The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry

1970s, academic turned farmer Wendell Berry wrote about how economic success includes the hidden cost of depriving people “of any independent access to the staples of life: clothing, shelter, food, even water.”⁠14 What was once the riches of self‑reliance have become things with a price.

Our time is characterized as much by the abuse and waste of human energy as it is by the abuse and waste of fossil fuel energy.

Once the revolution of exploitation is under way, statesmanship and craftsmanship are gradually replaced by salesmanship.

he’s left in the insanity of denying the bedrock of human existence. Property and mastery: nothing else counts. Earth will be monetized until all trees grow in straight lines, three people own all seven continents, and every large organism is bred to be slaughtered.