Thu 2008-07-03 00:00 EDT
Faustian economics:
Hell hath no limits--By Wendell Berry (Harper's Magazine); "Our true religion is a sort of autistic industrialism"; "our 'identity' is located not in the impulse of selfhood but in deliberately maintained connections"; "in the phrase 'free market,' the word 'free' has come to mean unlimited economic power for some, with the necessary consequence of economic powerlessness for others"; "we confuse limits with confinement...our human and earthly limits, properly understood, are not confinements but rather inducements to formal elaboration and elegance, to _fullness_ of relationship and meaning"; "we want to make our economic landscapes sustainably and abundantly productive, we must do so by maintaining in them a living formal complexity something like that of natural ecosystems. We can do this only by raising to the highest level our mastery of the arts of agriculture, animal husbandry, forestry, and, ultimately, the art of living."