Wendell Berry, "Why I'm Not Going to Buy a Computer" 1987 Harpers
- About Berry
- Writer, poet, farmer, teacher at U. of Kentucky, defender of family
farm/traditional farming, conservationist (often criticizes trad env.
movement), peace activist
- BERRY'S OBJECTIONS TO BUYING A COMPUTER
- Doesn't admire being hooked to energy corporations
- Acknowledges that everybody is
- He hopes to become less hooked
- Is hooked a good word?
- Addicted to more and more use of energy
- Always on; Unable to turn off
- Could we function in modern society without being hooked to energy
corporations? Could you do it?
- In his work he tries to be as little hooked to them as possible
- Farms with horses
- Writes with pencil, pen, and paper
- Hates to think his work as a writer could not be done without direct
dependence on strip-mined coal (most electricity comes from burning coal)
- Note this allows indirect dependence
- Wants to be consistent: How could he write against rape of nature if
in act of writing he is implicated
- It matters to him that he writes in day w/o electric light
- Does it make a difference that he is implicated in other ways than through
his writing? For example that he uses electricity in his house?
- Does it matter that in the act itself of protest he not use the means of
what he is protesting against, even if he uses those means in other
areas of his life?
- Consider a rally for bikes and against cars by people driving
cars? (Still they do drive cars in other areas of life)
- Work is sacred for Berry, so it might make a difference--need to be
as pure in work as possible
- Doesn't admire computer makers much more than energy industry
- Seduce struggling family farmers to believe problems solved by
buying another expensive piece of equipment
- Propaganda campaigns got computers into schools that need books
- Computers not bringing us any close to what matters to Berry
- Berry's values: Peace, economic justice, ecological healthy, political
honesty, family and community stability and good work
- Computers might enhance good work by ending drudgery of retyping,
increase political honesty and make democracy work better by group
email lists, improve ecological health by reducing paper use? (In
U.S. 13% of electric power used to make/run computers and operate
internet; this use growing rapidly.
- Do computers improve writing?
- Quicker, better? More revisions?
- Berry's argues no: When someone using a computers writes
better than Dante and it is shown that this is due to his use of
computers then he will speak with more respect about computers
- Berry objects to getting the latest when what you have now works fine and
nothing wrong with it
- Examples of people getting rid of perfectly good things to have
newest/latest?
- Cars, clothes, bikes Computers! Obsolete so fast?
- Distinguish between new abilities old one's can't do and j ust changing things so old one is perceived to be no
good anymore
- "Planned obsolescence"
- Relation to his wife
- Wife types his hand written draft on 1956 typewriter, in as good
condition as when got it
- She's his best critic and edits and revises as she types
- A great literary cottage industry doesn't want to get rid of
- To get a computer would mean ending this treasured working
relationship with his wife
- Tech innovation always requires discarding old model
- Present day tech typically involves superceding not just
something but someone
- What about his wife using a computer?
- More efficient for retyping and correcting
- Computer is not a idea machine; she can still do all valuable
intellectual work
- She would be doing less drudgery work (retyping), but still be able to
do editing-the meaningful work
- Berry's standards for tech innovation in his own work:
- New tool should be cheaper than one it replaces
- As small as one it replaces
- Do work that is clearly and demonstrably better than one it replaces
- It should use less energy than the one it replaces
- Should use some form of solar energy, such as that of body
- How is the body solar energy? Why solar energy better? Renewable/non-renewable, sutainable/non-sustainable
- Repairable by a person of ordinary intelligence, provided has right
tools
- (Keep things relatively simple)
- Purchasable and repairable as near as home as possible
- Community
self sufficiency, opposition to national/international chain stores
- Come from privately owned shop that take it back for maintenance
and repairs
- Opposes throw-away mentality
- It should not replace or disrupt anything good that already exists,
including family and community relations
- Extremely stringent requirement. Important techs will bring
changes that disrupts. So can't let the benefits of a technology
outweigh its negative aspects?
- CRITICISMS OF BERRY
- Berry is a sexist, male chauvinist, who exploits his wife
- Wife as a handy alternative to enslavement by computer
- Low-tech, energy saving device, drop off pile of written notes on wife
and get back finished manuscript-computer can't do that
- Wife is cheap, reparable, good for family structure
- Berry is supporting subservience of one class to another
- So Berry opposes vacuum cleaners and washing machines because
wife can beat rugs and hand wash clothes?
- Berry's reply
- Insulting to his wife, as if stupid drone
- Maybe she wants and likes this work and some meaning out of it and
not working for nothing
- Berry's got wrong target: Electricity not the problem, but how energy
companies produce it
- More sensible to correct precise error rather than simply ignore their
product
- Should protest against strip mining, but can keep using computer with
clear conscience
- Wouldn't you actually have to protest for this to be plausible?
- To not use any of the products of technological practices that
Luddites oppose would be nearly impossible (and might severely
disadvantage you)
- Berry's principle impossible to universalize:
- Should Sierra club not use
printing machines but hand copy all their material? (Because they fight
against wasteful practices of energy industries)
- Berry is inconsistent and shouldn't sleep well at night because magazines
he publishes in support (via advertisements) nature/community destroying
businesses
- Natural Rural Electric Association, Marlboro, McDonald Douglas
- Berry response: This critic thinks I should be a fanatic
- I'm not
- I am a person of this century and an implicated in many practices I
regret
- Didn't say and doesn't know how to end right away all
involvement in harmful tech
- Wants to limit that involvement and knows how to do that to an
extent
- If tech does damage to world it is reasonable/moral to try to limit
one's use of the tech
- That he's implicated partially, doesn't mean he is inconsistent to try
to lessen that implication and arguing against being more implicated
- Berry's critique of consumption/consumerism
- What is wrong with conservation movement is has clear conscience
- Guilty are always someplace else
- Believe that only production causes damage and ignores that
consumption supports that production
- People want to limit production w/o limiting consumption and
conscience of consumer
- Virtually all consumption today is extravagant (in developed
world) and consumes the world
- One can't understand history of Appalachian coal field exploitation
(or rest of story about energy exploitation) and plug in an appliance
with a clear conscience
- To extent we consume in our present circumstances we are guilty
- To extent we are guilt consumers and conservationists, we are absurd
- Writing letters to protect env. and giving to env. org is important
- But government and conservation organizations alone won't
make us a conserving society
- We can do something directly to solve our share of the problems
- Our first duty to reduce so far as we can our own consumption.