Mulling Over the Manifesto, Part 2

Follow New Paths Away From Wanting, Toward Loving

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.

This is the second installment of working my way savoring-ly through the poem Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front, by Wendell Berry.  In Part 1, I spent some time exploring Mr. Berry’s beautiful, practical description of “human heart logic,” which has been tragically co-opted by an economic way of life that gives us license to simply want, all the time, without limits and without responsibility for our wanting.  I’d like to add this little challenging note before moving on:  Wanting all the time is not limited to greedy, ego-serving, or hoarding desires.  It includes every kind of unlimited wanting, even the kinds that seem on the surface to be altruistic.  So, for instance, we may desire to “end hunger world-wide”, and in service of that seemingly noble but entirely abstract goal, force open new markets to reach the “undeveloped world,” bringing more and more people into the economy of wanting, and drawing huge resources from the earth in the form of cheap factory-farmed food to “Feed the World”.  But this is just more wanting, more desire to control that-which-we-think-is-wrong-and-needs-righting. In other writings, Berry calls that kind of altruistic or visionary wanting “pride”.  Whether brazenly greedy or openly altruistic, it amounts to the same thing: overconsumption for ungrounded ideals.

The rest of this “anti-manifesto” of Mr. Berry’s is a kind of answer to the question that might rise up within us (as it has for me) if the first stanza inspires us: “How can I step out of this system?  How can I free myself and others?”

The answer is offered in the form of advice, of sorts (“So, friends . . .”).  Some of it is very specific advice, and much of it seems more romantic or symbolic.  But, taken all together, I think they are meant to be emblematic of a way to greater freedom. I picture the totality of Mr. Berry’s suggestions for freer living as just a few of the pathways through a rich landscape. There are broad valleys, wide and deep forests, and mountain passes. There are also thorny patches, sucking bogs, and dead ends.  These are not by any means the only paths one can take.  But the paths Mr. Berry is pointing toward can give us a sense for what these new paths feel like.  In other words, if you imagine yourself doing some of the things he suggests, and feel how that feels to you, then you are starting to do the heart-work to find your own version of these pathways for yourself.  You are building your own new “heart logic,” that can displace the corrupted heart logic of the modern middle class.  After some while of practicing in this way, despite some strong misgivings about the practicality or wisdom of it, you might even try a few of these pathways yourself . . . and experience how that feels.  In the final stage of the cycle, you could learn from that experienced feeling, and begin to cultivate a love for that feeling.  Then, repeat, repeat, repeat.  This will lead you slowly but surely toward a way of living that is more human and free, and less mechanical and prideful.  It will lead you away from having your heart and mind “punched in a card and shut away in a little drawer.”  

Turning now to the lines of this portion of the poem itself: I’m going to work my way through these lines by starting at the beginning, then moving to the end, and finishing in the middle. Actually, I’ve written so much this week, that I need to leave the middle part of this stanza for the next post!  Let’s start here: 

The reference to doing something everyday that “won’t compute” is classic Wendell Berry.  I’ve written several times on this Substack about his essay “Why I Am Not Going To Buy a Computer”.  This is another reference to computer-thinking that he already invoked in the first movement of the poem; in other words, to strict mathematical logic, stripped of any context or feeling.  He is saying: act and think and love like a human, not like a machine.  And this can lead to all kinds of interesting questions about how humans (when they are working well, and freely, and fully), act and think and love, and how radically different that is from any machine, even the fanciest AI that has everyone all in a terrified tizzy right now. I think I won’t say much more about that in this post.  I’ve already done so in others, like this one and this one.

After the warnings about what not to love in the first stanza, there are three new objects of love suggested in this stanza; namely: The Lord, the world, and someone who does not deserve it.  Quite a challenging triad!  And, if I may say so, entirely recognizable.  Here, I think Mr. Berry is elucidating pretty directly from scripture.  

In the book of Matthew, when the Pharisees are questioning Jesus in their attempt to entrap and expose him as a fraud, they ask him “Which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’  All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”                                                                               Matt 22:37-40

Reading Jesus’ Greatest Commandments and comparing it to the language of the poem, it may seem that Mr. Berry is adding a third “love focal point” to Jesus’ list of two.  Jesus affirms love of God and neighbor (who is, of course, the “person who doesn’t deserve it” in Berry’s poem).  To these two, Mr. Berry adds a third, “the world”. I’m quite sure once again that this is very intentional.  Mr. Berry, for as much as he draws from his Christian roots, has been quite open about his strong criticism of institutional Christianity’s willingness to embrace love of God and other humans, while pretending that the rest of the natural world does not also consist of a multitude of living neighbors that we must also care for if our love for God and neighbor is to mean anything at all. So, adding “the world” explicitly is, I think, Mr Berry’s correction to this huge blind spot.  The world, in fact, consists of nothing but neighbors.  We must love all of it.

Moving to the end of this stanza now, what about denouncing the government and embracing the flag?  I have to say that I’ve been disturbed by this line greatly in the last two years.  Ever since the unhinged followers of Donald Trump stormed the capitol building, waving American flags and denouncing the government, I have wondered, would Mr. Berry perhaps revise this line?  I’m not sure.  He’s certainly not saying, “try to violently overthrow the government.”  And, nestled and surrounded as it is with what is basically a restating of the Greatest Commandments of Jesus, I find that the kind of denouncing that Mr. Berry is calling for is more like a walking-away than an overthrow.  In fact, in another of his Mad Farmer poems, The Mad Farmer, Flying the Flag of Rough Branch, Secedes from the Union, he says exactly that: 

From the union of power and money
From the union of power and secrecy,
From the union of government and science,
From the union of government and art,
From the union of science and money,
From the union of genius and war,
From the union of outer space and inner vacuity,
The Mad Farmer walks quietly away.

There had been a lot of flag burning in protest of the Vietnam War in the years before 1973, which is another obvious reason for this line.  Mr. Berry is pointing to the beauty of the idea of an American free republic, and pointing away from the grotesque power brokering that drove so much of our government in that time. 50 years later, this has not changed one bit, and in fact has become much more brazen and pronounced.  Once again, Mr. Berry is taking up an idea that, in our time of dangerously meaning-sapped language, could be taken literally and become one that provides cover for an unhinged, vengeful mob.  But by working with it, he is trying to reclaim the inspirational ideas, as found for example in our Declaration of Independence (flawed and unfinished and restricted as it was at the time to white men) that all people are created equal and have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I am strongly reminded of this beautifully truthful speech given by the Rev. Dr Martin Luther King Jr  at Lincoln University on June 6, 1961. This particular speech has been on repeat on my Spotify playlist for several years now. Here’s an excerpt (and if you go to the link above you can listen to Dr. King give the speech while reading along):

. . . we have made of this world a neighborhood. Now through our moral and ethical commitment we must make of it a brotherhood, and we must all learn to live together as brothers, or we will all perish together as fools. Every individual must learn this. Every nation must learn this. Every nation must realize its dependence on other nations. 

Mr. Berry is saying, I think, that even when burning flags or storming capitol buildings, those of our neighbors acting this way are actually still playing the game the way that those in control would like us to play it.  Even doing these things, you are still affirming the power, might and centrality of the government, whether you want to overthrow it, or defend it. Instead of all of this, we can all, by turning our love to that which is really knowable and lovable (God, the world, and our neighbors), stop imbuing government with so much power through our incessant attempts to turn it to our special interest desires that arise from non-stop wanting.  Freed of the burden of all of this pride, we can get to the business of embodying the American Dream in our own individual lives, through our actions and our embodied, local loves.  We need to take hold of our own individual lives, exercise our own liberties as we find them and, through finding living neighbors to love, human and non-human, pursue our happiness; and honor and preserve the same for all of our neighbors.  

I do want to add here, however, that I still don’t like this line very much. I have absolutely no use for the bit of nationalist propaganda that persists in many of our schools, The Pledge of Allegiance, which Mr. Berry is invoking in that last line. And, it interests me that by the time he wrote The Mad Farmer, Flying the Flag of Rough Branch, Secedes from the Union, even he had taken up a new flag: an anti-flag in fact, to match this anti-manifesto!

I’ll stop here for now and return next week to this phrase, which has inspired and troubled and confused me for years: “Work for nothing.  Take all you have, and be poor.” I look forward to picking this up with you then. As always, I’d love your responses and engagement!

Photo of print artwork on my mantlepiece from Watkahootee Print Shop