An economy dependent on explosions

Wendell Berry, “Two Economies”:

More than anything else, we would like to “control the forces of nature,” refusing at the same time to impose any limit on human nature. We assume that such control and such freedom are our “rights,” which seems to ensure that our means of control (of nature and of all else that we see as alien) will be violent. It is startling to recognize the extent to which the industrial economy depends upon controlled explosions—in mines, in weapons, in the cylinders of engines, in the economic pattern known as “boom and bust.” This dependence is the result of a progress that can be argued for, but those who argue for it must recognize that, in all these means, good ends are served by a destructive principle, an association that is difficult to control if it is not limited; moreover, they must recognize that our failure to limit this association has raised the specter of uncontrollable explosion. Nuclear holocaust, if it comes, will be the final detonation of an explosive economy.