The Agrarian's Lament: On Wendell Berry. An introspection.

The Agrarian's Lament: On Wendell Berry. An introspection.: We noted the passing of Wendell Berry here on September 1, but I didn't go into much introspection on him in relation to us.  This omiss...

On Wendell Berry. An introspection.

We noted the passing of Wendell Berry here on September 1, but I didn't go into much introspection on him in relation to us.  This omission was, ironically, time caused. 

I didn't have time to.

Since Berry's death I've ready comments by people, principally on Twitter, reflecting on how influential Berry was on them.  He was certainly influential on me, but not quite in the way that he was on others.  Berry wasn't the source of my world view.  Rather, what he was was the distiller of it.

I had an Agrarian mindset before I'd ever heard of Berry.  I came into Berry, in fact, because I had an agrarian mindset.  Indeed, I had an agrarian mindset before I had heard of agrarianism in a philosophical sense.  I was really a nascent agrarian by the time I graduated from high school, although only vaguely so.

By the time I had graduated from university as an undergrad, I was a full blown, if undefined, agrarian.  What I really wanted to do was to hunt, fish and garden, and be allowed to do so.  If I could have, I would have ranched.  I didn't have the means to do that, or to make my other goals my present habitus or mode of living, at least in full, although at the time wildgame provided most of my meat, and my father's garden most of my produce.  What I didn't have, was a good and steady income and the destruction of the extractive economy, which I was disenchanted with anyhow, kept me from having one.   I had already found a literary fellow traveller in the form of Aldo Leopold.

Law school seemed my only option, and so I went.

The Agrarian impulse however only strengthened during that time.  Getting out of law school in 1990 I recall telling a friend of mine that I had no ambition, as all I wanted to do was ranch.  He told me that didn't mean I had no ambition, that was my ambition.  Well, that's one of those insights that is a bit shocking when you first hear it, but it was correct.  At that time I still carried a sort of weltanschauung that required me to make something of myself in the eyes of the world, something that had been instilled by my mother.

In spite of starting practicing law, my agrarian world outlook only increased.  At that time I discovered the Southern Agrarians somehow, which was mind blowing.  For the first time, really, I learned that there others who held the same viewpoints on many things that I did. The Southern Agrarians, who are very problematic on some things, nonetheless really helped define my philosophical worldview to me and I realized that what I was, was an agrarian.

The Southern Agrarians were almost all dead by that point in time.  Only Andrew Nelson Lytle was left alive.  So the movement seemed to be dead itself, but the arrival of the Internet allowed even a very isolated person such as myself to learn who else was out there.  That lead me to Gene Logsdon and Wendell Berry.  Berry was by far the more influential.

Indeed, Berry took the world out look I had and really distilled it. There were a lot of things I believed but I didn't have the existential nature of defined. Berry did that for me.  His influence on how I sese the world was massive.

Distilling my world view didn't stop with Berry.  Sometime after discovering him I discovered the Distributist, including Chesterton, and that really completed it, basically.  I often say, when there's ears to hear it, that while not all Distributists are Agrarians, all Agrarians are Distributist.

Berry stands in my intellectual formation with Leopold and Chesterton, three men who now are at some lively gathering beyond the veil.

Berry's death is a major and tragic loss for the intellectual life of the nation.  Not just agrarianism, but the soul of the United States itself.  Berry lived life the way it really should be lead.  He was deeply Christian (he was a Baptist) and a man of letters who farmed.  He saw America for what it was, what it had become, and what it should return to.  He advocated for Christian principles and lived a Christian life, while having a deep land ethic and understanding of the land itself.  He urged us to "become native to this place".

I've never really been able to pull off what he lived and advocated.  But I may be about to.

Berry, in his youth, was an opponent of the Vietnam War in a region that was likely not opposed to it.  His departure comes during the reign of Donald Trump.

Berry, like all true agrarians in contemporary society, likely knew that what he stood for was not going to be adopted by the culture at large.  The Southern Agrarians were already lamenting the destruction of the last of agrarianism during the 1930s.  The Unsettling of America, a masterpiece, was published in 1977. Particularly after the election of Ronald Reagan, each passing year has made the plight of agrarians worse in this country, as its yielded to an unprincipled culture and greed. Restraints placed on the evolution by the law, which do exist, and by the culture, which also exist but which are greatly weakened, have nearly fallen by the wayside.

Berry was 93 when he died this past week.  Donald Trump, suffering from dementia in the Oval Office while nearly ruling as a dictator, is 80 years old.  Berry was of the Silent Generation (Leopold was of the Lost Generation). Trump is a Baby Boomer and virtually defines that generation, in spite of what many in it would like to believe.

Berry stood for, and will continue to stand for, the opposite that everything Donald Trump does.  He was a sincere Christian deeply in nature and the virtues of self control on al things. Trump is, at best, a faux Christian who stands for destruction and avarice. They represent the two poles that struggle for the soul of the nation, one who would anchor us in a quiet and unassuming harbor, and another who would drag us out into and down under in the tempest.

Wendell Berry, August 5, 1934 – August 31, 2026.  May the perpetual light shine upon him.

The Voice of Generation Jones

There are times when perhaps we should retitle our blog just that.

Members of Generation Jones, including myself, in about 1965.

I hadn't realized that what I've been calling "the Gap Generation" has actually been defined as "Generation Jones" and that it's actually pretty well-defined.  Indeed, according to Wikipedia:

Generation Jones is the social cohort^[ of the latter half of the Baby Boomer Generation to the first years of Generation X.  The term Generation Jones was first coined by the cultural commentator Jonathan Pontell, who identified the cohort as those born from 1954 to 1965 in the U.S. who were children during Watergate, the oil crisis, and stagflation rather than during the 1960s, but slightly before Gen X.

Yup, that's about right.

And so is this:

While charismatic leaders like John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. inspired millions of older Boomers to work for — and witness — positive social change, younger Boomers were in preschool or not yet born. Woodstock was a defining moment for older Boomers; younger Boomers have no memories before the Watergate scandal and the cultural cynicism it begat.

Many came of age during the 70s and early 80s. They shared similar pop culture and MTV with Gen X'ers. They were young adults navigating the workforce in the 80s and 90s, but still felt the 2008 economic crisis. This hit them hard because they had to help and advise their older Millennial children while also providing for their younger Gen Z kids.

* * * 

Key characteristics assigned to members are pessimism, distrust of government, and general cynicism.

Yup, again.

And of potential interest: 

Though there are few studies on voting behavior with respect to Gen Jonesers during the 2016 and 2020 election cycles in the U.S., a general distrust of the government and cynical voting behavior tracks well with this cohort's majority support for Donald Trump, who was seen as a boisterous political outsider, in 2016. However, the cohort shifted left 2020: (Mr. Pontell says) Mr. Trump’s fumbling response to the Covid-19 crisis ... hurt him with Jonesers, who are part of the demographic most at risk from the disease ... And ... Mr. Trump’s cruel mocking of Joe Biden’s senior moments (offended them). “There are lots of seniors out there that also have senior moments,” Mr. Pontell says. “They don’t really like the president mocking those one bit.”

If I were to quibble, and indeed I'm inclined to do so, I'd not put the floor in 54, as those folks came of age in 72, when the Vietnam War was still on.  Indeed, I'd put the floor in 56.

Having said that, it's interesting to read this short synopsis, and frankly it has a lot of merit to it.  Taking a look deeper, I'd add a few things, and then I'll expand on that.  Indeed, I think it explains a lot why those of us in this generational cohort bristle at the thought that we're part of the Boomers.

Let's look again.

While charismatic leaders like John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. inspired millions of older Boomers to work for — and witness — positive social change, younger Boomers were in preschool or not yet born. Woodstock was a defining moment for older Boomers; younger Boomers have no memories before the Watergate scandal and the cultural cynicism it begat.

John F. Kennedy was assassinated when I was a few months old. I have no personal memory, rather obviously, of him at all, and the phrase "everyone remembers where they were when Kennedy was shot" might as well be stated about James A. Garfield in so far as my personal memory goes.  And, while it might surprise people who are old enough to remember him, for those of us in my generation he supplies no sort of inspiration at all.  

My mother, I'll note, really admired Kennedy, and continued to admire Jacqueline Kennedy, whom she followed.  My father, however, was never particularly impressed with Kennedy, although a Mass card was among the collection of things in his dresser drawer.  If I heard about a President that my parents both admired at home, it was most likely to be Truman.  What I was left with, regarding Kennedy, is that he was Catholic like us (which my mother would bring up), that he came from a family that my father regarded as a bit dicey in some ways, that he had questionable personal morals, and that he was responsible for the Bay of Pigs invasion, which was stupid.  Lyndon Johnson got better overall marks.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was another matter.  Everyone admired him, but he seemed like a character from the distant past.  Even with King, however, I'm pretty sure all my memories about King came from learning about him in the 1970s, probably starting with junior high or high school, and from the cultural background after he'd been killed.  When he was living, I didn't know of his existence.  Dr. King was assassinated in 1968, at which time I was five, and I have no recollection of it whatsoever, other than that I can remember riots being on television from 67 or 68, and these may have been the 68 riots that followed the assassination of Dr. King.

Indeed, the Civil Right Era, which was in full swing when I was born, seemed like something that had happened within recent American history, but far enough back it was very removed from our modern lives.  That I recall that shows my very early recollections of the times, times that "Baby Boomers" were supposedly living.  The civil rights movement wasn't something I participated in, in any fashion.  Nor was the "Camelot" atmosphere of the Kennedy Administration.

The same thing could be said about the Vietnam War, sort of, modified by the fact that it was really long.  I have some very early recollections of the war, including that a son of the couple who lived across the street was a paratrooper who was serving in Vietnam.  I mostly recall that as he had been dating, literally, the girl next door, and when he went on leave during the war he went to Hawaii, and she flew out to visit him, which was a topic of conversation in my parents home.  I also recall a sign on a door that stated "War is harmful to children and other living things", which I recall as it was such an odd thing to see in a place where nobody outwardly opposed the war.  I was in school at the time, so that may have been actually observed in the 1970s, however.  By the early 70s, and maybe even the late 60s, the background of the war was constant and so even the young were fully aware it was going on.  But it was the defeat of South Vietnam in 1975 that I really recall, although POWs returning in 1973 or so is pretty vivid as well.

The earliest thing of the "60s" I really directly participated in was the July 20, 1969, moon landing, which we watched on television.  Kids were fascinated with space at the time, and we all participated in that.  For me, personally, the next thing I really recall was the televised scenes of Jimi Hendrix playing at Woodstock.  But you really have to get into the 1970s, with the US invasion of Cambodia, that I was old enough to be aware of what was going on in the world and the culture.

That in turn means that it was really all the way into the 1970s before people like me were aware of what was up, and had a feeling about it, and that came with the backdrop of the 1970s.  Indeed, the experience is depicted really well in the television series The Wonder Years, which is specifically set from 1968 to 1973.  That means that it involved children who were older than I was, but the setting was pretty accurate.  And keep in mind, that I'd place the high school graduating class of Generation Jones as starting at 1976, whereas The Wonder Years is dealing with the class of 1974.   I debated where to put that line, but 74, the year after the active participation in the Vietnam War for the US ended, would be another good place to put it.  All in all, it has the feeling right, and the characters would have a little more of the late stages of the Vietnam War whereas folks in my line would have a little more of the rampant inflation of the 70s.

In any event, The Wonder Years does a really good job of showing how the "60s Generation", the real Boomers, were observed from Generation Jones from the outside.  We didn't participate in the events of the 60s, but they were background.  I've touched on this in a way, in a long thread regarding my early years, Growing up in the 1960s.  Indeed, in that I noted:

The Cuban Missile Crisis, the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the (American portion of the) Vietnam War, the Prague Spring, Woodstock, the Stonewall Riots, two Kennedy assassinations, the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. . . all of these are things that remain fresh in the nation's memory and as long as there is a member of the Baby Boom generation still with us, they will continue to.  Youth rebellion in the United States and Europe, particularly in Germany and France, combined with a rejection of conventional morality by some of that demographic combined with the introduction of "the pill" also reach back as long influential developments.  Finally, in our list, the Second Vatican Council concluded making changes of debated nature to the practices of the Catholic Church, impacting the 2,000 year old foundational Christian religion in ways that are still being sorted out and which are still hotly debated as to their merits.

So that all must have really been something growing up, right?

Well, that's another topic, isn't it?

We're all impacted by the years in which we grow up. It cannot be denied. I've often noted here that a person's personality is basically fixed by the time they're five, and they're going back to that personality, one way or another, sooner or later.  And part of what influences that personality is the era in which we are young.

But only part, and perhaps not in the way we might imagine.

In really real ways, the central events for the Baby Boom Generation, that defined that generation and its view of the world, were like a hand grenade thrown by that generation and its events into a room we were in.  It blew up on us.

We didn't fight in Vietnam, but might have known somebody who had a family member who did.  The impact of the war on us wasn't the lost cause in Vietnam, but an ineptitude and uncertainty about the American place in the world that followed it.  If it was more direct, it was the Laotian kids at school who showed up and kept to themselves, strangers in a very strange land, guest of the nation that had helped wreck their nation.  Experimentation with drugs wasn't something cool and enlightening, but a cancer that had crept into society and was wiping out the minds of the young, including kids who were hauled out of junior high and high school as they were them.  The revolution of the 60s had torn things down, but it didn't build up anything in its place.  We hadn't participated in the counter culture, but by our early teens we were aware of it, and it had its remnants in the girls who still wore elephant bells after their time had passed.

And we didn't participate in an American economy that was the strongest in the world as the world was still recovering from World War Two. By the time we were young enough to be aware of the economy, it was suffering from inflation 

And all of that gets back to something noted above.  General skepticism.

Like the entry noted, we have memories of Watergate, the Nixon resignation, the failed Carter Administration, the fall of Vietnam, the withdrawal from Saigon, boat people, the Iranian hostage crisis, and rampant inflation.

We're not looking back on that with nostalgia.

We also have memories of lives wrecked with drugs and a drug culture that never went away.  We watched the 60s promise of a "counter culture" kill its members and then continue on to the present day and keep on killing.  We heard of the "sexual revolution" and then grew up to watch it continue to corrode society and carry on to the modern era in which all that some think about is their glands.

And we graduated into an economy with no jobs.  Unlike our older Baby Boomer predecessors, we never enjoyed an economy in which simply holding a college degree meant that a "good job".  We had to scramble to find work, and going to college, in our era, involved none of the revelry that the college experience supposedly had come to mean in the 1960s and 1970s, but a landing approach on an economic carrier in stormy seas . . . maybe you were going to make it, or maybe you were going to wreck.

Indeed, we ended up resembling The Silent Generation more than any other.  That generation came after the "Greatest" Generation that fought World War Two, and experienced that horror, and the Great Depression, as background to their childhood, like we experienced Vietnam, the Counterculture, and the like.  And we were focused, like they were, on getting by.

Also, like the Silent Generation, we didn't have a sense of rebellion against anything. We'd seen that, and it didn't work out, and we bore the brunt of its failures.  The Silent Generation hadn't rebelled against the Greatest Generation or the Lost Generation, the two generations that its parents were drawn from. Generation Jones didn't rebel against the Silent Generation or the Greatest Generation, which its parents were drawn from.  We mostly hoped just to get by, and were very much aware of what had been lost.

We still are.

Prior Threads:

Growing up in the 1960s