Amanda DeSalme, Unsettling of America

Wendell Berry discusses health and the separation of body and soul in his book The Unsettling of America. I agree with him when he is talking about health and wholeness, but as he ties it together with the isolation of the body, he starts to sound rather doomsday-like. He tends to sound very cynical throughout this book. Here is an example of his exaggerated style: "By dividing body and soul, we divide both from all else. We thus condemn ourselves to a loneliness for which the only compensation is violence-against other creatures, against the earth, against ourselves"(Berry, 106). To an extent, what he is saying is true. But not everyone resorts to violence when feeling despair over the conflictions of body and soul. I guess what rubs me the wrong way about this passage is that he uses the all encompassing "we," assuming we are all spiraling downwards in a flurry of self-destruction and violence towards other beings. I don't consider myself a violent being and I have many friends who I know are not violent. We have very convivial relationships, rather than the competitive, exploitive relationships Berry claims we have. Maybe it is just a recent development since this book was written, but I know plenty of people who strive to be nuturing rather than exploitive. Berry makes some nice points about why things are wrong, but I don't agree that they are really huge problems today. The only problem I really do agree with is that farmlands are incredibly exploited and people don't always realize the connection of their body to the earth. Some people do realize it, but for any change to happen there needs to be "more walking and less talking" so to speak. I would enjoy this book much more if it were written in a different style.