| ஒத்திசைவு | प्रत्याह्वय | resonance |

Sri Wendell Berry happens to be one of my favourite poet-essayist-novelist-farmer-educationist-activist swarajists (if there is such a term), who practices  what he sermonizes. And, I am sure you would agree that this species of real swarajists is a fast dwindling one and is truly endangered.

Au contraire, this species can also be dangerous, as they can look at the world through new possibilities, contexts and history – and question & undermine our uncalled-for assumptions. We merely need to be open, that’s all.

As Michael Jackson of Thriller fame could  have agreed with me and when he might  have said: This Species is Dangerous!

Here’s an extract from one of this Kentucky farmer’s works:

We do as we do, we say, “for the sake of the future” or “to make a better future of our children.” How we can hope to make a good future by doing badly in the present, we do not say. We cannot think about the future, of course, for the future does not exist: the existence of future is an article of faith. We can be assured only that, if there is to be a future, the good of it is already implicit in the good things of the present.

We do not need to plan or devise a “world of the future”; if we take care of the world of the present, the future will have received full justice from us. A good future is implicit in the soils, forests, grasslands, marshes, deserts, mountains, rivers, lakes and oceans that we have now, and in the good things of the human culture that we have now; the only valid “futurology” available to us is to take care of those things.

We have no need to contrive and dabble at “the future of the human race”; we have the same pressing need that we have always had – to love, care for, and teach our children.

/ Wendell Berry / What are People For / 1990 / North Point Press (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc) / ISBN-10: 0865474370 /

A world of stewards, who are humanely and passionately taking care of what they already have here and now, may help all of us?

JournalEntry: 6th December, 2009.