The Necessity of Making Something

"To be interested in food but not in food production is clearly absurd. It is like being interested in clothing but not in tailoring or weaving or the work of the cotton mill. It is like being interested in shelter but not in carpentry or masonry or the making of nails."

— Wendell Berry

Context

This passage appears in Berry's 1977 essay "The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture," written during the height of industrialization's transformation of American farming and food systems. Berry was responding to a growing cultural amnesia—the severing of consumption from production, use from making. His critique extends beyond agriculture to a broader civilizational condition: we have become a society of consumers who have forgotten how things are made, where they come from, and what skills and labor produce them. The absurdity he names is moral, not merely practical. To enjoy the end product while remaining willfully ignorant of its origins is to live in a fantasy, disconnected from the material reality that sustains us and from the dignity of work itself.

Reflection Question

What do you consume or use daily without any understanding of how it's made, who made it, or what skills and resources were required to bring it into existence? What would change if you knew?

Application Tip

Choose one thing you use regularly—food, clothing, furniture, technology—and spend thirty minutes today researching its production process. Watch a video of it being made, read about the materials and labor involved, or visit a place where it's produced if possible. If it's food, consider visiting a farm stand or farmers market and asking the grower a question about their process. If it's clothing, research the textile and garment workers behind the label. Let this inquiry change how you see the object. Notice whether understanding its origin alters your relationship to it—your gratitude, your care in using it, or your willingness to pay what it's actually worth.