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“Nothing can take form except within limits.”

October 9th, 2018 | 1 min read

By Matthew Loftus

Wendell Berry summarizes many of our contemporary problems quite well in this excellent interview with Gracy Olmstead:

Those problems could be summed up as the triumph of industrialism and industrial values over the lives of living creatures, and over the life of the living world. The preferences and choices of industrialism do not imply a limit of any kind. They rest instead upon the premises of limitless economic growth and limitless consumption, which of course implies limitless waste, and finally exhaustion.

Nothing can take form except within limits. No cure is possible, either in policy or practice, except within understood limits, which is to say within a correct diagnosis. This requires patience. A good solution has to begin with a description of the problem that is full, clear, and reliable.

If artists and musicians really want to Save The Planet, one of the very best things that they could possibly do is spend a generation creating art that celebrates the beauty and necessity of limits.

Matthew Loftus

Matthew Loftus teaches and practices Family Medicine in Baltimore and East Africa. His work has been featured in Christianity Today, Comment, & First Things and he is a regular contributor for Christ and Pop Culture. You can learn more about his work and writing at www.MatthewAndMaggie.org