It is easy for me to imagine that the next great division of the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures and people who wish to live as machines.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the fundamental choice between living authentically as natural beings or conforming to the mechanical and artificial aspects of modern life.
Wendell Berry's quote suggests a looming divide in society between those who embrace their humanity and natural existence versus those who accept machine-like existence, possibly referring to technology's impact on our lives. This contrast highlights an essential philosophical discussion about our identity, the nature of life, and the implications of technology on human experience.
In practice
In a discussion about the impact of technology on society, this quote can highlight the importance of valuing our human nature.
We weren't allowing our hopes to become expectations. Expectations are tempting, pleasant, maybe necessary. They are scary too, once you have had some experience. They are not necessarily and not always a bucket of smoke, but they can be and are even likely to be.
The uplands of my home country in north central Kentucky are sloping and easily eroded, dependent for safekeeping upon year-round cover of perennial plants.
A corporation, essentially, is a pile of money to which a number of persons have sold their moral allegiance.
WE ARE DESTROYING OUR COUNTRY - I mean our country itself, our land. This is a terrible thing to know, but it is not a reason for despair unless we decide to continue the destruction. If we decide to continue the destruction, that will not be because we have no other choice. This destruction is not necessary. It is not inevitable, except that by our submissiveness we make it so.
Much of our waste problem is to be accounted for by the intentional flimsiness and unrepairability of the labor-savers and gadgets that we have become addicted to.
We had entered an era of limitlessness, or the illusion thereof, and this in itself is a sort of wonder. My grandfather lived a life of limits, both suffered and strictly observed, in a world of limits. I learned much of that world from him and others, and then I changed; I entered the world of labor-saving machines and of limitless cheap fossil fuel. It would take me years of reading, thought, and experience to learn again that in this world limits are not only inescapable but indispensable.
The best laws cannot make a constitution work in spite of morals; morals can turn the worst laws to advantage. That is a commonplace truth, but one to which my studies are always bringing me back. It is the central point in my conception. I see it at the end of all my reflections.
Brothers and sisters, this is a divine work in process, with the manifestations and blessings of it abounding in every direction, so please don’t hyperventilate if from time to time issues arise that need to be examined, understood, and resolved. They do and they will. In this Church, what we know will always trump what we do not know. And remember, in this world, everyone is to walk by faith.
The difference between a crime of evil and a crime of illness is the difference between a sin and a symptom.
To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top.
There are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes one’s head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people’s pain.
He who imagines he can do without the world deceives himself much; but he who fancies the world cannot do without him is still more mistaken.
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