Wendell Berry gave the 2012 Jefferson Lecture at the National Endowment for the Humanities this past Monday. His focus: Sustainability — of farms, “land-communities,” economy. How do we make them sustainable? The answer, he said, is affection.
“To live from a place without destroying it, we must imagine it. By imagination we see it illuminated by its own unique character and by our love for it. … As imagination enables sympathy, sympathy enables affection. And it is in affection that we find the possibility of a neighborly, kind, and conserving economy.”
Berry has rocked lots of worlds with his writing. (Inside Higher Ed said Monday’s talk did the same.) This is long but worth it. Read it.