Do something that won’t compute

On Wendell Berry and true liberation

Claude Monet, Poppy Field (1873)

Dear friend,

Over the last year, the main questions I’ve been meditating on are what it means to be human and how to live a full, beautiful human life in this age. In our culture of optimization and efficiency and scale, it feels like a small act of resistance to embrace human limitations instead of attempting to overcome them, to elevate what is natural and core to our being rather than attempting to engineer the optimal outcome.

Few writers better capture this sentiment than Wendell Berry, the poet-essayist-farmer whose work pokes at my beliefs in the most brilliantly uncomfortable ways. His most (in)famous essay, which gives a good sense of his general orientation toward our modern world, is titled “Why I Am Not Going To Buy A Computer.” At first, I dismissed him as a Luddite who futilely rejected progress. But in recent months, bewildered and disappointed by the world in many ways, I find myself returning again and again to his writing, seeking a truth I am often reluctant to admit to myself: that we have been bought into a cheap vision of prosperity, and that the good life—not in the way we rationally conceive of it, but in a way that feels deeply right in the marrow of our bones—requires resistance to it.

I first encountered his poem, “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front,” in my friend Max’s (wonderfully written and highly recommended) book review. Berry questions whether the “perks” of our contemporary lives—the quick profit, the ready-made—are truly gifts at all. He prods us to consider whether our desire for convenience and ease might actually be weakening us, and that the friction we try to sandpaper with technology is what helps us build resilience. Perhaps it is the sacred inefficiencies of everyday life that give color to it: rambling banter with a neighbor in the corridor; leisurely strolls without a destination in mind; hand washing dishes after dinner, one person passing the plate for the other to dry.

Do something that won’t compute. Following this maxim may mean I will soon become obsolete, outpaced by those who calculate their utils and control their time and carefully calibrate their existence. But I’ve grown contented with that fate. I wish to live and die as I am: wholly, honestly, and messily; constantly awed by life’s imperfection; wasting endless time to save my soul.

With love,
Ash

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Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Wendell Berry

    Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
    vacation with pay. Want more
    of everything ready-made. Be afraid
    to know your neighbors and to die.
    And you will have a window in your head.
    Not even your future will be a mystery
    any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
    and shut away in a little drawer.
    When they want you to buy something
    they will call you. When they want you
    to die for profit they will let you know.

    So, friends, every day do something
    that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
    Love the world. Work for nothing.
    Take all that you have and be poor.
    Love someone who does not deserve it.
    Denounce the government and embrace
    the flag. Hope to live in that free
    republic for which it stands.
    Give your approval to all you cannot
    understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
    has not encountered he has not destroyed.

    Ask the questions that have no answers.
    Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
    Say that your main crop is the forest
    that you did not plant,
    that you will not live to harvest.
    Say that the leaves are harvested
    when they have rotted into the mold.
    Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

    Put your faith in the two inches of humus
    that will build under the trees
    every thousand years.
    Listen to carrion – put your ear
    close, and hear the faint chattering
    of the songs that are to come.
    Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
    Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
    though you have considered all the facts.
    So long as women do not go cheap
    for power, please women more than men.
    Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
    a woman satisfied to bear a child?
    Will this disturb the sleep
    of a woman near to giving birth?

    Go with your love to the fields.
    Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
    in her lap. Swear allegiance
    to what is nighest your thoughts.
    As soon as the generals and the politicos
    can predict the motions of your mind,
    lose it. Leave it as a sign
    to mark the false trail, the way
    you didn’t go. Be like the fox
    who makes more tracks than necessary,
    some in the wrong direction.
    Practice resurrection.