In the first essay of In the Presence of Fear, the declaration that speaks most to me is number 27. This is the last declaration that Berry wrote in this essay. In my opinion, this is the best ending possible for his essay. The thing I liked most about this declaration was his call to action. "The first thing we must begin to teach our children (and learn ourselves) is that we cannot spend and consume endlessly." (Page 9). Throughout the first essay, Berry made several accurate statements, but he never really let the reader know what he should do. Here, Berry calls the reader to action by saying we need to teach our children and ourselves how to be conservative. Further on in this declaration, Berry tells the reader that we need a new economy that is based on being conservative with resources and not so wasteful. So, Berry uses his call to action to demonstrate how a new economy can be achieved. Many people today say we need a new economy, but very few actually state how we should change the one we have or what the new economy should be founded upon. In this declaration, Berry really drives home to me that we need to conserve our resources and stop being so wasteful, which in-turn leads to a non-peaceable economy.
More so than his first essay, Berry's second essay is very dense. For a major part of this essay, Berry mentions the dominance of the corporation in our daily lives, and how the corporations are just a pile of money. Moreover, Berry gives a list of assumptions about what the corporations values. On this list, number 14 is the most significant to me and this is where Berry's ideas are at their best in my opinion. Throughout most of the essay, Berry mentions just how the corporation has taken over people and brain washed them with money. In number 14 of his list of assumptions, Berry states:
"One does not do the work that one chooses to do because one is called
to it by Heaven or by one's natural or god-given abilities, but does instead
the work that is determined and imposed by the economy. Any work is all
right as long as one gets paid for it." (Page 25).
This absolutely blows me away because of how accurate it is. For the majority of us, including myself, we will do any work as long as we are paid handsomely for it. Also, we do not work for our own morals and values, but instead for the money signs. In simplest terms, Berry believes we are all controlled by money, which I find to be very true.
One term I found in the essay was also in the list of assumptions number 14. The term I am speaking of is "vocation". According to Merriam-Webster, vocation is "a strong desire to spend your life doing a certain kind of work". In other words, vocation is your job or profession in which you care about. It is important to understand what this word means so we can see why Berry believes we do not care about who we are. In the list of assumptions, vocation is used to show that we no longer care about what type of worker we are and why we work because it is all just for the money. I did not know what this word meant prior to doing some research, and now I truly understand why Berry thinks people are so ignorant.
Is money just a piece of paper with some numbered printing on it, or is it something much more than that to us? The following site is a great source for more information on the power of money:
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/billions.htm
What I found most remarkable from this site is that it costs very little to produce one bill, whether it is a one dollar bill or a 100 dollar bill, but the bill has such a huge value compared to what it costs to produce that bill.
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