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.
Interpretation
The quote highlights how modern conveniences contribute to waste due to their design, encouraging a culture of disposability.
Wendell Berry's quote critiques the modern obsession with convenience and efficiency, revealing that many gadgets and labor-saving devices are built to be flimsy and unrepairable. This design choice not only leads to increased waste but also reflects a deeper societal addiction to these products, often at the expense of sustainability and long-term responsibility. By understanding this dynamic, we are encouraged to rethink our relationship with technology and consider the environmental consequences of our consumption habits.
In practice
In a discussion about environmental policies, this quote could serve as a poignant reminder of the need to design products with sustainability in mind.
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.
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.
I finally knew... why Christ's prayer in the garden could not be granted. He had been seeded and birthed into human flesh. He was one of us. Once He had become mortal, He could not become immortal except by dying. That He prayed the prayer at all showed how human He was. That He knew it could not be granted showed his divinity; that He prayed it anyhow showed His mortality, His mortal love of life that His death made immortal.
Plant a new Truffula. Treat it with care. Give it clean water. And feed it fresh air.
Give me strength to walk the soft earth, a relative to all that is.
The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.
You must teach your children that the ground beneath their feet is the ashes of your grandfathers. So that they will respect the land, tell your children that the earth is rich with the lives of our kin. Teach your children what we have taught our children, that the earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves.
Climate change is for real. We have just a small window of opportunity and it is closing rather rapidly. There is not a moment to lose.
Indeed, the night sky is the part of our environment that's been common to all cultures throughout human history. All have gazed up at the 'vault of heaven' and interpreted it in their own way.
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