Readings and Links:
Introduction
Choosing the Common Reading for students can be a challenging task! The members of the Common Reading committee are faculty from various parts of campus who have come together to decide a reading that we believe will serve as an introduction to not only important ideas, but also to important considerations about values. The reading will also help you learn how to engage in an academic community.
The link to the reading is provided, as is a reading guide for students. The guide is supplemented by several links that provide historical context.
You will receive directions from your First-Year Seminar professor about discussion points that may center around comprehension, application, and / or action. Your professor may ask you to focus on only some questions about the reading, but your professor will expect that you will have read the entire piece by the Week of Welcome.
Reading Guide for Students
About the author: Wendell Berry is a farmer and an award-winning and critically-acclaimed author. His writings often focus on rural America, especially his home state of Kentucky. He writes novels, poems, and essays, of which Think Little is an example.
Background and reading guide for key events and themes
Think Little was written in 1969 at a time of rapid social change in the US. Berry’s essay considers three social movements: civil rights, opposition to the war in Vietnam, and the environmental movement. Berry’s essay begins with reflections on what he identified as three major social movements of the time: The Civil Rights Movement, the Peace Movement, and the Environmental Movement.
Throughout the essay, Berry speaks to those who wish to advance the causes of these movements. According to Berry, it is tempting to forget how our personal actions and “private lives” are bound together with broader social processes. The failure to understand such connections can create cognitive dissonance, where our actions do not align with our beliefs. For example, he criticizes the hypocrisy of those who advocated abstractly for civil rights but balked at the prospect of racially integrating their own neighborhoods. Thus, for positive social change to occur, we must practice what we preach. As Berry says, “there is no public crisis that is not also private.”
Of course, the inverse of this maxim is also true. Our private lives are not atomized, we are not “isolated individuals,” but interconnected to one another and the planet. Thus, Berry encourages us to also get more involved politically and demand more from elected officials. You can pick up a degree of frustration in Berry’s tone when he writes “I am sick of it,” when referring to the apathy of his state house toward environmentally damaging mining practices. Notice, though, how Berry does not respond to his feeling of anger with despair. Instead, he chooses to work harder to make the movement’s voice heard.
Finally, Berry argues that these issues—war, racial oppression, and pollution—are “not separate issues, but are aspects of the same issue.” Consider here how war destroys both human life and ecologies, like forests, watersheds, and the land itself. Or consider how racial segregation and discrimination often entails citing toxic waste facilities near minoritized communities and Indigenous reservations.
The less clear portion of Berry’s argument here concerns the “issue” at hand. What is the core issue, to Berry? Berry critiques our society’s tendency for myopia, or short-sightedness. He calls this “myopic economics,” typified by a firm’s characterization of conservation as a “no-return on investment,” policy. Perhaps, then, the core issue starts at our failure to notice fundamental truths about our connection to the earth and those who inhabit it. Notice what Berry suggests we can do to repair this issue.
Before you read Think Little:
- This essay is titled Think Little. What do you expect the author will be encouraging us to think little about? In what areas of your life do you prefer to think big and in what areas of your life is it better to think little? Why?
- What are some of the conversations and topics you think you might be talking about in future classes?
- E.G. ‘what are some major problems in the world today, in your opinion?’ answers could be general, like “war” rather than “this particular conflict”
- What sorts of things have you made or done yourself rather than purchase from others or pay someone else to do? Have you ever knitted or crocheted something? How about painting? Woodworking? Home improvement? Car repair? Berry makes a case for gardening. Have you ever grown a garden? If you have experience with a DIY project, how did it compare with purchasing a similar product or with paying someone else to do it? If you haven’t had a DIY experience, what would you most like to make or do for yourself?
As you read, consider
- Find terms and phrases Berry repeatedly uses
- To what extent do you expect something written in the 1960s could provide useful advice or insight into events happening over 50 years later?
- A key principle of ecological thinking is that “everything is connected.” As you read, notice when Berry makes arguments that stress inter-connection between people, environments, and ideas.
After you read Think Little:
- Do you think the reading is relevant for the 2020s? Which parts remain relevant today, and which parts are no longer relevant?
- Berry argues that the Civil Rights Movement and the Peace Movement were both treated superficially and with not enough attention to underlying causes. In what ways has history shown Berry was right, and in what ways was he wrong?
- Berry argues that the Environmental Movement and the Civil Rights Movement and the Peace Movement are all efforts to solve the same problem: greed and exploitation. How are people thinking about connections between these issues today? How and when do we link them as part of the same issue, and how and when do we treat them separately? Do you think we should treat these problems collectively or separately? Why?
- Berry refers to environmental problems but never to climate change. Although scientists in the 1960s and before were studying how carbon dioxide in the atmosphere causes temperature to rise, the issue of global climate change was not yet widely known. Today, much of the attention about climate change focuses on large corporations or wealthy individuals and their lavish lifestyles. How might Berry respond to that focus, given what he has to say about “Think Little”? Do you agree with how Berry’s perspective might translate to carbon pollution? Why or why not?
- Berry writes that we need “...better minds, better friendships, better marriages, better communities.” That passage seems like it could have been written today about the impact of social media on personal relationships. What do you suppose were the forces acting on personal relationships in the 1960s that caused Berry to write this passage?
- Catawba holds as its four major values: scholarship, character, culture, service. Where do you see Berry talking about these values in this reading?
- Sustainability
- The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015, provides a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are integrated and indivisible and balance the three dimensions of sustainable development: the economic, social and environmental. Based on ideas he presents in Think Little, how do you predict Berry would respond to the UN SDGs?
Historical Context for Berry’s Essay
Civil Rights Movement.
Early key events include 1954’s Supreme Court Ruling “Brown vs. Board of Education,” to overturn school segregation followed shortly after by Rosa Park’s 1955 refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man. In the 1960’s, sit-in campaigns began as Black civil rights activists occupied “white only” spaces, such as the Woolworth’s café in Greensboro, NC to protest racial segregation. Protests against anti-Black, pro-segregation Jim Crow laws spread across the south, culminating in MLK’s March on Washington and The Selma Bridge Crossing (1963 and 1965, respectively). This activity forced the hand of Washington, D.C., as the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act were signed into law at the federal level in 1964 and 1965. This progress was anything but smooth and linear. Writing at the end of the 1960’s, dozens of civil rights leaders—most famously MLK in 1968 and Malcolm X in 1965—were assassinated.
Sources for review:
The Vietnam War.
Almost 17,000 Americans died in Vietnam in 1968, making it the deadliest year of the Vietnam War for American troops. About 30% of all American casualties during the war occurred in 1968. Scholars estimate that nearly 842,000 Vietnamese people were killed. The length and violence of the war spawned the anti-war movement Berry referred to. In 1967, 100,000 Americans gathered at the Lincoln Memorial. In this same year, MLK also publicly spoke out against the War. At the time, young American men were subject to a military draft, or forced conscription, into the war which they could not defer unless they were still at college. This widespread conscription, combined with unfavorable and televised news reporting, coincided with popular music and other pop cultural forms that voiced anti-war criticism.
Sources for review
The Environmental Movement.
The modern, U.S. environmental movement was born in the 1960s. In 1962, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring hit the best-seller list. Carson’s book made the world aware to the mass-risk associated with pesticide application, notably DDT. In the 1960’s, American cities were beset with smog and water pollution. Major events like the 1969 Cuayahoga river fire, where oil and debris pollution caused the river to catch fire, further alerted Americans to the immediacy and severity of modern environmental problems. As such, one year after Berry’s article, the first Earth Day celebration occurred on April 22nd, 1970.
Sources for review:
