally holes punched in cardstock, carried around in crates and fed into computers one at a time.
  
  But that one dated image aside, Berry is exactly right here, both in his diagnosis and his prognosis.  If we want to have any chance, we've got to live out of step with the ordering of society and its values.
  
  Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
  vacation with pay. Want more
  of everything ready-made. Be afraid
  to know your neighbors and to die.
  And you will have a window in your head.
  Not even your future will be a mystery
  any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
  and shut away in a little drawer.
  When they want you to buy something
  they will call you. When they want you
  to die for profit they will let you know. So, friends, every day do something
  that won't compute. Love the Lord.
  Love the world. Work for nothing.
  Take all that you have and be poor.
  Love someone who does not deserve it.
  Denounce the government and embrace
  the flag. Hope to live in that free
  republic for which it stands.
  Give your approval to all you cannot
  understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
  has not encountered he has not destroyed
  
  ....
  
  As soon as the generals and the politicos
  can predict the motions of your mind,
  lose it. Leave it as a sign
  to mark the false trail, the way
  you didn't go. Be like the fox
  who makes more tracks than necessary,
  some in the wrong direction.
  Practice resurrection.

  What do you think?  Does Berry accurately diagnose our cultural malaise?  How can we take his advice to lose our minds?  What does it mean to practice resurrection?

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