Tragedy of the Commonwealth and the Vision of Wendell Berry, The

3. Faith

Berry understands the healthy and viable commonwealth to include faith and a sense that humanity and all of creation live under the divine laws of God. This understanding informs his perspective on law, economy, land, and community. For example, he begins The Gift of Good Land: "I want, first, to attempt a Biblical argument for ecological and agricultural responsibility. second, I want to examine some of the practical implications of such an argument."83 Moreover, in considering conflicting economies and economic models, he has written on the supremacy of the "Great Economy" of the "Kingdom of God."84 In a blistering assault on the Kentucky strip mines he proclaims that so far as he knows, "there are only two philosophies of land use. One holds that the earth is the Lord's . .. The other philosophy is that of exploitation . . . ."85 From this philosophical perspective, Berry argues that a moral and religious awakening is all but essential for saving the commonwealth from the "philosophy of exploitation." Nevertheless, a full exploration of Berry's religious holdings-infused throughout his writings-and their relationship with his understanding of the commonwealth lies beyond the bounds of this article and will not be addressed here.

4. Local Knowledge

In his concern for the land and the commonwealth, Berry, like many authors, moralists, and economists, takes up the idea of knowledge.86 Rural economies and communities are essential, he says, because "we must keep alive in every place the human knowledge of the nature of that place."87 Comparing industrialism and agrarianism, and the global and the local economies, Berry finds "the most critical difference is that of knowledge."88 The difference manifests in a "global economy [that] institutionalizes a global ignorance, in which producers and consumers cannot know or care about one another," in bright contrast to the "sound local economy, in which producers and consumers are neighbors,... who understand their economy [and] will not tolerate the destruction of the local soil or ecosystem or watershed as a cost of production."89 Like others, of course, Berry distinguishes between "informed knowledge" and "intimate knowledge," and it should not surprise us that Berry favors the latter.

Garrett Hardin once argued that the answer to the conventionally conceived "population problem" was beyond a "technical solution," by which he meant "one that requires a change only in the techniques of the natural sciences, demanding little or nothing in the way of change in human values or ideas of morality."90 Similarly, Berry argues that in answering our environmental problem we must resist the "assumption ... that we can first set demons at large, and then, somehow, become smart enough to control them."91 To Berry, the environmental crisis begins in the "human household,"92 and its problems present a "human problem," belonging, he might say, to Hardin's class of "no technical solution problems."93 Recognizing that mankind is "terrifyingly ignorant," Berry submits that any attempt to solve such problems through an acquired knowledge or "informed decision" aimed at controlling nature is "a kind of idiocy" that we ought to call evil.94 "[K]nowledge does not solve 'the human problem,'" writes Berry,95 "[i]ndeed, the evidence overwhelmingly suggests-with Genesis-that knowledge is the problem."96 Suggesting that "[t]he 'informed decision' ... is as fantastical a creature as the 'disinterested third party' and the Objective observer,"' Berry urges us to