In the Western tradition of individualism there is the assumption that art can grow out of a personal or a cultural disease, and triumph over it. I no longer believe that. It is related to the idea that a man achieves personal immortality in a work of art, which I also no longer believe. Though I believe that the liveliest art is suffused with the energy of the creation, and in that sense participates in immortality. I do not believe that any work of art is immortal any more than I believe that a grove of trees or a nation is immortal. A man cannot be immortal except by saving his soul, and he cannot save his soul except by freeing his body and mind from the destructive forces of his history. A work of art that grows out of a diseased culture has not only the limits of art but the limits of the disease; if it is not an affirmation of the disease, it is a reaction against it. The art of a man divided within himself and against his neighbors, no matter how sophisticated its techniques or how beautiful its form and textures, will never have the communal power of the simplest tribal song.

Wendell Berry, The Hidden Wound

To be ashamed of one's species is a strange and sickening emotion. It goes against instincts of kinship and self-regard. And yet it is an emotion that I and I think a great many others have to contend with more and more often. When I think of the near-perfection of industrial and recreational pollution, of the near-universality of armed hatred and prejudice, of our scientists' ecstatic dance in the light of the first atomic explosion, of the utter destruction of land for its timber and coal then I feel such a heavy disgust that I look at the so-called lower animals with envy. I would gladly give up several of the larger benefits of "progress" for the assurance that one of my kind had never subjugated another people or destroyed a mountain or a watershed or napalmed a child. . . . I would try to get rid of such emotions if I did not recognize their truth. In these times they are part of the responsibility of an honest person. I believe that I would be a dangerous person if I did not feel them.

Wendell Berry, The Unforeseen Wilderness

A man who loves the world insofar as it conforms to his expectations (insofar, that is, as he can understand it or use it, as engineers use it) is like an adolescent lover who loves a girl because (he thinks) she loves him. He is encapsulated in himself, and he misses the whole adventure.

A man who loves the world beyond his understanding, welcoming its unexpected blessings and depending on them, in spite of its unexpected trials and dangers, has the wisdom of a man long married to a beloved woman.

Wendell Berry, The Unforeseen Wilderness

Once the place of humans was thought to be above the animals and below the angels between the natural and the divine. Then, by understanding and accepting that human place in the order of things, people could see that their privileges were limited and safeguarded by certain responsibilities. They could see, moreover, that only evil could be the result of the transgression of these limits: men could not escape the human condition except sinfully, by pride or by degradation.

The growth of what is called the Modern World has been, by turns, both the cause and the effect of the destruction of that old sense of universal order. The most characteristically modern behavior, or misbehavior, was made possible by a redefinition of humanity which allowed it to claim, not the sovereignty of its place, neither godly, nor beastly, in the order of things, but rather an absolute sovereignty, placing the human will in charge of itself and of the universe.

Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America

Once the place of humans was thought to be above the animals and below the angels between the natural and the divine. Then, by understanding and accepting that human place in the order of things, people could see that their privileges were limited and safeguarded by certain responsibilities. They could see, moreover, that only evil could be the result of the transgression of these limits: men could not escape the human condition except sinfully, by pride or by degradation.

The growth of what is called the Modern World has been, by turns, both the cause and the effect of the destruction of that old sense of universal order. The most characteristically modern behavior, or misbehavior, was made possible by a redefinition of humanity which allowed it to claim, not the sovereignty of its place, neither godly, nor beastly, in the order of things, but rather an absolute sovereignty, placing the human will in charge of itself and of the universe.

Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America