Week 15 Discussion

Wendell Berry's article discusses how agriculture and local business has been driven to near-extinction proportionally to the nation's population as a direct result of national political decisions. He talk about how to world is controlled by massive corporations that deliberately take away other's shares of deciding how things should be. He uses particular wording in describing how the government and education systems serve those corporations and not the people, and how they think that the natural world is lesser than the technological world. Placing the values of machines over people is a theme that surfaces once again. We've seen it when talking about cheap labor in underdeveloped countries, and we've also been hearing about it a lot more in they last year or two. He also talks about how standard political conventions won't work to solve the issue since both parties are controlled by the corporations. This is apparent even today; both parties are locked in a push-pull cycle and just stalemate over issues because there's always an alterior motive that prevents politicians from breaking away and serving the people over the corporations. 

The second article is written in a style that is better for application and practicality for the reader. The authors argue that history has proven that there are ways to combat the globalization of corporate domination, and outlines how readers can take action in a realistic manner rather than just hypothetically. It is broken up into 4 sections based on each role an individual can play and how one can fulfill the duties of that role to push back against negative globalizing forces. The section that stod out the most to me was the final one about the steps of a citizen. I like that it was divided into levels of scale, since that is what seems to deter people from taking action most frequently, at least from what I've seen. People will be reluctant to take action because they think they can't have an impact at anything above the local scale, so it is important to distinguish how they can impact the regional, national, and global scales as well.

These articles show 2 different perspectives of a similar issue. Barry focuses more on a radical change in the political system, while the authors of the second article focus more on reforming the current system through active participation. I agree more with the second article, simply because I think it's more applicable to what's reasonable or realistic in today's world. I think that Barry's ideal party system could eventually be achieved, but his means of getting there may not be achievable without the actions of the second article.