Questionnaire

                        by Wendell Berry

1. How much poison are you willing
to eat for the success of the free
market and global trade? Please
name your preferred poisons.

2. For the sake of goodness, how much
evil are you willing to do?
Fill in the following blanks
with the names of your favorite
evils and acts of hatred.

3. What sacrifices are you prepared
to make for culture and civilization?
Please list the monuments, shrines,
and works of art you would
most willingly destroy.

4. In the name of patriotism and
the flag, how much of our beloved
land are you willing to desecrate?
List in the following spaces
the mountains, rivers, towns, farms
you could most readily do without.

5. State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes,
the energy sources, the kinds of security,
for which you would kill a child.
Name, please, the children whom
you would be willing to kill.

“Questionnaire” by Wendell Berry from Leavings. © Counterpoint, 2010

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The G7 meeting is to begin in Biarritz, France tomorrow.  Leaders of the seven most advanced economies will meet for consultation.  They have much to discuss: The Amazon burns, the Middle East roils with the atrocity visited upon the Palestinians, the choking of the Iranian economy, and the world economy shudders with a deepening trade war between the U.S and China.

The G7, is a meeting of the great lords, the Daimyō of the West, and especially the President of the United States who fantasizes himself to be the Tenno Heika*. Are they not all vassals to this Son-of- Heaven who holds all under his protection?

A reasonable person recognizes immediately how insane that last sentence is.

So how much are you willing to suffer, are you willing to countenance to suffering of others, to prop up unsustainable, unjust, and environmentally violent practices for meeting our needs?  It is morally wrong to extract as much profit as you can from your customers, and secondarily from your employees.  It is morally wrong to hold workers in a state of voluntary servitude, whether your own countrymen or those of another country, in order to enrich yourself, or to enrich your corporation.

Several weeks ago a friend mentioned the news that Bayer AG has promise of settling the class action lawsuit, that involves 18,400 plaintiffs.  The allegation is that the Roundup herbicide, glyphosate causes non hodgkins lymphoma and is unsafe for human use.  My friend thought a pathway to a settlement for Bayer was “good news” because Bayer could get back to business as usual.  Roundup remains widely available with no changes to the label.

We must rise up friends to protest business as usual, to object to the violence that derives profit by causing harm to others.  We must rise up verbally, to dissent to the despoilation of Nature, to the globalized network of plunder.

We can resist!

*The Emperor