Lewontin responds to Berry. (Letters to the Editor).The claim by Wendell Berry Wendell Berry (born August 5, 1934, Henry County, Kentucky) is an American man of letters, academic, cultural and economic critic, and farmer. He is a prolific author of novels, short stories, poems, and essays. He is also an elected member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. ("The Prejudice Against Country People," April issue) that my attitude toward "country people" is one of "prejudice" and "condescension con·de·scen·sion n. 1. The act of condescending or an instance of it. 2. Patronizingly superior behavior or attitude. [Late Latin cond " is ludicrous. The next time that, called to duty as a volunteer firefighter in the rural Vermont community in which I live, I find myself crawling on my belly in a smoke-filled house, I will be sure to ask the man ahead of me on the hose-line whether he thinks I show condescension and prejudice toward him. No, the real prejudice against country people is shown by those who scorn rural life as it is actually lived by most country people, and who play at living in the world of their grandparents grandparents npl → abuelos mpl grandparents grand npl → grands-parents mpl grandparents grand npl , sitting in privies, doing their laundry on wringer wring·er n. One that wrings, especially a device in which laundry is pressed between rollers to extract water. Idiom: put (someone) through the wringer Slang To subject to a severe trial or ordeal. washing machines (storage) washing machine - An old-style 14-inch hard disk in a floor-standing cabinet. So called because of the size of the cabinet and the "top-loading" access to the media packs - and, of course, they were always set on "spin cycle". , plowing with horses, heating with wood, and avoiding electric lights at night. My farmer neighbors have flush toilets, automatic washers, and tractors and gave up the real pleasures of wood stoves, which I too have known, when the price of oil went back down, because they are too busy trying to make ends meet to spend precious hours and energy splitting wood. (I am glad they did because my temptation to prejudice and condescension was greatly increased when I found myself on winter nights on slippery roofs helping to put out chimney fires that could have been prevented by elementary precautions.) Berry's passions have interfered with his ability to read plain English Plain English (sometimes known, more broadly, as plain language) is a communication style that focuses on considering the audience's needs when writing. It recommends avoiding unnecessary words and avoiding jargon, technical terms, and long and ambiguous sentences. . I did not speak of Vandana Shiva's allies as Luddites, but, rather, made a special point of the incorrectness of such a claim. I wrote that the Luddites were "industrial and rural laborers thrown out of work or trying to live on poverty wages, who destroyed knitting and threshing threshing or thrashing, separation of grain from the stalk on which it grows and from the chaff or pod that covers it. The first known method was by striking the reaped ears of grain with a flail. machines that had displaced their labor." In contrast, I pointed out that the correct nineteenth century equivalent of the Shivaites was the middle class educated urban romantic movement of Blake and Rossetti, which called for the return to an idyllic rural life that never, in fact, existed. Most people engaged in English agriculture in the nineteenth century and before were, in fact, hired laborers whose chronic poverty and misery were the root of the struggles over the Poor Law, just as in Berry's grandfather's day, half of Southern farmers were landless land·less adj. Owning or having no land. land  less·ness n.Adj. 1. tenants and sharecroppers. Readers of The Progressive interested in the real story of the penetration of capital into agriculture and its effect on the nature of farming and farm family life might look at two articles of mine in a magazine not usually thought of as an apologist Apologist Any of the Christian writers, primarily in the 2nd century, who attempted to provide a defense of Christianity against Greco-Roman culture. Many of their writings were addressed to Roman emperors and were submitted to government secretaries in order to defend for capitalism, the Monthly Review. "Technology, Research, and the Penetration of Capital: The Case of U.S. Agriculture" (July/August 1986, with J. P. Berlan) and "The Maturing of Capitalist Agriculture" (July/August 1998). R. C. Lewontin Marlboro, Vermont Wendell Berry responds: In his letter, Professor Lewontin says, "I did not speak of Vandana Shiva's allies as Luddites." Here is what he, in fact, said in his article: "Now we understand the Turning Point Project. They're a bunch of Luddites." |
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