'All of us who are committed to saving things of value have been in what Wes Jackson calls "the ain't-it-awful conversation," in which we recite the current litany of outrages. We have been in that conversation, and, if we have brought to it a modicum of sanity, we have recognized sooner or later the need to get out of it. The logical end of the aint-it-awful conversation, as of the life devoted merely to opposition, is despair. People quit having any fun, they begin to talk about the "inevitability" of what they are against, and they give up. Mere opposition finally blinds us to the good of the things we are trying to save. And it divides us hopelessly from our opponents, who no doubt are caricaturing us while we are demonizing them. We lose, in short, the sense of shared humanity that would permit us to say even to our worst enemies, "We are working, after all, in your interest and your children's. Ours is a common effort, for the common good. Come and join us."'
Wendell Berry, 'The Purpose of a Coherent Community' in The Way of Ignorance, p.74.
