"We cannot comprehend what comprehends us"
About this Quote
Berry’s line lands like a gentle rebuke to the modern itch to master everything with an explanation. “We cannot comprehend what comprehends us” flips the usual hierarchy: it’s not just that the world is complicated; it’s that we’re inside it, held by it, answered by it, dependent on it. The verb choice matters. To “comprehend” is intellectual, almost managerial. To be “comprehended” is to be taken in, surrounded, sustained. Berry compresses an ecological theology into eight words: the systems that make us possible (soil, water, community, time, mortality) will always exceed our models of them.
The subtext is an indictment of a culture that confuses information with understanding. In the age of metrics, optimization, and expert-speak, we’re tempted to treat land and people as problems to be solved rather than relations to be honored. Berry’s paradox yanks the reader out of that posture. If the comprehending force is nature, then the line warns against techno-triumphalism and the fantasy of control. If it’s God, the warning shades toward humility and reverence. If it’s community, it becomes a critique of rugged individualism: you’re not self-made; you’re made by the web you barely notice.
Contextually, this fits Berry’s lifelong argument against industrial agriculture and extractive economies: they operate as if the whole can be contained by the spreadsheet. The sentence works because it doesn’t plead. It states a limit, cleanly, almost kindly, and in doing so it restores an older ethic: knowledge that begins in restraint, attention, and gratitude rather than conquest.
The subtext is an indictment of a culture that confuses information with understanding. In the age of metrics, optimization, and expert-speak, we’re tempted to treat land and people as problems to be solved rather than relations to be honored. Berry’s paradox yanks the reader out of that posture. If the comprehending force is nature, then the line warns against techno-triumphalism and the fantasy of control. If it’s God, the warning shades toward humility and reverence. If it’s community, it becomes a critique of rugged individualism: you’re not self-made; you’re made by the web you barely notice.
Contextually, this fits Berry’s lifelong argument against industrial agriculture and extractive economies: they operate as if the whole can be contained by the spreadsheet. The sentence works because it doesn’t plead. It states a limit, cleanly, almost kindly, and in doing so it restores an older ethic: knowledge that begins in restraint, attention, and gratitude rather than conquest.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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