The Commerce of Violence

The Commerce of Violence by Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry opens by noting that on the day of the Boston bombing, The New York Times published an op-ed by a man who had been held at Guantanamo for more than eleven years without charge or trial. He calls this a coincidence but insists the two events are not unrelated, since both stem from the devaluation of human life and of the earthly life that sustains it. He names this cheapening of life, and the violence that follows from it, the dominant theme of the era, remarking on how casually society now resorts to violence. He lists parallel instances: coal mining in the Appalachian fields that destroys mountains, forests, waterways, and human communities without counting the loss as a cost; military technicians who kill enemies and enemies' children by remote control from armchairs; and Guantanamo guards who force fasting prisoners to live as routinely as they might otherwise kill them. Turning to Boston itself, Berry says he was not present and knew no one who was, but felt grief and fear that have recurred and worsened since he first felt them at the start of World War II. He expresses full sympathy for those who suffered the bombing and their loved ones, noting the particular cruelty of a general violence landing on specific people, which forces the question "Why me?" But he distances himself from the rhetoric of official indignation, saying he wants the perpetrators caught and punished but rejects having that wish voiced in a tone of outraged surprise, since the Boston bombing is not new or unique. He calls it merely another transaction in "the commerce of violence," an unending exchange of an eye for an eye in which everyone participates, alongside a broader willingness to destroy anything standing between people and what they consider themselves destined to have. He points to the Civil War as an example of self-congratulation: the same army that freed the slaves also established a "right" of military violence against civilian populations, later exercised in wars of extermination against native peoples of the West, and continuing through the "Indian wars" to contemporary wars of "homeland defense." He argues no one who knows this history should be surprised by massacres of civilians and children. Berry states that a society cannot reduce the value of life to nothing only when convenient without thereby reducing it for everyone, including its enemies and even the perpetrators of attacks on schoolchildren or marathon spectators. He adds that violence persists because it is profitable, since people do not grow wealthy by treating others or the world with kindness and respect, and he asks whether any prominent leader would dare say so. He then criticizes Thomas L. Friedman's Times column from the second day after the bombing, which urged washing the sidewalks, wiping away the blood, and leaving no trace so the perpetrators would see no lasting effect, and which claimed the benefits of living in an open society always outweigh the costs. Berry challenges this, asking how all traces of violence could be wiped away, whether from a bombed village, a strip mine, a gullied field, or a wrecked forest, and observes that the dead in Boston no longer live in any society, open or otherwise. He also addresses Friedman's praise for the bystanders who ran toward the blast to help, agreeing this is admirable and reassuring but insisting that help given after violence occurs is not a solution to violence. Berry proposes that the real solution, far more complex, would require abandoning the belief that war leads to peace and that permanent damage to the ecosphere leads to wealth. It would require radically revising understanding of economic life, community life, work, and pleasure. He contrasts the vast resources devoted to particle physics and astronomy with the comparatively little devoted to harmony between economy and ecology or to countering hatred and killing. Learning to meet human needs without continuous violence against one another and the world, he concludes, would require an immense intellectual and practical effort from every human being, potentially extending to the end of human time, but such work would be worthy of the name human, and would be fascinating and lovely.

By Wendell Berry · First published 2019 · Genre: Essay, Op-ed, Political Commentary · 1,235 words

First lines

ON THE DAY of the bombing in Boston, The New York Times printed an op-ed piece by a human being who had been imprisoned at Guantanamo for more than eleven years, uncharged and of course untried. The occurrence of these two events on the same day was a coincidence, but that does not mean that they are unrelated.

What connects them is our devaluation, and when convenient our disvaluation, of human life as well as the earthly life of which human life is a dependent part. This cheapening of life, and the violence that inevitably accompanies it, is surely the dominant theme of our time. The ease and quickness with which we resort to violence would be astounding if it were not conventional.

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violence · economics · capitalism · ethics · commerce · society · philosophy · agriculture · sustainability · community · culture · politics

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