"The life of this world is small to those who think it is, and the desire to enlarge it makes it smaller, and can reduce it to finally nothing." In his article, Wendell Berry submits heavy claims as to society's deluded idea of limitlessness. He stresses that few things actually do have limits nowadays, or rather, limits that Americans would like to acknowledge. There is limitless wealth, growth, want, money, energy, and even debt. He does not think it wise that our society is founded on the basis of limitlessness because when the limits are recognized and pushed as far as they can do, everyone will just get hurt. The American way of life has become one established on waste, greed, and foolishness. Berry is very straightforward and rather harsh in the manner he addresses his thoughts, commenting on America as a possessing a "national insanity."
Berry addresses the country's fantasy of limitlessness as a concept of moral minimalism as well. As more technology and machines are added to the equation in order to be efficient at any cost, the idea of complex thinking disappears. People appear "to be genuinely embarrassed by any solution to any problem that does not involve high technology, a great expenditure of energy, or a big machine." In striving for ultimate freedom, Americans are trying to escape the limited nature of the world, but this is in fact, impossible because abusing resources will eventually catch up with us. Limits and restraints must be put on Americans in order to relieve them of their delusional ideas.
Berry uses the texts of Christopher Marlowe's Tragical History of Dr. Faustus and John Milton's Paradise Lost to reiterate and substantiate his thoughts on limitlessness in the human mentality. He seeks data from many political happenings such as summits held on alternate energy and statistics involving the burning of fossil fuels. He uses this data to stress that Americans are under the misunderstanding that limits constitute confinement. This is untrue seeing as how limits are necessary in order for society to function properly. Berry believes that Americans need to strongly re-evaluate the economic and environmental limits on this world. We, as guests to this planet, need to learn how to preserve and sustain the earth, economy, and morality since another world will not be given to us for mere abuse.
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I liked the point that you stress from his article that people are embarrassed to use any solution other than technology. But you didn't explain what he meant by that. He feels that technology cannot be the solution because you cannot solve technology with more technology. So the reason this problem is not getting solved is because the only solution we're looking for is through technology.
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