Wendell Berry argued that a new tool should be judged by clear standards: cost, scale, work quality, energy, repairability, local purchase and repair, and whether it disrupts goods that already exist, including family and community relationships. He refused a computer in a 1987 essay. Dependence on destructive power and the household cost to his shared work with his wife worried him more than convenience, and he refused to fool himself that a machine would make him write better.
On Wendell Berry: Why He Never Bought a Computer (aired Sep 4, 2026), David Niles and Adam Minihan take up Berry’s essay “Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer” (1987) as a living checklist for phones and household tools. Berry died on August 31, 2026, and this episode was published on September 4, 2026. On the show Adam and David name his death as part of why they are discussing him, and they treat his work with the same stubborn practicality he brought to the farm and the page. This post offers a Catholic man’s reading of a clear-eyed essay that still asks better questions than most product launches, without claiming that the Church formally adopted Berry’s list.
Why Berry still belongs in a Catholic man’s tech decisions
Berry wrote with pencil and paper. His wife, Tanya Berry, typed his work on a Royal standard typewriter and served as his closest reader and fellow worker. Friends told him a computer would improve the cottage industry. He said no, and then he listed the standards by which he would judge any new tool in his own work.
Catholic men do not need to copy his exact setup to borrow his questions. We already know that tools form habits, and that those habits shape households and the souls who live in them. Berry simply refuses the cultural habit Adam names on the show: treating new technology as automatically better while staring at output, without weighing the cost to person-to-person community. The question worth keeping is whether the tradeoff is worth it.
What the land taught him (patience and consequences you cannot undo)
Adam and David linger on a lesson that does not translate well to a screen culture. Lessons from the land are hard to learn in a world where you can hit Ctrl+Z and undo things. Early on, Berry disturbed soil for a pond on a hillside that did not work as he hoped. The mistake stayed. You cannot delete eroded ground the way you delete a file.
They also recall his image of a path versus a road, where a path stays submissive to the terrain and roads arrive and change how you move. David met that image in The World-Ending Fire, the essay collection Adam and David treat as a strong starting point (Nick Offerman reads the audiobook). Some tools remake the household and the neighborhood while claiming only to save time, and Berry’s path-and-road image is meant to show that cost.
Adam brings in Josef Pieper to name what fidelity to a real life looks like. In Leisure: The Basis of Culture, Pieper argues that the opposite of acedia (the old sin of sloth) is the glad acceptance of your own life, so a man can stay busy every hour and still refuse the life he actually has.
“My final and perhaps my best reason for not owning a computer is that I do not wish to fool myself.”
Wendell Berry, as read on The Catholic Man Show (~50:50), from “Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer” (1987)
The nine standards for technological innovation
In the essay, Berry states his standards for technological innovation in his own work. The whisper transcript of the episode skips or muddles standard 1 and standard 8. The wording below is taken from Berry’s published essay (1987; later republished with critics’ letters and his replies), not invented from the audio.
- The new tool should be cheaper than the one it replaces.
- It should be at least as small in scale as the one it replaces.
- It should do work that is clearly and demonstrably better than the one it replaces.
- It should use less energy than the one it replaces.
- If possible, it should use some form of solar energy, such as that of the body.
- It should be repairable by a person of ordinary intelligence, provided that he or she has the necessary tools.
- It should be purchasable and repairable as near to home as possible.
- It should come from a small, privately owned shop or store that will take it back for maintenance and repair.
- It should not replace or disrupt anything good that already exists, and this includes family and community relationships.
Standard 5 is the playful line Adam and David enjoy: Berry counts the human body as a form of solar energy. Standard 6 and 7 push against sealed gadgets and distant service empires. Standard 8 asks for a real shop that will take the tool back, since a subscription can strand you when the company moves on.
The standard that hits hardest: do not disrupt what is already good
On the episode Adam and David call standard 9 the key, the hard-hitting one. Berry’s line is that the new tool should not replace or disrupt anything good that already exists, including family and community relationships.
Adam presses the cultural failure here: we accept new tech as better and look at final results alone, skipping the quieter costs to how we talk and stay in contact. Technology nearly always shapes person-to-person communication, and often it replaces that communication. Adam and David’s question is blunt: with this new innovation, are we going to continue to be a community, or only a set of users staring at output?
Why he refused a computer
Berry’s refusal rests on more than taste. Adam and David, with the essay, join dependence on destructive extraction to the household cost of his shared work with his wife, then close on the reason he calls perhaps his best: he does not wish to fool himself about writing better by machine.
He did not want his writing to depend on electricity tied to destructive extraction. On the show they discuss his opposition to strip mining and the ruin of topsoil. He asks how he could write against the rape of nature while his writing machine depended on that system.
He also refused to discard what he called the “old model,” which included both the typewriter and his wife, Tanya Berry, as his critic and closest reader. She was also his fellow worker. To stay “up to date” as a writer, he said he would have to sacrifice an association he depended on and treasured. Critics later accused him of using her unfairly, and Berry answered them in print in “Feminism, the Body, and the Machine”. Adam and David defend the household collaboration framing and ask readers to handle that debate with care, since the essay’s point is that innovation often supersedes a person along with a tool.
His last reason is the one he calls perhaps his best. He does not wish to fool himself. He disbelieves the claim that he or anyone else could write better or more easily with a computer than with a pencil. He says he will speak more respectfully when someone produces work demonstrably better than Dante’s by computer, and still will not buy one.
How to use the nine standards on phones and household tools this week
Before you adopt the next tool, slow the yes down long enough to run Berry’s questions.
Pick one tool that is crowding your attention or your household: a phone app, a smart speaker, a “helpful” AI feature, or a gadget you almost bought. Run it through Berry’s nine standards in order. Write the answers down. Notice which standards you cannot honestly meet. Then pick one relationship that tool is crowding (dinner table talk, evening prayer, a child’s bedtime, a friend’s face-to-face visit) and protect that good on purpose for seven days.
If a tool fails standard 9, that failure outweighs a slick demo. If it fails standard 6 and 8, plan for the day it breaks. If it only wins on speed while raising energy use and shrinking local repair, name that trade honestly before you subscribe.
Sibling posts in this technology cluster (including David’s rules and Adam’s hesitancy on AI) will take up artificial intelligence more directly. Use Berry’s list as the shared front door.
Listen to the episode
For the full conversation, including the path-and-road image and the reading of Berry’s reasons in his own cadence, listen to Wendell Berry: Why He Never Bought a Computer (aired Sep 4, 2026). Start with The World-Ending Fire (Nick Offerman narrates the audiobook). From there try Jayber Crow among the Port William novels, and The Mad Farmer Poems. For a Catholic household angle from Adam and David themselves, see Living Beyond Sunday: Making Your Home a Holy Place (Ascension). If you want to walk with other Catholic men while you sort your tools and your attention, support the show.
Source note: Nine standards verified against Wendell Berry, “Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer” (1987). Episode audio was unclear on standards 1 and 8; essay text supplied the missing wording.
