“In a society in which nearly everybody is dominated by somebody else's mind or by a disembodied mind, it becomes increasingly difficult to learn the truth about the activities of governments and corporations, about the quality or value of products, or about the health of one's own place and economy. In such a society, also, our private economies will depend less and less upon the private ownership of real, usable property, and more and more upon property that is institutional and abstract, beyond individual control, such as money, insurance policies, certificates of deposit, stocks, and shares. And as our private economies become more abstract, the mutual, free helps and pleasures of family and community life will be supplanted by a kind of displaced or placeless citizenship and by commerce with impersonal and self-interested suppliers... Thus, although we are not slaves in name, and cannot be carried to market and sold as somebody else's legal chattels, we are free only within narrow limits. For all our talk about liberation and personal autonomy, there are few choices that we are free to make. What would be the point, for example, if a majority of our people decided to be self-employed? The great enemy of freedom is the alignment of political power with wealth. This alignment destroys the commonwealth - that is, the natural wealth of localities and the local economies of household, neighborhood, and community - and so destroys democracy, of which the commonwealth is the foundation and practical means.”
Quote by Wendell Berry
Work
The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays
Browse quotes and source details for this work. more
Author
You May Also Like
“When money realizes that it is in good hands, it wants to stay and multiply in those hands.”
Source: Wealth for All: Living a Life of Success at the Edge of Your Ability
Source: All the Light We Cannot See
“You willed yourself to where you are today, so will yourself out of it.”
“No matter whether you believe in luck or chance, the final decision is from yourself.”
“If equal affection cannot be, Let the more loving one be me.”
Source: Toxic Assets
