Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

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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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