The Wisdom of Wendell Berry

After reading two books (each by a different author) that were full of quotes from Wendell Berry's writings, I figured it was high time I investigated some of his work. It took some searching of San Jose Public Library's catalog to find the books containing the essays most frequently referenced in Shannon Hayes's Radical Homemakers, but I was able to find and check out Berry's The Gift of Good Land and Home Economics. I've already begun plowing through several essays in the former, but it was the foreword that I found especially thoughtful. In particular, the following paragraph for me summarized and underscored the primary reason our species seems to be increasingly indifferent to the plight of the natural systems that support life on our planet, despite the abundance of evidence that our current behavior is very likely to lead to the demise of more than just a few "inconsequential" species:

Soil conservation, Henry Besuden wrote nearly forty years ago, "involves the heart of the man managing the land. If he loves his soil he will save it." There are fewer hearts involved now than there were then, and more soil is being lost. Wes Jackson, writing in 1981, is forced by consideration of the increased loss to the same perception; the cause of waste is "alienation from the land": "Where there is alienation, stewardship has no chance."