by Staff
I wrote several times on Wendell Berry and the effect he had on me professionally and personally.
Prepare students for a good job
Wendell Berry and the loss of the university
Peace of wild things by Wendell Berry
Lack of peace
Wendell Berry’s goal
Meet Wendell Berry
Surprisingly, there are more.
You will find below an extract of “Two Minds”, an essay on what he published in 2003 in response to the attack on the World Trade Center. It is, very roughly, a test that explores the two different “types of mind” that we have and the effects of use – or not to use – each time.
I wrote more about it in The two minds of an educator.
An extract of “two minds” is below. You can buy books by Berry at the Berry Center bookstore.
“It is often proposed, nowadays, that if we only get rid of religion and other remains of our primitive past and that we lit by scientific rationalism, we could invent the new values and ethical necessary to preserve the natural world.
This proposal is perfectly reasonable and perfectly doubtful. He assumes that we can know empirically and rationally understanding everything involved, which is exactly the assumption that has subscribed to our transgressions in the natural world in the first place.
Obviously, we must use our intelligence. But how much intelligence do we have? And what kind of intelligence do we have? And how, at best, does human intelligence work?
See also The two minds of an educator
In order to try to answer these questions, I suppose that for a certain time, there are two different types of human mind: the rational spirit and another which, for lack of a better term, I will call the sympathetic spirit. I will say now and try to remember that these terms will seem allegorical, too neat and too separate – although I must also say that their separation has not been invented by me.
The rational spirit, without being perfectly embodied, is the spirit that we are all supposed to try to have. It is the mind that the most powerful and influential people think they have. Our schools mainly exist to educate and propagate and authorize the rational mind.
The rational spirit is objective, analytical and empirical; He only presents himself considering the facts; He pursues the truth by experimentation; It is not corrupted by preconception, received authority, religious belief or feeling. Its ideal products are proven, the prediction precisely and the “informed decision”.
This is said to say, the official spirit of science, industry and government.
The sympathetic spirit differs from the rational mind, not by being unreasonable, but by refusing to limit knowledge or reality within the reach of reason or invoice or experimentation, and by making reasons for the servant of things which he considers as a precedent and more. »»
The Berry Center
You can find more information on the Berry Center. According to their site, the Berry Center was “created in 2011, the Berry Center is a non -profit organization dedicated to the development, knowledge and cohesion at work to modify our ruinous industrial agricultural system in a system and a culture which uses nature as a norm, does not accept any permanent damage to the ecosphere and takes into account human health in local communities.”
