Manifesto:The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
by Wendell Berry
Love the quick profit, the annual raise,vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid to know your neighbors and to
die.
And you will have a window in your head. Not even your future will be
a mystery any more. Your mind will be punched in a card and shut away
in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something they will call you. When they want
you to die for profit they will let you know. 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. Give your approval to all you
cannotunderstand. Praise ignorance, for what man has not encountered
he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers. Invest in the millenium. Plant
sequoias. Say that your main crop is the forest that you did not
plant, that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested when they have rotted into the
mold.Call that profit. Prophesy such returns. Put your faith in the
two inches of humus that will build under the trees every thousand
years.
Listen to carrion -- put your ear close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come. Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful though you have considered all
the facts. So long as women do not go cheap for power, please women
more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields. Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos can predict the motions of
your mind, lose it. Leave it as a sign to mark the false trail, the
way you didn't go.
Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the
wrong direction. Practice resurrection.
"Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front" from The Country of
Marriage, copyright ® 1973 by Wendell Berry, reprinted by permission
of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.
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