How Wendell Berry Avoids Deep-Conservatism

He may be a Jeffersonian liberal or he may be a Burkean conservative, either way Wendell Berry is a national treasure. That said, I find his view of human nature incomplete.

Localism, which Wendell Berry rightly affirms, rises naturally out of the altruism of group-selection, and group-selection naturally leads to ethnic cultures and to ethnocentrism, and even to xenophobia. Ethnocentrism evolved as a basic part of human nature due to the advantages it brought to survival success and social harmony---call it deep-conservatism.

If localism is to be successful it needs to include an affirmation of ethnic cultures, with ethnic territories, and in a multi-ethnic nation this suggests ethnopluralism. American federalism could then protect the different regions, states, localities, and ethnic cultures, which could be affirmed by the separation of powers and states in the original U.S. Constitution. Whatever human peace is possible needs to include this deep-conservatism.

Although Berry is not the typical Christian, like most Christians he misses the central motive behind the ascetic sermons of Jesus. Jesus rejected all material desires, as Buddha also did, so as to experience the God or Father Within, which could only be fully experienced by ridding the body of material desires. One could love ones enemies and be peaceful and forgiving mainly because one was not concerned primarily with the material desires or outward actions of the flesh. This was not really a social or political philosophy.

Real human nature remains kin-centered, ethnocentric and even xenophobic, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection. Jesus, Buddha, and the Hindus before them would probably agree with this definition of human nature (they might even occasionally call it evil), as their ascetic philosophy ran contrary to it. We can retain the inward ascetic experience of the Father Within as the first symbolic glimpse of real Godhood, which is reached not by blocking human nature but by the guided outward evolution of material and supermaterial life toward real Godhood.

Long-term conscious evolution requires peace and order, and peace and order require local, ethnic cultures and ethnocentrism. Contrary to political correctness (cultural Marxism), we would probably not have the territorial racial battles we see happening today in West Baltimore if a protected ethnopluralism had been affirmed and established.