Humans are unique in our ability to analyze our own position in the world. This special power comes with its limits, like our denial of our own demise. However, through exercising our own awareness and sense of agency, I believe it is possible to overcome this psychological limitation. Throughout history, art has been a key method for grappling with big-ticket… Read more »
Throughout this quarter, my peers and I were invited to complete an action project. This project has three key goals: to create and implement a response to the course material, create an offering to the larger community, and to integrate a reflective component in both inception and implementation. My group’s final product after extensive deliberation is a website about climate… Read more »
Be it the vexing half-hour chirrup of the old wall clock, Professor Litfin’s pager beep, or perhaps the sighs of the student beside you, it’s hard not to be cognizant of time’s passage. In the classroom, we are beholden to this ever-present tick-tock. We’re getting older by the second, damnit! Even closing our eyes, as we do in contemplation, does… Read more »
A quick shout-out to our classmate, Claire, who penned a crisp and comprehensive article for the UW Daily about mindfulness in the classroom. A talented journalist, Claire interviews a few experts on campus while weaving in her own findings from the quarter in Honors 392. She calls attention to three alliterative components within mindfulness: “presence, personhood, and perspective.” When outlined as… Read more »
Eco Villages support an interesting solution to climate change, a massive scale down of our current lifestyle. Eco Villages take us back to our roots in the land and create smaller scale societies where environmental efficacy is paramount. As Professor Litfin delved into her studies of eco villages I was struck by the still vast differences in the villages consumption… Read more »
Let’s relive our most recent contemplative practice. Imagine: The state of the world is worsening. Feverish Earth and its subjects are drowning in corruption, injustice, and inequity. Children are hungry. Rich men govern from palace-sized homes. Industry of war is prospering. The future is dark, smoldering hot, and underwater. Run through the litany of traumas endured by Earth and its people. This reality is familiar…. Read more »
The constant across all cultures is the factor of the human brain—a three-pound, equally introspective and innovative organ that has the capacity to interrogate its own existence. However, the rate of development across the world has been highly dependent on the geographic limitations of the region each society settles in—at it’s most basic, the growth of the polis is a… Read more »
In our most recent class contemplative practice we were asked to envision the world in three different ways. This included having a perspective of our Earth as getting worse, getting better, and it being in a state of things are what they are. I learned a lot about the state of the world in my own perspective and how I… Read more »
Director Josh Fox’ film, How to Let Go of the World and Love All The Things Climate Can’t Change, is truly eye-opening. The part filmed in Beijing was most horrifying to me. Fox says when he first arrived in Beijing, he thought it was foggy, but in fact he was seeing pollutants suspended in the air. This pollution kills millions… Read more »
It is easy to feel paralyzed and pessimistic when pondering the Anthropocene. With so much damage already done though carbon dioxide emissions and many complex and political issues ahead how could you not feel scared and overwhelmed? While I am often overwhelmed by the vastness of issues presented by the Anthropocene, a “perspective” contemplative practice completed in class helped me… Read more »
