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貝瑞使自己成為一座橋樑，搭在彼此不信任的雙方間。他的世代屬於較年長的農人，而他也回到他們的生活領域中。但是，他曾經亦屬於新興的新左派中的一員，並且參加反對露天開採、對大自然隨意破壞的運動。他同時是一名原鄉人，也是一位「返鄉者」，他同時代表有機農業新、舊兩代交錯的面貌。
愈小、愈慢、愈好
「幾乎跟所有的人都一樣，我跟能源公司脫不了關係，但我可不喜歡這樣，我希望關係可以不用如此密切。我盡可能不在工作時依賴它，務農時，所有的工作我幾乎都靠馬來完成；寫作時，我使用鉛筆或原子筆，以及一張白紙。」
這樣便開始了一篇或許比溫德爾•貝瑞其他作品更具爭議性及被批評的短篇論述：他1987的著作《為何我不會買一台電腦》。自從《美國的不安》以來，一些支持者便提出，貝瑞對孟諾教派公開的欣賞，使他更容易成為被毀謗的目標。但是，這位作家拒絕使用微軟視窗和蘋果電腦，才真的引起軒然大波。這篇刊載於哈潑雜誌的文章，引來了一波波嘲諷的信件。（審校註：孟諾教派家裡沒有電話、電視、收音機，或任何現代家電；出門不用汽車，而以馬車或腳踏車代步；農耕也只倚賴傳統動力，如水力、風力等。）
貝瑞並未因而放棄，一如往常，每當被說是盧德份子時，貝瑞會站出來替他們辯護。他寫著：「他們是勇於主張世界有比工業化更重要的需求以及價值的一群人，這群人拒絕科技創新以及經濟剝削的命定論。」（審校註：盧德份子──19世紀時，英國手工業工人中，參加搗毀機器的一群人。）
貝瑞認為，現在我們最好還是維持這種懷疑的精神。他並不是完全拒絕接受所有的新發明，他會搭飛機，開車，並用電鋸，但他不接受只為了創新而創新的科技進步。他要求我們捫心自問：每一個創新背後有什麼「更高的目標」，以及所帶給社會的可能影響將是什麼。
在一個經常將科技與進步畫上等號的社會中，這種疑問與異說無異，貝瑞極可能因此而被逐出主流輿論──只是，因為他的論述是如此的合乎邏輯，讓他的看法顯得更接近常識。在懷疑之前，我們反而還會問自己，怎麼沒有先想到呢？
就拿他對電腦的看法來說：「有人告訴我電腦會讓你的寫作變得更快、更容易、更多…，但是，我想要更快、更容易、更多嗎？」他如此的問自己。「我不要，我的標準不是速度、平易、以及數量。有太多證據顯示，我寫得太快、太容易、太多了。」他在別處寫道：「我帶了一支鉛筆和幾張紙進入森林，我的工作配備之完善，不下於IBM的總裁。」
貝瑞引用愛德華•艾必的話，批評世界經濟運作依靠的是「癌細胞的運作模式」。言下之意就是：它必須成長才可以生存。貝瑞寫著：「無止盡的成長、無止盡的財富、無止盡的權力、無止盡的機械化及自動化－這些的目標可以（暫時的）帶給少數人財富和權力，但遲早會帶給所有的人毀滅。」
這是他批評科技的主要意旨，你或許與貝瑞對該在哪裡該畫上界線有不一樣的看法，但若人類希望生存下去，這條界線是必要的。
在貝瑞的想法裡，「自由」指的並非不受限制的個人自主，而是應該選擇哪些限制來依循、哪些社群來負責，這是在消極消費的年代中做主動的選擇。在一個高度行動化的年代中，當許多人不由自主的接受世界經濟支配時，決定在一個小小的鄉下落地生根，比享用非常現代而又特權的自由，反而不是倒退；相同的，在一切向電子科技靠攏的年代中，細心思索科技的必要性，比起一些前衛論述，反而不顯得落伍。貝瑞淘氣般的寫道：「若使用電腦是新的想法，那麼更新的主張便是不要用電腦。」
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Berry established himself as a key figure in bridging a gap filled with
mutual suspicion. He was born among older farmers and had returned to
their fold. But he had also spent time surrounded by the emerging New
Left and had campaigned against the wanton destructiveness of strip
mining. He was at once a native and a "back-to-the-lander." He
represented the new face of organic farming, and its old face as well.
Smaller, Slower, Better
"Like almost everybody else, I am hooked to the energy corporations,
which I do not admire. I hope to become less hooked to them. In my work,
I try to be as little hooked to them as possible. As a farmer, I do
almost all of my work with horses. As a writer, I work with pencil or a
pen and a piece of paper."
Thus began the essay that, perhaps more than any other, has generated
controversy and criticism for Wendell Berry: his 1987 work, "Why I Am
Not Going to Buy a Computer." As far back as The Unsettling of America,
some supporters had suggested that Berry's unabashed admiration of the
Amish gave his detractors too easy a target. But it was the writer's
rejection of Windows and Mac that really hit a nerve. The essay, which
was published in Harper's, prompted a spray of derisive letters.
Berry was undeterred. Then as now, when branded a Luddite, Berry
rises to the group's defense. "These were people who dared to assert
that there were needs and values that justly took precedence over
industrialization," he writes; "they were people who rejected the
determinism of technological innovation and economic exploitation."
We would do well to maintain such skepticism today, Berry contends.
He does not reject new inventions out of hand. He flies in airplanes,
drives a car, and cuts wood with a chainsaw. But he is not willing to
accept technological "advances" for their own sake. He challenges us to
ask "what higher aim" each new innovation serves, and what its likely
impact on our communities will be.
In a society that steadfastly equates technology with progress, such
questioning is heresy. It would condemn Berry to the outhouse of public
opinion -- except that, with his impeccably logical prose, he makes his
position seem so close to common sense. Instead of rolling our eyes, we
wonder why we didn't think of it first.
Take his view of the computer: "[A] computer, I am told ... will help
you write faster, easier, and more. ... Do I, then, want to write
faster, easier, and more?" he asks. "No. My standards are not speed,
ease, and quantity. I have already left behind too much evidence that
... I have written too fast, too easily, and too much." He writes
elsewhere: "Going off to the woods I take a pencil and some paper ...
and I am as well equipped for my work as the president of IBM."
Quoting Edward Abbey, Berry charges that the global economy operates
on "the ideology of the cancer cell." That is, it must grow to survive.
"The aims of ... limitless growth, limitless wealth, limitless power,
limitless mechanization and automation," Berry writes, "can enrich and
empower the few (for a while), but they will sooner or later ruin us
all."
This is the larger point of his technological criticism. You may not
agree with Berry about where to draw the line, but if we are to survive,
surely the line must be drawn.
Freedom, in Berry's view, is not about unconstrained individual
autonomy, but rather about choosing which constraints we will abide by
and which communities we will be responsible to. It is about making
active choices in an age of passive consumption. In a highly mobile era,
when many people are involuntarily pushed about by the global economy,
his choice to root himself in a single county is less a throwback than
the exercise of a very modern and privileged freedom. Likewise, in a
time marked by unthinking adulation of all things electronic, careful
consideration of technology is less antiquated than avant-garde: "If the
use of a computer is a new idea," Berry writes in a sly moment, "then a
newer idea is not to use one." |
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左派、右派？
貝瑞並不擔心他人視他個人的反對力量「不足為奇」，梭羅很久以前便對所謂「有意義的多數」的愚昧，提出關鍵看法了：為何一件對的事，需要等到所有人都在做的時候才做呢？疼愛小孩、或者吃飯，對大多數人也是不足為奇的，但是大部分的人並不會等政府通過法案才開始愛小孩或吃東西。
這種個人的責任感，突顯貝瑞的政治哲學，這種想法也在他早期批評越戰的詩中可以看見。在《1968年2月2日》中，他寫道：
月黑風高時、白雪橫飛時、冬季沉寂時，
戰亂遠擴、家庭枯萎、世界處於危難中，
我獨步山丘石頭間，灑下菽草。
這首詩優雅的道出一個人對戰亂及毀滅的反應，同時，這首詩明確的避免讓美國詹森總統相當困擾的反對運動。
的確，貝瑞的政治傾向難以定位，是眾所皆知的。若他的反戰爭、他的環保主義、以及他對市場經濟的反感暗示他是傾左的，貝瑞其他的特質則往往令人猜想他的內心深處，到底是否是一個保守主義者？
在一個比較習慣新世代神必主義以及生化科學不可知論的環保運動中，貝瑞虔誠的基督教信仰使他引人注目。他堅決的信奉聖經架構，讓他獲得許多較保守、且經常作禮拜者的青睞，並使他在主流的環境文學中，做出比較不尋常的比喻。（他在1968年的"A
Native Hill"中寫道：表土「有如耶穌基督般」。）
貝瑞對孟諾教派的讚揚，以及對婚姻忠貞的演說，表示他支持嚴謹的社會秩序。不管是提到不當的行為時（「愚昧」、「傲慢」、「罪惡」、「錯誤」、「粗心」）或者是好的行為（「人品」、「道德」、「倫理規範」、「忠貞」、「尊敬」），他說教的口氣，聽起來有點像蘿菈博士。
然而，有一些要素讓貝瑞成功地將革新的想法看起來保守，但非反之亦然。
雖然嚴肅看待自己的信念，以及使自己立命於基督教傳統中，他卻沒有絲毫狂熱的表現。他坦承佛教的影響相當的大，並且在911事件發生後建議：「我們的學校應該開始教授回教國家的歷史、文化、藝術、以及語言。」因為他願意公開的面對宗教挑戰，使他更添上了幾分道德權威。結合他對地球的關懷與表達清楚的靈性，使他能夠適當的提出一個不會支持露天採礦的基督教經濟體（就如一個適當佛教經濟體一樣）。貝瑞並不自以為是，坦承自己便是他所批評中的一環，與能源公司脫不了關係，勇於面對這項事實。
一個朋友曾經這麼對我說過貝瑞：「若他搞運動，我會反對他。」然而，他並不是搞運動，他更不屑成為一個運動。事實上，他是一個道德的聲音，仔細想來，他並不希望被仿效。
幸好他對收弟子不感興趣，要不然亨利郡是很難容下那麼多仰慕者的。70歲的溫德爾•貝瑞，正從安身立命之地收穫中，他勸告他的讀者也應該這麼做。
貝瑞在他的詩《留在家吧》中寫著：
我會在原野中等待
等著看、雨
如何為草帶來滋潤
原野中的工作
久過男人的一生
我在家，別
跟著我，
你也留在家吧。
(2005-07-20) |
Left, Right, Left, Right Berry is
unconcerned with people labeling his personal acts of resistance
"insignificant." "Thoreau gave the definitive reply to the folly of
'significant numbers' a long time ago: Why should anybody wait to do
what is right until everybody does it? It is not 'significant' to love
your own children or eat your own dinner, either. But normal humans will
not wait to love or eat until it is mandated by an act of Congress."
This attitude of personal responsibility defines Berry's politics. It
also infused several of his early poems, which looked critically upon
the Vietnam War. In "February 2, 1968," he writes:
In the dark of the moon, in the flying snow,
in the dead of winter,
war spreading, families dying, the world in danger,
I walk the rocky hillside, sowing clover.
The poem offers an eloquent personal response to the ravages of war.
At the same time, it pointedly avoids embracing the protest movement
that so troubled Lyndon Johnson.
Indeed, Berry's political orientation has been notoriously difficult
to label. If his anti-war sentiment, his environmentalism, and his
distaste for the market economy have suggested that he is a leftist,
other characteristics have made some wonder if Berry isn't, at heart, a
conservative.
In an environmental movement more accustomed to New Age mystics and
bioscience agnostics, Berry's devout Christianity stands out. His
stalwart adherence to a Biblical framework has endeared him to many
more-conservative churchgoers and has produced metaphors uncommon in
mainstream environmental literature. (Topsoil "is very Christ-like," he
writes in his 1968 essay "A Native Hill.")
Berry's praise for the Amish and his lectures on marital fidelity
suggest that he favors a stern social order. And, whether he is speaking
of bad behavior ("foolishness," "pride," "sin," "error," "carelessness")
or good ("character," "virtue," "moral law," "fidelity," "reverence"),
his language is moralistic, which risks making him sound like an
agrarian Dr. Laura.
Several factors, however, indicate that Berry has succeeded in making
progressive ideas appear conservative, and not vice versa.
Having undertaken a serious reckoning of his own faith and having
grounded himself in the Christian tradition, he shows no trace of
zealotry. He acknowledges a deep debt to Buddhism and proposes, in the
wake of 9/11, that "[o]ur schools should begin to teach the histories,
cultures, arts, and languages of the Islamic nations." His willingness
to struggle openly with religion ends up enhancing his moral authority.
Combining his care for the earth with his articulate spirituality, he is
able to propose that a properly Christian economy (like a properly
Buddhist one) is unlikely to permit strip mines. Finally, Berry avoids
self-righteousness by implicating himself in the evils he criticizes.
He, too, is hooked to the energy corporations, and he won't hesitate to
remind you of it.
A friend once said to me of Berry, "If he were a movement, I would
oppose him." But he is not a movement, and he would not care to be one.
Rather, he is a moral voice. He means not to be emulated so much as
carefully considered.
That he has no interest in disciples is fortunate, for his many
admirers could hardly fit in Henry County. At 70 years old, Wendell
Berry is reaping the rewards of having found his place in the world. He
admonishes his readers to do the same.
Berry writes in his poem, "Stay Home":
I will wait here in the fields
to see how well the rain
brings on the grass.
In the labor of the fields
longer than a man's life
I am at home. Don't come with me.
You stay home too.
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