Let’s talk about bubble wrap. For the uninitiated, it’s worth noting: a fresh sheet of pristine bubble wrap provides an endless abundance of sensorial pleasure and poppable potential. The satisfaction of its loud “clack!” is matched only by the sheer delight of snapping a pustule beneath your thumb pad.
For years (heck, until this course began, really), I’ve lived within my own protective Bubble. Born into privilege, safeguarded from any such adversity, mine has been a dome-home insulated by all the resources I’d ever need—and then some. I have access to the basics (potable water, a toilet) plus the next rungs of Maslow’s Hierarchy (loving family, community) and (cherry-on-top!), a few goodies and gadgets (iPhone, microwave). Don’t get me wrong: I sure enjoy this Bubble. Cozy, clean, familiar: it’s all a middle-class white girl ever needs! Venturing beyond its membrane would mean risking failure or sickness, disappointment or even downfall. Where’s the reward in willingly bidding adieu to the Bubble’s boundary?
Of course, as we know, that’s the wrong question. This isn’t a matter of “reward”: it’s about responsibility.
As the Ecological Footprint activity recently revealed, my tiny “enviro-habits” only go so far (a compulsively-composting vegan cyclist isn’t as Green as she once hoped). Because my bubble exists within a system, and because we—as system constituents—are urged to consider ourselves in a holistic, symbiotic sense, it’s inevitable: I will bump into a lot of other bubbles! And we multitudinous bubbles are but minuscule cells in a much larger limb, a limb that belongs to (if you can believe it!) an even-more-gargantuan corpus. How’s that in terms of “perspective”?
“Confined spaces are boring,” noted Sara Schley, “sooner or later many of us emerge, aware of the gap…and interested in learning how to do our part to close it” (Oxford Leadership Journal 3).
I think it’s time my privilege—my isolation—got popped. It’s time to nestle uncomfortably to others, to share and learn and link up. How to do this? I believe, earnestly, that technology promises a great deal.
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As Professor Litfin paraphrased in class, astronaut Neil Armstrong once said: “It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth.”
These days, the bulk of our thumb-work consists of scrolling, tapping, and swiping. That iPhone I mentioned earlier? It’s made my stubby digit quite adept at navigating cyberspace. Do our thumbs function in a similar fashion as Armstrong’s? By unlocking the phone’s screen, are we effectively “blotting” out the big picture, losing sight of Gaia’s scale?
Or, conversely, might this powerful network we hold in our palms be one solution for our problems? Does not the iPhone’s Home Button resemble a popped sphere of Bubble Wrap?! Professor Litfin urged us to start “thinking in circles” [emphasis added] (420). Technology has the power to unite us, to literally and figuratively “break” our bubbles. Political revolutions can start in the palm. But we must harness the technology responsibly, intelligently. To think on a systems-, rather than singular-level, we have to shift our attention from Instagram to Gaia-gram. What might this look like? A “Pokémon Go”-like game that encourages players to pick up trash in their neighborhoods? Alerts sent to phones, reminding us to switch off unused lights?
It’s worth sharing the final part of Armstrong’s quote: “I didn’t feel like a giant,” he admits, despite enjoying a view many of us will never experience. “I felt very, very small.”
This sensation—insignificance, humility, awe—is a very powerful one. I’ve actually begun to seek this out, effectively hunting for more bubble-bursting epiphanies. Just how tiny am I? Where can I be reminded of this? How large is, say, our UW community? Can I stand in the middle of Red Square during rush hour? Rather than paralyze, these moments motivate me profoundly. They encourage me to do the best I can, while I’m here, no matter how tiny an echo my singular “clack!” may have.
Pop on, populace.