Journal 4 from Kelsey Eversole

Wendell Berry writes a short essay a little bit after the 9/11 terror attack, and he gives his views of the act of terror and the American state.  He talks briefly about different concepts and ideas but one that was important to myself was, “XIX. Even now we dare not forget that since the attack of Pearl Harbor—to which the present attack has been often and not usefully compared—we humans have suffered an almost uninterrupted sequence of wars, none of which has brought peace or made us more peaceable” (Berry 6).  I believe this is an idea that is very important in relation to the entire essay.  It spoke to me and made me really think about the series of wars and attacks that have taken place over time.  It eludes to the idea that Peace is an unattainable dream, and that the world is doomed to be forever in a state of war.  They all start with some sort of attack on an otherwise peaceful opponent.  Then it escalates into an all-out war on the attacker.  But in the case of 9/11 mentioned in this passage there has been no peaceful outcome.  We have officially found justice for the attack, but we still have an ever presence of another attack.  It demonstrates that no matter the cost and scale of war there will always been violence and peace a distant dream.

            In his second essay, The Idea of a Local Economy, Berry talks about what his interruption of a local economy is.  In the last couple of pages he sums up what in his mind a local economy is and its benefits,

“So far as I can see, the idea of a local economy rests upon only two principles: neighborhood and subsistence.  In a viable neighborhood, neighbors ask themselves what they can do or provide for one another, and they find answers that they and their place can afford…Of course, everything needed locally cannot be produced locally.  But a viable neighborhood is a community; and a viable community is made up of neighbors who cherish and protect what they have in common.  This is the principle of subsistence” (Berry 30-31).

I believe Berry hit this one right on the head, and defined it in simple easy to understand terms.  This is important to summarize the idea of a local economy in the simplest terms.  This allows people to read his whole essay and get a wrap up to finally nail down his theory.  Preceding this section he goes through and outlines the errors of the economies of the world, and then he lays out what would fix these worldly problems.  If countries would just focus their efforts on local production instead of importing and take care of the country as a whole things would take a turn for the better.  In the case of America we have the raw resource and production capabilities to sustain ourselves, but choose to import things that could be made in house.  For our “neighborhood” our country we must look out for one another and support our factors of production and limit our importation.

            The elevated diction in this essay can cause some issues with comprehension of the content.  One word that is used throughout the first couple of pages is the word oversimplification.  I thought I knew the literal meaning, but by looking it up it allowed me grasp the content better as a whole.  Merriam-Webster describes oversimplify as “To simplify to such an extent as to bring about distortion, misunderstanding, or error”.  This is important in understanding what Berry meant on page 12, “And so we will be wrong if we attempt to correct what we perceive as “environmental” problems without correcting the economic oversimplification that caused them” (Berry 12). After looking this term up it becomes clearer to what this sentence means.  We correct the big problems we see but by refining our definitions of environmental problems we lose what the true meaning is and can effect further comprehension.

            Something that I still have questions about is, what can be done to favor more in-country production, instead of importing so many goods?  In researching this question I came across a website that helped in my question, and I attached it to the bottom of my journal.  The heritage foundation actually eluded to the idea that imports do not actually hurt the US economy.  They in fact actually help the economy by providing more US jobs, and increasing the national consumer spending.  This goes against the essay that Berry wrote, and leads me to want to research further on this subject to find a clearer side or answer to this debate.  This causes me to question some other parts of Berry’s essay and lean to the idea of a more international economy instead of the “neighborhood” theory.

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/09/trade-freedom-how-imports-support-us-jobs