Last night, Kristyn and I finished Look & See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry. For a while now, I’ve admired Berry from afar, as it were—not having interacted with much of his work directly save for a few essays here and there. This documentary proved why so many esteem him so highly. It also stoked in me a greater desire to read more of his work.

Toward the end of the film, Berry delivers these words as the movie splits between shots of him speaking and shots of farmers and the land:

A culture is not a collection of relics or ornaments, but a practical necessity, and its destruction invokes calamity. A healthy culture is a communal order of memory, insight, value, and aspiration. It would reveal the human necessities and the human limits. It would clarify our inescapable bonds to the earth and to each other. It would assure that the necessary restraints be observed, that the necessary work be done, and that it be done well. A healthy farm culture can only be based upon familiarity. It can only grow among the people soundly established upon the land. It would nourish and protect the human intelligence of the land that no amount of technology can satisfactorily replace. The growth of such a culture was once a strong possibility in the farm communities of this country. We now have only the sad remnants of that possibility, as we now have only the sad remnants of those communities. If we allow another generation to pass without doing what is necessary to enhance and embolden that possibility, we will lose it altogether. And then we will not only invoke calamity, we will deserve it.