A Word on Inspirations and Purpose

I've decided to start this new journal for two basic reasons: first to record my academic (and hopefully professional) projects in sustainable economic development and also to stay in touch with as many as possible when I'm working away from home.

The title I have adapted from a Wendell Berry poem Do Not Be Ashamed. Until this year I had not read Berry, though I had meant to for a while. In preparing for my internship at the Maya Mountain Research Farm, I have been reading his collection of essays The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture. Within ten pages, I was impressed by his sense of unapologetic conviction, that only an involved farmer could claim when discussing our relationship to (e)arth. He speaks as a partisan on behalf of our humane instincts and history that challenges the consumerist conventional wisdom. His voice is outside the narrow discourse of ownership (not stewardship), competition (not cooperation), and care (not exploitation).

I could repeat his philosophy for volumes, but when he encounters questions of practical steps toward sustainable social change two related themes emerge. At the most fundamental level, our social reality is determined by personal choices and experiences. As a young student, whose agricultural experience is limited to small scale gardening, this is a challenging idea. It is especially bad news for "experts", perhaps Berry's least favorite title. This is at the heart of why I am going to Belize and what I hope to do after graduation. All the journals and books in the world can't teach me the reality of a farmer or her community.

His second theme is no less challenging. Berry questions the potential of generalized solutions to problems that are perpetuated by individual thought. Conservation organizations, many of which Berry is a venerated member, are not the best hope for social change because they are another division of labor. Instead of changing ones lifestyle to agree with ones convictions, a contribution to an organization of conservation "experts" or "advocates" is sometimes used as an offset, even a penance. Institutions, to Berry, are shaped by culture which in turn is expressed by individuals and families. Changing the head of the EPA might affect a standard here or a regulation there, but the real threat to sustainable farming and the unrelenting threat to the earth is our alienation from it. As a student of government and institutions, this challenges my reflexive dependence on organization and legislation, to think more broadly about our culture and my own lifestyle.

Over the next month I'll have a lot to think over. The tension between my interest in the "theory" of sustainable agriculture and need for experience will be playing out for sometime. I won't hold my breath for any conclusions on the concepts I've only started to hack into above, but maybe I'll get some vague direction, before too many bills need to be paid.