Individualisms and Fundamentalisms

Two quotations from Wendell Berry from a recent perusal of a bunch of his essays. 

From “Rugged Individualism” (2004):

 “Conservative individualism strongly supports ‘family values’ and abominates lust. But it does not dissociate itself from the profits accruing from the exercise of lust (and, in fact, of the other six deadly sins), which it encourages in its advertisements. The ‘conservatives’ of our day understand pride, lust, envy, anger, covetousness, gluttony, and sloth as virtues when they lead to profit or to political power. Only as unprofitable or unauthorized personal indulgences do they rank as sins, imperiling salvation of the soul, family values, and national security. 

“Liberal individualism, on the contrary, understands sin as a private matter. It strongly supports protecting ‘the environment,’ which is that part of the world which surrounds, at a safe distance, the privately-owned body. ‘The environment’ does not include the economic landscapes of agriculture and forestry or their human communities, and it does not include the privately-owned bodies of other people--all of which appear to have been bequeathed in fee simple to the corporate individualists.

“Conservative rugged individualists and liberal rugged individualists believe alike that they should be ‘free’ to get as much as they can of whatever they want. Their major doctrinal difference is that they want (some of the time) different sorts of things” (The Way of Ignorance, Shoemaker & Hoard, 2005, pp. 10–11).

From “God, Science, and Imagination” (2010): 

“If in fact the fundamentalist scientists were as smart as they think they are, and if the religious fundamentalists were as secure in their belief as they claim to be, then they would (except for issues of justice) leave one another in peace. These camps keep pestering each other because they need each other. The sort of mind that is inclined to fundamentalism is not content within itself or within its own convictions or principles. It needs to humiliate its opponents. It needs the sustenance of converts. It is fundamentally insecure and ungenerous” (Imagination in Place, Counterpoint, 2010, p. 186). 

Reading Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez

I don’t like cold. I don’t like winter. I like the look of fresh snow—from inside a cozy home. So it surprised me that one of the books I have most enjoyed reading this year is Barry Lopez’s Arctic Dreams (1986), a sprawling, 400-page tome on a part of the world I would never visit. It’s even more surprising given that I don’t read much related to the sciences and I probably haven’t watched a nature documentary since March of the Penguins. The later chapters of the book—on maps and geography, on the thrilling and often tragic history of arctic exploration, and on the plight of the present-day Arctic, complete with Wendell Berry-esque indictments of industrial hubris—were more my kind of thing, but I was already hooked by the early chapters on Arctic animals: muskoxen (of all things), polar bears, narwhals, migration patterns. These early chapters were assigned for a spring seminar on creative writing about place, but this summer I read the rest for myself.

Three takeaways from the experience of reading this: First, as William Zinsser says in On Writing Well, any topic can make for good, engrossing nonfiction writing if the writer is passionate about his or her topic and a gifted writer who can deftly balance substance and style. Second, we should from time to time be willing to explore, with a gifted writer as our guide, topics entirely foreign to us—and stick with it even if the going is rough or boring at first. It will take some effort to learn to appreciate the kinds of details the writer values, details we wouldn’t have noticed ourselves. The length of Lopez’s book is valuable for this: learning to see, and growing to love what the writer loves, takes time. Third, practicing patient attentiveness in one area can help us be more attentive in others. Slowing down to read what Lopez has to say about icebergs and light phenomena for almost fifty pages can make us more aware of the wonders around us.