The Social Vision of the Alternative Food Movement - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 526

been distilled through generations and has become incorporated into the traditions
and customs of a community, part of the community's “common sense” or “wisdom of
centuries,” it becomes acceptable to him. For Berry, knowledge achieves reliability not
through reason but by virtue of the abandonment of reason . He addresses this in refer-
ence to certain farming techniques that he witnessed on his travels in Peru:
They do as they have done, as their ancestors did before them. The methods are
assuredly complex—this is an agriculture of extraordinary craftsmanship and eco-
logical intelligence—but they were worked out over a long time, long ago; learned
so well, one might say, that they are forgotten. It seems to me that this is probably
the only kind of culture that works: though sufficiently complex, but submerged and
embodied in traditional acts. It is at least as unconscious as it is conscious—and so is
available to all levels of intelligence. . . . Not so with us. With us, it grows harder and
harder even for intelligent people to behave intelligently, and the unintelligent are
condemned to a stupidity probably unknown in traditional cultures.
(Berry 1982a, 27)
In some ways, according to Jeremy Beer, Berry's ideas in this regard are very similar
to Edmund Burke's famous defense of prejudice expounded in his 1790 Reflections
on the Revolution in France . “We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his
own private stock of reason,” wrote Burke. At its best, prejudice is the means by
which the humble, especially, may be engaged in “a steady course of wisdom and
virtue.” Prejudice “does not leave a man hesitating in the moment of decision, skep-
tical, puzzled, and unresolved. Prejudice renders a man's virtue his habit” (Beer
2007, 223).
Wendell Berry's Ideology of Limits
Wendell Berry's principles are founded on a certain worldview, a certain ideological out-
look. According to him, the fundamental problem that leads to all our other problems
is that we human beings are simply too ambitious for our own good and for the good of
nature. Our aspirations are too grand. Not only are they futile pursuits, they violate our
natural limits and do not show sufficient respect for the mysteries of nature. Trying to go
beyond the limits of place, community, tradition, and extant knowledge, is, says Berry,
akin to assuming godly authority. “People are not gods,” writes Berry. “They must not
act like gods or assume godly authority. If they do, terrible retributions are in store. In
this warning we have the root of the idea of propriety , of proper human purposes and
ends” (Berry 1982b, 270). In Berry's view, our ultimate happiness lies in fully accepting
and conforming to the limits that we are born into.
We have already seen Berry's antagonism toward science and technology. But there is
one particular aspect of science that Berry finds extremely disturbing. Referring to emi-
nent scientist E. O. Wilson's book Consilience , Berry observes,