Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community

These are the quotes I found the most impactful from Wendell Berry's book Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community. I wish I wouldn't have waited this long to read his essays. Pretty easy reading, but some hard ideas. I would like to read more of his stuff. I may have included too much material. The ellipses denote places I left stuff out. I edited out as much as I could. Let me know if you'd like the rest of what I typed up.

Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community by Wendell Berry

On the Outdoors.

Pg 28 The love of nature that limits itself to the love of places that are “scenic” is implicitly dangerous. It is dangerous because it tends to exclude unscenic places from nature and from the respect we sometimes accord to nature.

Outdoors we are confronted everywhere with wonders; we see that the miraculous is not extraordinary but the common mode of existence. It is our daily bread...The turning of water into wine- was, after all, a very small miracle. We forget the greater and still continuing miracle by which water (with soil and sunlight) is turned into grapes.

On Peacefulness.

Pg 84 There is one great possibility that we have hardly tried: that we can come to peace by being peaceable.

Pg 86 Peaceableness has been too little tried by individuals, much less by nations. It will not readily or easily serve those who are greedy for power. It cannot be effectively used for bad ends. It could not be used as the basis of an empire. It does not afford opportunities for profit. It involves danger to practitioners. It requires sacrifice. And yet it seems to me that it is practical, for it offers the only escape from the logic of retribution. It is the only way by which we can cease to look to war for peace.

Peaceableness is not the amity that exists between people who agree, nor is it the exhaustion or jubilation that follows war. It is not passive. It is the ability to act to resolve conflict without violence. If it is not a practical and a practicable method, it is nothing. As a practicable method, it reduces helplessness in the face of conflict. In the face of conflict, the peaceable person may find several solutions, the violent person only one….Of course, as the Amish know, peaceableness can get you killed. I suppose they would reply that war can get you killed, too, and is more likely to get you killed that peaceableness—and also that when a peaceable person is killed, peaceableness survives.


On Being Man.

Pg 106 Dualistic minds conclude that the formula for man-making is man =body + soul. But that conclusion cannot be derived, except by violence, from Gen 2:7, which is not dualistic. The formula give in Gen 2:7 is not man = body +soul; the formula there is soul = dust + breath. According to this verse, God did not make a body and put a soul into it, like a letter into an envelope. He formed man of dust then , by breathing His breath into it, He made the dust live. The dust, formed as man and made to live, did not embody a soul; it became a soul. “Soul” here refers to the whole creature. Humanity is thus present to us, in Adam, not as a creature of two discrete parts temporarily glued together but as a single mystery.


On Sex.

Pg 134 A skin lotion advertisement displayed a photograph of the naked torso of a woman. From a feminist point of view, this headless and footless body represents the male chauvinist’s sexual ideal: a woman who cannot think and cannot escape. From a point of view somewhat more comprehensive- the point of view of community- it represents also the commercial ideal of the industrial economy: the completely seducible consumer, unable either to judge or to resist.

The headlessness of this lotionable lady suggests also [our culture's...] gravitation of attention from the countenance, especially the eyes, to the specifically sexual anatomy. The difference, of course is that the countenance is both physical and spiritual. ..Looking into one another’s eyes, lovers recognize their encounter as a meeting not merely of two bodies but of two living souls. In one another’s eyes, moreover, they see themselves reflected not narcissistically but as singular beings, separate and small, far inferior to the creature that they together make. …Sexual love is thus understood as both fact and mystery, physical motion and spiritual motive. That this complex love should be reduced simply to sex has always seemed a fearful thing to the poets.



Pg 139 Our present sexual conduct has forsaken trust, for it rests on the easy giving and breaking of promises. And having forsaken trust, it has predictably become political….We are attempting to correct bad character an low motives by law and by litigation. “Losing kindness,” as Lao-tzu said, “they turn to justness.” …..The difficulty is that marriage, family life, friendship, neighborhood, and other personal connections do not depend exclusively or even primarily on justice- though, of course, they all must try for it. They depend also on trust, patience, respect, mutual help, forgiveness- in other words, the practice of love, as opposed to the mere feeling of love. As soon as the parties to a marriage or a friendship begin to require strict justice of each other, then that marriage or friendship begins to be destroyed, for there is no way to adjudicate the competing claims of a personal quarrel….The proper question, perhaps, is not why we have so much divorce, but why we are so unforgiving. The answer, perhaps, is that, though we still recognize the feeling of love, we have forgotten how to practice love when we don’t feel it.

The phrase “sexual partner” which denies all that is implied by the names of “husband” or “wife” or even “lover.” Denies anyone’s responsibility for the consequences of sex. With one’s “sexual partner,” it is now understood, one must practice “safe sex” – that is , one must protect oneself, not one’s partner or the children that may come of the partnership.


Sexual liberation ought logically to have brought in a time of “naturalness,” ease, and candor between men and women. It has on the contrary, filled the country with sexual self-consciousness, uncertainty and fear. Women, though they may dress as if the sexual millennium had arrived, hurry along our city streets and public corridors with their eyes averted, like hunted animals. “Eye contact,” once the very signature of our humanity, has become a danger. The meeting ground between men and women, which ought to be safeguarded by trust, has becomes a place of suspicion, competition, and violence. One no longer goes there asking how instinct may be ramified in affection and loyalty; now one asks how instinct may be indulged with the least risk to personal safety….Women must look on virtually any man as a potential assailant, and a man must look on virtually any woman as a potential accuser……We presume to teach our young people that sex can be made “safe” by the use, inevitably, or purchased drugs and devices,. What a lie! Sex was never safe, and it is less safe now than it has ever been. What we are actually teaching the young is an illusion of thoughtless freedom and purchasable safety, which encourages them to tamper prematurely, disrespectfully, and dangerously with a great power. Just as the public economy encourages people to spend money and waste the world, so the public sexual code encourages people to be spendthrifts and squanderers of sex.


On Sexual Harassment.

If men and women are merely animals, it is hard to see how sexual harassment could have become an issue, for such harassment is no more than the instinctive procedure of male animals, who openly harass females, usually by unabashed physical display and contact; it is their way of asking who is and who is not in estrus. Women would not think such behaviour offensive if we had not, for thousands of years, understood ourselves as specifically human beings- creatures who, if in some ways animal-like, are in other ways God-like. In asking men to feel shame and to restrain themselves which one would not ask of an animal- women are implicitly asking to be treated as human beings in that full sense, as living souls made in the image of God. This kindness cannot be conferred by a public economy or by a public government or by a public people. It can only be conferred on its members by a community.