Wendell Berry

Questionnaire

By Wendell Berry (Leavings)

1. How much poison are you willing to eat for the success of the free market and global trade? Please name your preferred poisons.

2. For the sake of goodness, how much evil are you willing to do? Fill in the following blanks with the names of your favorite evils and acts of hatred.

3. What sacrifices are you prepared to make for culture and civilization? Please list the monuments, shrines, and works of art you would most willingly destroy.

4. In the name of patriotism and the flag, how much of our beloved land are you willing to desecrate? List in the following spaces the mountains, rivers, towns, farms you could most readily do without.

5. State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes, the energy sources, the kinds of security, for which you would kill a child. Name, please, the children whom you would be willing to kill.

I read this poem today, not for the first time. But I read it in the right place, at the right time, and with the right mindset and it resonated with me in a new way, as poetry has a way of doing. I think it sums up (way more eloquently and interestingly than I could write) some of my feelings about approaches to development, globalization, power, and the responsibility that we owe. Every decision that we make (and the decisions of our governments) has a consequence, and paying attention to those consequences--being mindful and analytical and interested--is part of social justice and responsibility.