Lost Mountain #3

In the last part of Lost Mountain, Wendell Berry makes a distinction between a “rational” and a “sympathetic“mind. To me there is a huge distinction between them. For one, a rational mind is the intelligence in mankind to make decisions logically and think through them. I would then define having a sympathetic mind as having a feeling of compassion or you identify with somebody. What you hear affects you and you feel sympathy for that person. There are many examples in the third part of Lost Mountain where Reece exhibits having a sympathetic mind. He tells many stories about the people in the area who either have lost someone in their family from a flash flood or falling boulder, or are too scared to even sleep at night because something could fall or damage their house any minute. These stories really make you have a sympathetic mind because you feel bad for them. Erik Reece wants you to feel this way with him so we will have the urge to change the way coal is extracted. Another example in the book that Erik portrays with a sympathetic mind is the idea of poverty. He tells you that most people in the area of the coal mining are very poor. They do not receive money from the coal companies or have jobs from the coal companies. There is a strain on other jobs in their area also because all they land is basically destroyed. Finally he says that all these people want to work and not be poor, but they have no way to make money. This information is very sad. I feel bad for these people and hearing it from a sympathetic view, makes me want to do something about it.

There are many quotes in the conclusion chapter that are significant. One quote that actually stuck out at me was, In his 1935 book, The Creed of Kinship, Salt Declared,” The basis of any real morality must be the sense of kinship between all living things.” (Pg. 241) This quote that Henry Salt had in his book, and that Erik Reece reframed in his book really got me thinking. I like this quote because it is very true. We need to start treating the environment like a thing and treat it the way it deserves. All of us humans are just destroying it instead of making a kinship. If we stopped destroying the land and found better ways to extract the resources we need, we might be able to use the environment to our advantage. In this book, Lost Mountain, Erik expresses the affects of mountaintop removal and how it is destroying our beautiful land. I never knew about this way of extracting coal but I am glad that I now know some of the information. It might not affect me personally but it is affecting others and I want to do something about it. I urge the government and the coal companies to start researching or working on a new way of extracting coal. The environment needs to be preserved and if we keep destroying it there will be none left.