At the beginning of the quarter, I didn’t know what the Anthropocene was. On the first day of class, I learned it is the current epoch, characterized by unprecedented human impacts on the Earth system. We have become geological agents to the point where we greatly influence the planet’s climate, carbon cycle, and more. The problems of this time are caused by our inability to control this power.
One of the things our professor, Karen Litfin, emphasized to us, is that we are not independent. We depend on plants to produce oxygen for us to breathe, bacteria to digest the food we eat, and other people to plan and build the cities we inhabit. We are part of a much larger system that includes all the life on Earth as well as features of the non-living environment. We cannot solve global issues without thinking about our role in this system. No individual can make a significant impact in these issues only by adjusting their own habits.
Clownfish depend on anemones for protection. credit: http://www.thunderboltkids.co.za/Grade5/01-life-and-living/chapter1.html
I think in the Anthropocene we need to shift away from the idea of individualism. It is important to be able to get a job and support oneself, but we also need to recognize that we are never truly “self-sufficient.” Solutions to systemic issues are not a product of thinking as individuals, they arise when people think about their role and their relationship to others in the system and identify something that needs to change. This systemic thinking is part of being human in a good Anthropocene.
This course has also made me reexamine institutions I take for granted, particularly capitalism. Free-market competition drives down the price of all consumer goods and motivates companies to make better products. However, capitalism has led to the overexploitation of natural resources such as lumber and fossil fuels. The air in Beijing is opaque and deadly from the factories that rampant consumerism has made necessary. I like the capitalist system, but I think it needs to be government-regulated in order to be sustainable.
If I hadn’t taken this class, I would think I was living in the Holocene. No other class I’ve taken has attempted to address the question of what it means to be human. While this class has been challenging, it has also been a welcome break from my STEM-focused classes, and it has been incredibly eye-opening and novel to me.