Source: Berry, Wendell. 1986. The body and the earth. p. 97-140. In Wendell Berry (ed.) The unsettling of America: culture and agriculture. Sierra Club Books, San Francisco, CA.

In this essay, Berry discusses how a series of disconnections between the body and soul, husband and wife, marriage and community, and the community and earth are harmful to the world. His apparent goal is to stress how culture and humanity are destroying the land. He points out that all people are at fault and responsible for what happens to the earth and thus, we should change what we are doing. Berry argues that we should treat the earth as we treat our bodies. He says that people strive to be healthy, but we have forgotten that to be healthy we must also be whole. According to Berry we are no longer whole because culture has caused a separation between the body and the soul. The soul controls our feelings of grief and joy. If the emotions of the soul become separated from our body, we replace these emotions with greed, scandal, and violence. These emotions cause us to become abusive to ourselves, others, and the earth. In order that this does not happen, people have to see that what we do affects the earth and the life on it. Berry sees the divisions of the roles of men and women as leading to the exploitation of the earth as well. These roles have caused men and women to become disconnected from each other. This combined with how society has misled young people as to the sacrifice and commitment that must go into love and marriage leads to discontent. This in turn can lead to infidelity. Berry says that there are parallels between the breakdown of the household and marriages and the disconnection and disrespect of the people for the land. He points out that people must first learn to be faithful to each other so that they can be faithful to humanity and the earth. Berry also finds it important that fertility is no longer in the hands of the individual person. As fertility of people, and the control of that fertility, has been given to doctors and drugs, the fertility of the land has been taken over by the use of chemicals. Berry believes that if agriculture is to succeed, then it needs to preserve "wildness." Order created by humans must also include the order created by nature, or wild nature will not survive. People need no longer grow their own food and food production has become ruled by the economy. He believes that people would be better off if everyone again had this responsibility of producing their own food so that each person could see the impact that every individual has on the earth.

Abstract Author: Sarah H. Scally, 16 October 1996.

SUSAG Abstracts: Go back to the SUSAG Abstracts search page.