A friend just sent me this neat little interview with Wendell Berry in Sun Magazine. Though not everything in it will be lauded on ASC, I think many of the gems offered, by the always eloquent and insightful Berry, will resonate. The interview touches on a wide range of topics including agriculture, ecology, the good life, science, art, culture, faith, intellectual property, politics, economy, academia, writing, war and love.

One of the unique strengths of Berry's agrarian conservationism is that, similar to the distributist thought of G.K. Chesterton; Hilaire Belloc; or Dorothy Day, it defies convention and cannot be easily pigeonholed as liberal; conservative; leftist; rightist; centrist; libertarian or any of the other more common -ians; -ists or -isms. He offers refreshing third-way commentary that should be attractive to anyone dissatisfied with the state capitalism vs. state socialism - either way we get large scale nationalism, government and industry - debate that seems to mark our current socio-political discourse.

Some highlights:

Art is a way of making, and science is a way of knowing. You’re never going to escape the need for either one; you’ve got to have a certain amount of knowledge, and you’ve got to have a certain amount of art. You’ve got to know how to make a thing — whether it’s a crop or a novel — and you’ve got to have a way of making it...

The human definition of the natural world is always going to be too small, because the world’s more diverse and complex than we can ever know. We’re not going to comprehend it; it comprehends us. The question is whether we can use it with respect. Some people in the past who knew very little biology were able to use the land without destroying it. We, who know a great deal of biology, are destroying our land in order to use it...

The real limit on government would be reasonably independent, self-sustaining localities and communities. But if there is no local independence, then governments and other organizations have a kind of freedom that they wouldn’t have otherwise...

I’m not going to subscribe to anybody’s excuse for coldblooded killing. There’s no such thing as a “just” war anymore, if there ever was. You can’t defend bombing children and innocent people. It isn’t right to teach people how to torture and kill each other. Wars never end, really. The Crusades aren’t quite over yet. Our Civil War certainly isn’t over yet. I don’t think we can afford this kind of behavior anymore. Nobody’s talking about the ecological damage of war.