No Utopia Found in Wendell Berry’s What Are People For?The preface to Wendell Berry’s What Are People For? is in the form of a two-part poem, titled “Damage� and “Healing.� By carefully digging through its cryptic obscurities (“It is despair that sees the work failing in one’s own failure�), we find the main message: The more diminutive, local, and settled a culture, the healthier it is and the less “damage� it inflicts upon its people and the land. Berry can be called a utopian but not in the traditional sense. He pines not for the future but for the past. Basing his lifestyle upon his boyhood memories of fifty years ago as well as America’s pioneer days, Berry is confident he has found the answer to the perfect existence. In this case, book and individual are difficult to separate. What Are People For? is Wendell Berry, so to criticize one is to criticize the other. His book is a compilation of contemplative essays on subjects ranging from literature to technology from the perspective of a Kentucky farmer.
