Wendell Berry’s knowledge has been dropped in my life

Today in my Typography class, we were assigned to produce a book- an editorial book based upon the life, essays, and poems of Wendell Berry. After I read a couple of his works, I decided to finally read his biography, whereby his manifesto, “The Futility of Global Thinking” was shared. It states the following, and challenges us- like the 10 Commandments- to pay new and deep attention to the laws and healing of the land. Here they are:

1. Beware the justice of Nature.
2. Understand that there can be no successful human economy apart from Nature or in defiance of Nature.
3. Understand that no amount of education can overcome the innate limits of human intelligence and responsibility. We are not smart enough or conscious enough or alert enough to work responsibly on a gigantic scale.
4. In making things always bigger and more centralized, we make them both more vulnerable in themselves and more dangerous to everything else. Learn, therefore, to prefer small-scale elegance and generosity to large-scale greed, crudity, and glamour.
5. Make a home. Help to make a community. Be loyal to what you have made.
6. Put the interest of the community first.
7. Love your neighbors–not the neighbors you pick out, but the ones you have.
8. Love this miraculous world that we did not make, that is a gift to us.
9. As far as you are able make your lives dependent upon your local place, neighborhood, and household–which thrive by care and generosity–and independent of the industrial economy, which thrives by damage.
10. Find work, if you can, that does no damage. Enjoy your work. Work well. (22)

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