Wendell Berry: "These lies are not innocent"
11 November 2011
Wendell Berry, a farmer, novelist and poet from Kentucky, put his finger on the problem precisely: "Young people are being told, 'You can be anything you want to be,'" Berry writes. "This is a lie. ... A high professional salary is not everything. You can't be everything you want to be; nobody can. Everybody can't be a leader; not everybody even wants to be. And these lies are not innocent. They lead to disappointment. They lead good young people to think that if they have an ordinary job, if they work with their hands, if they are farmers or housewives or mechanics or carpenters, they are no good."