Some time ago, in a conversation with Wes Jackson in which we were laboring
to define the causes of the modern ruination of farm land, we finally got
around to the money economy. I said that an economy based on energy would be
more benign because it would be more comprehensive.
Wes
would not agree, “An energy economy still wouldn’t be comprehensive enough.”
“Well, I said, “then what
kind of economy would be comprehensive enough?”
He hesitated a moment, and
then grinning, said, “The Kingdom of God.”
I assume that Wes used
that term because he found it, after that point in our conversation,
indispensable; I assume so because, in my pondering over its occurrence at that
point, I found it indispensable myself.
(Berry
then draws a conclusion about the subject of conversation he and his friend
were having regarding farmland)
…the thing that troubles us
about the industrial economy is exactly that it is not comprehensible enough;
that, moreover, it tends to destroy what it does not comprehend, and that it is
dependent upon much that it does not comprehend.
In attempting to criticize
such an economy, we naturally pose against it an economy that does not leave
anything out, and we can say without presuming too much that the first
principle of the Kingdom of God is that it includes everything; in it, the fall
of every sparrow is a significant event.
We are in it whether we
know it or not and whether we wish to be or not. Another principle, both
ecological and traditional, is that everything in the Kingdom of God is joined
both to it and everything else that is in it; that is to say, the kingdom of
God is orderly.
Berry continues:
…we live within order
and…this order is both greater and more intricate than we can know. The
difficulty of our predicament then is made clear… (And here he continues his
thought regarding economies and how they affect farmland) Though we cannot
produce a complete or adequate description of this order, severe penalties are
in store for us if we presume upon it or violate it.
