The Deep Life of Wendell Berry | Deep Questions with Cal Newport

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00:00:06.440 | Speaking of farm, so I read--

00:00:08.360 | last week you were telling me about this big New Yorker

00:00:10.700 | profile of Wendell Berry.

00:00:13.120 | So I went on your recommendation, and I read it.

00:00:16.920 | I had to read in the Physical Magazine,

00:00:18.560 | because Wendell Berry--

00:00:20.000 | you got to read a Wendell Berry thing in physical form.

00:00:23.820 | And that's really interesting.

00:00:26.120 | Really interesting.

00:00:27.920 | I mean, I knew about Berry, but it was interesting to hear,

00:00:29.980 | more of a long form description of what his life was like.

00:00:36.440 | The thing that caught my attention

00:00:37.720 | is that he is a purified instantiation

00:00:41.720 | of this deep life philosophy that we talk about on the show.

00:00:44.520 | I don't know if you had the same reaction, but think about it.

00:00:47.020 | This is someone who said, I'm going

00:00:48.480 | to do exactly what's at the core of our notion of the deep life,

00:00:51.640 | which we talk about in our core idea video on the deep life,

00:00:54.280 | if people aren't familiar.

00:00:55.760 | So YouTube page, core idea video on the deep life.

00:00:59.320 | We talk about this.

00:01:00.120 | But at the core of the deep life is making radical change

00:01:03.560 | to your life to put it into alignment with the things

00:01:06.360 | that you value.

00:01:08.200 | And that's what Berry did.

00:01:09.240 | I mean, he moved-- he left New York

00:01:11.520 | to move to a farm in Kentucky near where he grew up

00:01:15.920 | to cultivate land with horses while teaching

00:01:19.840 | at a local college there.

00:01:21.280 | Built his entire life around incredibly intentionally,

00:01:24.320 | here are the things I value, community, connection to land,

00:01:27.280 | these older ways of living, the idea of writers

00:01:31.880 | having a-- being cited in a particular place and context

00:01:35.760 | from which they write about, as opposed to, as he talks about,

00:01:38.320 | just being in this cosmopolitan abstraction

00:01:41.200 | where you live in a city and are of no place.

00:01:43.200 | And he did all those things and built a really unusual life

00:01:45.620 | around it.

00:01:46.800 | But it sounds cool.

00:01:47.880 | I don't know what your-- was your thought--

00:01:49.240 | my thought was, this sounds like kind of a cool life

00:01:51.180 | he built out there.

00:01:52.120 | Well, a couple of things.

00:01:53.160 | I mean, you read one of his books in the past month.

00:01:56.440 | I think it was January or December or something

00:01:57.920 | like that.

00:01:58.420 | So I hadn't heard of him until you

00:02:01.720 | were explaining in the book that you read about him.

00:02:03.880 | And then he came up here.

00:02:05.800 | And he's a prolific writer.

00:02:07.480 | He's written a ton of stuff.

00:02:08.680 | I mean, he's probably like 80-something years old.

00:02:11.000 | And he's written nonstop for--

00:02:12.360 | Nonstop.

00:02:12.920 | --for 50 years.

00:02:13.880 | Poems, novels, essays, and nonfiction books.

00:02:17.600 | And he's a professor, was a professor, and a farmer.

00:02:21.480 | But they have no technology.

00:02:23.720 | Didn't have a computer.

00:02:25.320 | They weren't on the internet.

00:02:26.400 | He wasn't on phone.

00:02:27.240 | So maybe it tells you something about you're up at dawn

00:02:31.800 | to tend your horses, even if you have a teaching job.

00:02:34.520 | You have a lot of time to write.

00:02:35.880 | He lives in a town of 60 people, something like that.

00:02:38.520 | Yeah.

00:02:39.040 | And he's related to half of them.

00:02:40.480 | Yeah.

00:02:41.000 | Yeah.

00:02:41.880 | I'll tell you the big revelation of the article for me

00:02:44.080 | was his writing shed.

00:02:46.080 | I hadn't heard about that before, that he has this house.

00:02:50.320 | It's overlooking a river.

00:02:52.120 | Not a house.

00:02:52.680 | It's like a little cabin up on pillars,

00:02:56.680 | because I guess the river overflows.

00:02:59.240 | No electricity, no running water.

00:03:02.120 | And he goes out there, and he writes.

00:03:05.440 | And he's out there, and he writes.

00:03:07.160 | But I love, in this piece, but also in the book of essays

00:03:10.600 | I read, how he knows the land, and he has a connection to it.

00:03:14.120 | And he wanders the land and canoes on his river

00:03:17.200 | and is completely connected to his town

00:03:20.920 | in that particular place.

00:03:22.160 | And now his family, multiple generations now, a lot of them

00:03:25.520 | all live around there.

00:03:26.680 | And in the article, his daughter and his granddaughter

00:03:29.360 | would just wander into their house.

00:03:31.720 | It really looks like a great case study

00:03:34.200 | of the deep life in action.

00:03:35.520 | Figure out what matters to you.

00:03:38.000 | Reorient your life around that, as opposed

00:03:40.920 | to arbitrary metrics that are nice in the moment

00:03:43.800 | or seem just culturally palatable,

00:03:45.320 | like just going up the ladder in a career

00:03:48.520 | or just seeking distraction.

00:03:51.840 | And then be willing to make radical changes.

00:03:53.280 | And what's more radical than leaving a teaching, writing

00:03:56.280 | job in New York and move to Kentucky?

00:03:58.960 | Speaking of which, you do a good job of explaining the radical

00:04:01.560 | part, because it's important to do-- you explain it

00:04:04.960 | like there being some sort of a test before you do that.

00:04:06.920 | Because then you gave the example of the one fellow who,

00:04:08.920 | in your book, who went to become a monk

00:04:10.920 | and didn't really work out.

00:04:12.760 | So I think for new listeners, it's

00:04:14.320 | good to explain that briefly, just so they don't think

00:04:16.720 | that you jump into the radical part.

00:04:18.360 | Yeah, radical is important, but it

00:04:19.960 | has to be aligned with your values.

00:04:22.680 | So you have to make--

00:04:23.760 | if you really want to live deeply, ultimately,

00:04:25.640 | you want to make some sort of radical shift,

00:04:27.200 | because that signals to yourself that you

00:04:28.480 | take this really seriously.

00:04:29.720 | It makes it an adventure.

00:04:31.400 | And it allows you to really immerse yourself in that value.

00:04:35.720 | So if Wendell had just said, I work in New York,

00:04:40.480 | but I live in northern New Jersey,

00:04:43.520 | but a little bit south, so I have

00:04:45.480 | a little bit of a plot of land.

00:04:46.920 | And I really have a nice garden that I take care of,

00:04:50.080 | because I find land really important.

00:04:51.800 | And I take the commuter train into New York

00:04:53.720 | and work in New York.

00:04:54.720 | That's not the same thing as I'm using horses

00:04:58.240 | to plow land in Kentucky.

00:05:00.160 | And there's something about the radicalness of what's important.

00:05:02.760 | That's the immersion in the value.

00:05:04.200 | You can make the value that you're

00:05:05.680 | orienting towards a guiding direction for your life.

00:05:08.880 | But radical without prep becomes just change

00:05:12.800 | for the sake of enjoying the disruption,

00:05:14.480 | and that can fade out.

00:05:15.400 | So you're right.

00:05:15.800 | It's so good they can't ignore you.

00:05:16.760 | I talk about the guy who says, I'm going to go become a monk.

00:05:20.600 | And he's in Mountain Monastery, and he gets there,

00:05:23.280 | and is like, oh, all right, this is not immediately

00:05:27.480 | making my life better.

00:05:28.680 | And why exactly am I doing this other than the fact

00:05:30.800 | it's disruptive?

00:05:31.600 | And he gave up on that.

00:05:33.200 | I talked about in the video where

00:05:35.800 | we explained the deep life from that Core Ideas playlist,

00:05:39.280 | the Mark Fredenfaller, where they

00:05:42.080 | moved to that island in the South Pacific.

00:05:44.400 | And it's because of disruption.

00:05:45.840 | You're like, hey, it's radical.

00:05:46.800 | Change is radical.

00:05:47.560 | It's something to do.

00:05:48.480 | And they're like, oh, this is terrible.

00:05:49.520 | And we feel weird about it.

00:05:50.400 | And our kids have lice.

00:05:51.640 | And they got ringworm.

00:05:52.640 | And it was like, this is not great.

00:05:54.520 | And they couldn't open the coconuts.

00:05:56.800 | This is another thing I didn't leave out.

00:05:58.520 | They imagined themselves just cracking open the coconuts.

00:06:00.840 | And it turned out it's really hard to open coconuts.

00:06:03.000 | And they're like, this is terrible.

00:06:04.800 | Why did we do this?

00:06:05.640 | And then he went back and did make a radical change,

00:06:08.720 | rebuilt his whole life around DIY, and started a new magazine,

00:06:12.200 | and getting back in touch with building things with his hands.

00:06:14.520 | So that's actually the real story.

00:06:16.000 | So I think it's a really important point,

00:06:17.520 | is that you have to do something radical, really,

00:06:19.600 | if you're going to embrace the deep life.

00:06:21.320 | But it has to be very much oriented towards things

00:06:23.880 | that are valuable to you.

00:06:24.880 | You have to know why you're making

00:06:25.960 | that particular radical change.

00:06:27.400 | And there's a lot of self-insight involved there.

00:06:29.360 | And that would be fascinating, to really be a fly on the wall

00:06:34.480 | with Wendell Berry in his 20s, when

00:06:37.240 | he's trying to figure this out and trying to convince his wife,

00:06:40.040 | this is what we need to do.

00:06:41.360 | A couple of things that come to mind.

00:06:43.520 | One, the article was written by the daughter

00:06:45.680 | of his first editor, who has since passed.

00:06:48.160 | But that was kind of cool to see the interchange of that

00:06:50.560 | throughout the story.

00:06:51.480 | It was a long article.

00:06:52.760 | And then talking about what he was like when he was younger,

00:06:57.200 | there was a quote in there where someone was like,

00:06:59.760 | did you tell him to lighten up?

00:07:01.080 | I think he was pretty intense.

00:07:03.400 | Yeah, his book seemed to be pretty polemical.

00:07:06.000 | His nonfiction work can be pretty polemical.

00:07:08.480 | And his new book, he's writing a book

00:07:10.360 | as an 80-something-year-old on racism.

00:07:13.720 | So that's going to be interesting, I think.

00:07:15.720 | Two other-- yeah, I think it will be for sure.

00:07:17.640 | I don't think he cares.

00:07:18.680 | He's like, whatever.

00:07:19.640 | What did he say?

00:07:20.360 | He said, I'm 80.

00:07:21.920 | I have friends.

00:07:23.080 | I have family.

00:07:24.520 | I don't care if people are mad at me.

00:07:26.200 | And so I'll read it.

00:07:28.120 | I think it'll be interesting.

00:07:29.440 | Thoughtful guy.

00:07:30.120 | He's written about that in the past.

00:07:31.720 | And I think that he's thought a lot about it.

00:07:34.840 | Yeah, he did a lot of writing about the Civil Rights

00:07:37.000 | Movement and trying to understand it as a movement

00:07:40.600 | and compare and contrast it to other movements.

00:07:42.680 | I don't remember the punchline, but I

00:07:44.280 | know he had some pretty provocative essays

00:07:47.440 | in the book I read that was comparing and contrasting

00:07:51.640 | the Civil Rights Movement to the environmental movement.

00:07:54.200 | So he thinks a lot about movements and how they expand.

00:07:59.800 | I mean, one of his main critiques, if I remember,

00:08:02.120 | is the problem with movements is there's a certain place where

00:08:05.800 | his real worry, which I think seems really relevant today,

00:08:09.800 | but his real worry is when movements get

00:08:14.200 | separated from personal action.

00:08:17.400 | So he talks about the environmental movement.

00:08:19.960 | And he's like, what matters is you're in a place actually

00:08:25.680 | stewarding the land in that place

00:08:27.840 | and building up from personal experience

00:08:30.040 | a respect for land and its interaction with humans.

00:08:32.440 | What he worries about is that you say, no, no, I just

00:08:34.920 | live in suburban America, and I give money

00:08:39.880 | to these groups that are trying to influence legislation.

00:08:43.960 | Or today it would be-- and he's talked about this probably more

00:08:46.560 | recently--

00:08:47.080 | I tweet about things or change my Twitter profile

00:08:49.640 | or whatever.

00:08:50.140 | And he says these movements become

00:08:51.520 | professionalized and abstracted.

00:08:53.720 | And they're identity badges.

00:08:55.120 | I'm a part of this movement.

00:08:56.400 | I wear the right thing.

00:08:57.400 | I say the right things.

00:08:58.560 | No action actually happens.

00:09:00.240 | And my memory is when he was talking about the Civil Rights

00:09:03.720 | Movement, the degree to which I guess this was cited

00:09:08.080 | in personal action.

00:09:11.000 | You were out there sitting at the lunch counters

00:09:13.800 | or this or that.

00:09:14.520 | And so I think he was lamenting about

00:09:16.080 | the environmental movement.

00:09:17.400 | But I think it's a big thing today

00:09:18.920 | that social media gives you the ability to superficially

00:09:23.800 | be connected with movements.

00:09:25.000 | But it also accelerates the abstraction of these movements

00:09:28.000 | into just components of an identity presentation.

00:09:31.600 | And there feels like there's a lot of crackling energy.

00:09:34.520 | But that energy is not being conduited into actually

00:09:38.200 | any sort of motive force.

00:09:40.640 | And so actually, yeah, I think this book will be interesting.

00:09:44.000 | Interesting guy.

00:09:45.760 | There was a cool part in the book where

00:09:47.380 | he was talking about the difficulty of writing.

00:09:49.120 | He's like, yeah, writing's hard.

00:09:50.120 | And then he gave the story about when

00:09:52.440 | he goes out to change the wires at night and it's cold.

00:09:55.000 | And he started doing the work.

00:09:56.280 | And then it was getting better.

00:09:57.580 | And then he related that to writing and getting

00:10:00.440 | into the groove.

00:10:01.200 | And yeah, if you're a farmer, you're used to hard work.

00:10:03.600 | Yeah, writing's hard work.

00:10:04.920 | Yeah.

00:10:05.840 | That's always my thing is what writer's block

00:10:08.960 | is another way of describing what it feels like to write.

00:10:11.600 | Because it's a weird, unnatural thing you're

00:10:13.400 | asking your brain to do.

00:10:14.480 | So why are you rewarded for doing it well

00:10:16.160 | is because you're able to overcome that.

00:10:17.920 | So the difficulty should be the first thing that you expect.

00:10:22.080 | But anyways, I think we'll see more of Barry-style lifestyles

00:10:29.040 | potentially in this current post-pandemic period

00:10:33.120 | where people are reinventing their lives

00:10:35.320 | and becoming disillusioned with what life was like pre-pandemic

00:10:40.480 | and having the disruption give them the space

00:10:42.320 | to think about it.

00:10:43.200 | That's a direction I think a lot of people

00:10:44.960 | should consider, which is this hardcore deep life direction.

00:10:48.600 | Radical changes to align your life with your values.

00:10:50.760 | You have to know what you value, be very careful about that,

00:10:53.260 | but then make the changes radical.

00:10:55.000 | So don't do radical for the sake of radical.

00:10:57.320 | You should be very aligned clearly with your values.

00:10:59.720 | And why not?

00:11:03.680 | I mean, Barry did it.

00:11:05.080 | He has an interesting life out there.

00:11:07.400 | So I think we need to move this podcast to a farm.

00:11:11.520 | I want video.

00:11:14.320 | We should be on horses.

00:11:16.040 | I think we should be on horses as we do the podcast.

00:11:19.280 | Here's an AV challenge for our contractors.

00:11:23.240 | We want to record this podcast from horses.

00:11:25.680 | We're just sort of walking over our land

00:11:27.440 | and sort of chatting about life.

00:11:30.280 | We can do that the 201st episode because the 200th episode

00:11:33.280 | will--

00:11:33.780 | We're going to South Africa.

00:11:34.960 | Yeah.

00:11:35.960 | And then after our treatment for black mamba venom,

00:11:40.320 | we'll go to a farm.

00:11:41.360 | We'll do this from a farm, and then we'll get the next headline.

00:11:44.280 | Minor podcaster hilariously bit by mamba in South Africa,

00:11:48.880 | immediately trampled by horses on farm,

00:11:53.000 | ruining the land and the financial future

00:11:56.320 | of the landowner, Wendell Barry, who has now

00:11:59.320 | been forced to move to New York to become a TikTok

00:12:02.960 | influencer in hopes of salvaging his waning fortune.

00:12:06.360 | It's a long headline.

00:12:07.240 | And he couldn't pack his typewriter.

00:12:08.720 | Yeah, couldn't pack his typewriter.

00:12:11.000 | So now is using virtual reality goggles

00:12:15.240 | and living mainly in the metaverse.

00:12:16.920 | And it's all going to happen.

00:12:20.320 | It's a long headline.

00:12:21.240 | The headlines are long these days.

00:12:22.800 | You have to-- because you've got to pack

00:12:24.500 | a lot of information into them.

00:12:26.480 | Oh, well.

00:12:27.000 | All right.

00:12:27.360 | Well, enough of that nonsense.

00:12:28.200 | We got calls today, right?

00:12:29.280 | So we got to--

00:12:29.920 | Yeah, we got some good calls.

00:12:31.240 | Listener call episode.

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00:12:35.600 | (upbeat music)

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The Deep Life of Wendell Berry | Deep Questions with Cal Newport

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