Certain people impress us by the quality of their regard. In the first instance, by the attention they bestow on what they encounter, be it a face, a leaf or a stone, a person, a tree or a mountain. In the second instance, by the concern the object of their regard arouses, the care that comes from the attunement of eye, mind, heart and soul. And finally, by the esteem—be it high or low—that the object of their regard elicits. John Berger was such a person. While John is no longer with us (he died on 2 January 2017), the quality of the regard that was his is, given the ravages of hyperconsumerism, one we’d do well to cultivate. Indeed, the attentiveness, lucidity and care that characterized John’s every encounter, the humanity that fueled his militancy, are qualities that need to be continually reincarnated if silence is to withstand the scream of consumerism.

A selection of John Berger’s essays and reflections

In 1517, Luther nailed a list of 95 complaints about ecclesiastical corruption to the church door in Wittenberg. I’ll be satisfied with nailing five—not of ecclesiastical corruption, but of all that undermines attentiveness, lucidity and care—to the door of Our Lady of Perpetual Consumption.

1. Sensation has overpowered sense: memory and imagination suffer instant gratification.
2. Know-how has conquered know-why: technique trumps ideal; economics, politics.
3. Commoditization recognizes no limits: having  trumps being;  consumer, citizen.
4. Mass customization disguises mass conformity: identity kills individuality; outer ascription, inner direction; narcissism, pride.
5.Thinking is reduced to calculation, ethics to self-interest: recognition and self-satisfaction supersede adventure and courage.

Pick up any book by John Berger. Rejoice in the fresh air of free thinking, surprise yourself with the expansiveness of your emotions, take pride in exercising your mind. Read To the Wedding, cast confetti on the bride and groom and regret that you waited so long to leave the beaten path of bestseller conformity. Read And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos and retrieve a long-lost silence and stillness, a light that illuminates before it heats. Read Portraits: John Berger on Artists and feel how his responses to artworks enlarge yours, how his intimacy with the mystery of art-making sharpens your vision.

A selection of John Berger’s fiction

Attentiveness, vigilance, the holiness of the spirit; lucidity, courage, the responsibility of risk: All John Berger’s work derives from and is informed by this. In a world where both art and essay are increasingly drawn into the hyperconsumerist machine, his work is a beacon of resistance: in its humility, it heightens our humanity.