Daily dose of Berry

"For the care or control of fertility, both that of the earth and that of our bodies, we have allowed a technology of chemicals and devices to replace the entirely cultural means of ceremonial forms, disciplines, and restraints.  We have gathered up the immense questions that surround the coming of life into the world and reduced them to simple problems for which we have manufactured and marketed simple solutions.  An infertile woman and an infertile field both receive a dose of chemicals, at the calculated risk of undesirable consequences, and are thus equally reduced to the status of productive machines.  As for unwanted life–sperm, ova, embryos, weeds, insects, etc.–we have the same sort of remedies, for sale, of course, and characteristically popularized by advertisements that speak much of advantages but little of problems… That is only a new battle in the old war between body and soul–as if we were living in front of a chorus of the most literal fanatics chanting: ‘If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out!  If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off!"


Wendell Berry’