Manifesto:
The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
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 cannot understand. Praise ignorance, for what man has not
encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that
have no answers. Invest in the
millennium. 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 highest 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.
