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.”
Wendell Berry, What Are People For?, 1990.
“There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.”
Wendell Berry, How To Be a Poet, 2005
“In a society in which nearly everybody is dominated by somebody else's mind or by a disembodied mind, it becomes increasingly difficult to learn the truth about the activities of governments and corporations, about the quality or value of products, or about the health of one's own place and economy.
In such a society, also, our private economies will depend less and less upon the private ownership of real, usable property, and more and more upon property that is institutional and abstract, beyond individual control, such as money, insurance policies, certificates of deposit, stocks, and shares. And as our private economies become more abstract, the mutual, free helps and pleasures of family and community life will be supplanted by a kind of displaced or placeless citizenship and by commerce with impersonal and self-interested suppliers.
Thus, although we are not slaves in name, and cannot be carried to market and sold as somebody else's legal chattels, we are free only within narrow limits. For all our talk about liberation and personal autonomy, there are few choices that we are free to make.
The great enemy of freedom is the alignment of political power with wealth. This alignment destroys the commonwealth — that is, the natural wealth of localities and the local economies of household, neighborhood, and community — and so destroys democracy, of which the commonwealth is the foundation and practical means.”
Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays, 2002
"No doubt there always will be some people willing to do anything at all that is economically or technologically possible, who look upon the world and its creatures without affection and therefore as exploitable without limit. Against that limitlessness, in which we foresee assuredly our ruin, we have only our ancient effort to define ourselves as human and humane.
Now the two great aims of industrialism—replacement of people by technology and concentration of wealth into the hands of a small plutocracy—seem close to fulfillment. At the same time the failures of industrialism have become too great and too dangerous to deny. Corporate industrialism itself has exposed the falsehood that it ever was inevitable or that it ever has given precedence to the common good. It has failed to sustain the health and stability of human society. Among its characteristic signs are destroyed communities, neighborhoods, families, small businesses, and small farms.
Land and people have suffered together, as invariably they must. Under the rule of industrial economics, the land, our country, has been pillaged for the enrichment, supposedly, of those humans who have claimed the right to own or exploit it without limit. Of the land and community much has been consumed, much has been wasted, almost nothing has flourished.
But this has not been inevitable. We do not have to live as if we are alone."
Wendell Berry, It All Turns on Affection, 2012
The great Kentucky naturalist and writer Wendell Berry has passed away at the age of 92.
Stocks were rebounding a bit today, as our obsessive-compulsive markets cannot bear to look at reality for any length of time, don't you know.
Gold and silver rebounded a bit after their recent smackdown.
VIX fell back down again.
The Dollar is just happy to chop sideways.
The war in the Mideast is cooking as the US and Iran climb the ladder of escalation.
The consequences of oil scarcity are just beginning to be priced in. They will stall that reckoning until after the midterm elections if they can.
It will be interesting to see how far they are willing to go.
I don't know if this is completely accurate, but this fellow who reports it is legit.
"Former US Army Secretary Dan Driscoll reportedly met with Trump to inform him that the Iran war was making it impossible to achieve foreign-policy goals, Trump talked exclusively about his ballroom in response, causing Driscoll to resign believing the admin was 'doomed.'” Dominic MichaelTripi, Post on X, September 2, 2026
Need little, want less, and love more.
For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.
Think of it. A friend of God!
Have a pleasant evening.
