The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry

Finished on: 8/10/2026

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

 

 

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Reading Wendell Berry's nonfiction these days feels like an antidote to a ubiquitous poison. Grounded, wise, and unflinchingly honest, Berry's voice is exactly what I need in this moment, even in the odd spot or two where I’m not in complete agreement with him. In the midst of our daily inundations of sales pitches, political propaganda, corporate shilling, big tech grifting, the whole loud apparatus of the capitalist system… in the middle of all that noise, hearing truth is a balm to mind and soul.

 

Given our current moment in history, it’s perhaps no surprise that I was particularly struck by how accurately Berry predicted the trajectory and ethos of the tech industry, long before the tech industry as we know it existed. I don't think Berry had "big tech" in mind at all: he was simply observing the realities and inevitable ends of America's large-scale, industrialized, exploitative economy. 

 

Yet it’s astonishing, the degree to which Berry's observations—mostly written in the 80s and mid 90s—ring true for the current rise of the Al industry. The two essays that stick out most to me in this regard are "Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer" and "Economy and Pleasure." In the latter essay, I found this passage especially noteworthy:

 

"Whatever 'new age' is at hand at the moment must be heralded in 'with a rush' because of the profits available to those who will rush it in. It seems that we have been reduced almost to a state of absolute economics, in which people and all other creatures and things may be considered purely as economic 'units,’ or integers of production, and in which a human being may be dealt with, as John Ruskin put it, 'merely as a covetous machine.' And the voices bitterest to hear are those saying that all this destructive work of mindless genius, money, and power is regrettable but cannot be helped."

 

That passage was written in 1988, yet I instantly felt its applicability to gen AI and its reckless development. Because while the tools may be new and “innovative,” the methods by which the tools are created and sold—the whole economic system in which they arise—remain the same: extractive, greedy, and ultimately destructive for both nature and human culture/community. 

 

Berry’s prescience about where we’re heading, and the fundamental changes we must make to course correct, make this a sobering but grounding (and, I think, ultimately hopeful) read.