Over the past few years, I’ve felt surrounded by the world’s grand demise, but didn’t know how to process much of what I was encountering. Eventually I knew I had to get involved in fighting these large-scale injustices. I was too afraid of the idea of being silent, yet too overwhelmed by the idea of committing myself to making change…. Read more »
Prior to taking this course, my first instinct in approaching an issue as immense and all-encompassing as the Anthropocene was to look anywhere but inward. I was under the impression that an issue as complex as our changing climate and degrading Earth strictly required stark scientific objectivity. Viewing the Anthropocene through a scientific lens granted the issue irrefutable credibility, and… Read more »
Suspended in the midst of seemingly desolate stardust, the Earth twinkles with life. Nestled on this phenomenal orb, we human beings are able to experience and grapple with the privilege of existence. Yet somehow, despite having only flourished for an infinitesimal portion of the Earth’s history, we may be initiating the onset of our own demise. How can it be… Read more »
While reading the assigned parts of Jeremy Rifkin’s Emphatic Civilization, I was struck by how his idea of humanity’s use of a “theatrical self” is applicable to the divide within America’s stance on climate change. Rifkin describes the theatrical self as a set of skills each person uses to adapt to a social situation. Each of us also possess a… Read more »
For Americans who take Veterans’ Day seriously, it’s a time to honor those who have served in the military—particularly those who have made “the ultimate sacrifice.” I suspect that for most us though, today is primarily an occasion for a three-day weekend. That’s generally been my perspective, in part because honoring vets is too often confused with endorsing US military… Read more »
The nature of the Anthropocene requires a problem-solving approach which addresses the world as a complex, interconnected system. Research over the previous decades has made it clear that no ecosystem, society, or geophysical process can operate in isolation, and many of the trends of the Anthropocene are interrelated. I understand that the actions of humanity are an increasingly dominant force… Read more »
The anthropocene is a complex, tentative notion in my mind that is steadily gaining traction. From my first introductions to philosophy to dummy, I bought right into relativity and jumped right off of the nonlinearity train. And so now, the move to systems theory does not seem so far off. A particular point of fascination for me is the aspect… Read more »
Walt Whitman once wrote, “You air that serves me with breath to speak…You light that wraps me and all things in delicate equable showers!… I believe you are latent with unseen existences, you are so dear to me.” Despite how personally we interpret the phenomenon of nature, the world around us is so much more complicated that we can… Read more »
Sitting 11,000 feet above sea level I realized how people affect me. Perched in front of a Buddhist monastery in the village of Upper Pisang, along the Annapurna Circuit Trek, in the Nepalese Himalaya I found my collectivist agenda. While I sat at this ramshackle monastery thousands of feet in the air, two Russian travelers sat beside me…. Read more »
Out of all the readings, class discussions, and media I’ve covered so far for this class I was by far the most taken aback by Donella Meadows’s piece, Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System. Reading this piece turned into such a delight for me, a rare experience where just reading her writing made me fully aware of how… Read more »