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MANIFESTO:
THE MAD
FARMER LIBERATION
FRONT
by Wendell Berry
Love the quick profit, the annual
raise, vacation with pay.
Want more of everything made.
Be afraid to know you neighbors
and to die.
And you will have a window in your
head.
Not even your future will be a
mystery any more.
Your mind will be punched in a
card and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you.
When they want you to die for profit
they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute.
Love the Lord. Love the world.
Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve
it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag.
Hope to live in that free republic
for which it stands.
Give you approval to all you cannot
understand.
Praise ignorance,
for what man has not encountered
he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no
answers.
Invest in the millennium.
Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the
forest that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such
returns.
Put your faith in the two inches
of humus that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion--put your ear
close,
and hear the faint chattering of
the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world.
Laugh. Laughter is immeasurable.
Be joyful though you have considered
all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power,
please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep of
a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie easy in the shade. Rest your
head in her lap.
Swear allegiance to what is nighest
your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and politicos
can predict the motions
of your mind, lose it.
Leave it as a sign to mark the
false trail, the way you didn't go.
Be like the fox who makes more
tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.
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