Ivan Chouinard is such a stone cold badass! And we’ve backpacked the same spot in the wind river range so that makes me a badass too right?! Just kidding- I’ll never ascend to his level because I’m really stuck on this idea of staying alive. Reading about Chouinard’s adventures was definitely entertaining. His lifestyle seems like it would be extremely liberating, but I don’t think I could handle eating cat food. Chouinard is obviously a person of action. It seems like his whole company was born of the fact that he didn’t know how to sit still. He also seems to subscribe to the motto that “If you want something done right, do it yourself.” He knew first hand what needs were not being met by the outdoor companies at the time. By making and then using his own rock climbing tools, Chouinard was able to ensure their quality but he was also able to think up changes to better meet his and other climber’s needs. His intentions are evident in the quality of his work. He mentioned at one point that Chouinard Equipment was making only 1% profit in those first few years because they kept ditching old dies and buying new ones once they’d thought up a better way to make each product. A traditional businessman would have thought this approach was a waste. A traditional businessman wouldn’t have dealt with the piton issue the same way either. I never knew Patagonia had such a commitment to environment. It’s so hard to be an informed consumer these days. When I took Intro to Environmental Studies we read an article about the “sins of greenwashing.” There are a lot of products out there that suggest sustainability but aren’t actually. The term “natural,” for example, gets used lot but carries no actually guarantee of environmental stewardship.

His comments about zen philosophy were extremely insightful. He says, “In Zen archery, you forget about the goal-hitting the bull’s eye- and instead focus on all the individual movements involved in shooting an arrow You practice your stance, reaching back and smoothly pulling an arrow out of the quiver, notching it on the string, controlling your breathing, and letting the arrow release itself. If you’ve perfected all the elements, you can’t help but hit the center of the target,” (pg. 74). This philosophy can be applied to all aspects in life and seems exceptionally appropriate for this class. We tend to get so caught up in the destination that we forget about the journey.

Visual Journal

The other day I heard someone refer to Wisteria as “that purple flower”and realized I should probably include some plant identification in my visual journal. Some of these pictures are from the guilford woods and some were taken at that shade garden between the old folks home and New Garden Friends meeting- lots of new stuff is blooming since the class met over there! I’m also going to go back through my old posts and identify the plants there. 

 

 

Florida anise- this shrub isn’t actually native to the area but it is native to the deep south. This variety is related to star anise but is not edible. 

Lily of the Valley

 

Bishop’s Hat, also known as barrenwort. When you see “wort” in a plants name it signifies that it at one point was thought to have medicinal properties. Barren refers to infertility and this plant was once thought to be an aphrodisiac. In about a month it’s going to have the tiniest, most amazing little flowers. 

 

Native Bleeding Heart

 

 

Native Catsby Trillium

 

Perfoliate Bellwort

 

Rue Anemone

 

Mayapple- These are a native spring ephemeral, meaning they show up in early spring and then disappear before summer. Mayapples seeds are spread by box turtles. They have an odor witch is unpleasant to the turtles before the seed has matured but smells appealing once it’s ready to be dispersed. 

Native Giner- These flowers are pollinated by betles. 

 

Non- native Akebia. This plant is the worst invasive in the Guilford woods. Not only is it taking over and choking out native species but it soaks up still pools of water that would have bred amphibians.  

Running cedar. This is a native plant, but when found grouped with certain other species like Virginia scrub pine, it typically signifies agriculture disturbance. There is a big patch of it in the Guilford woods, likely a result of keeping hogs in the woods back in the day.

Some kind of viburnum

 

  Eric Ginsberg’s article titled Words to Live By was simple, to the point, and his words rung true for me. I have also held jobs that on the surface seemed amazing but for whatever reason did not make me happy. I had a great job at a plant nursery in Louisiana for a while. I had the amazing opportunity to learn and experience something new and practical everyday. I got to work outside in the sunshine, help living things grow and flourish, be active, and keep a steady, reliable schedule that had me waking up in the early morning for work. Eventually though, the hierarchical nature of business and commerce got me down. I had two primary managers, one was very hands off and one was extremely nitpicky and having to shift my attitude and expectations depending who was working that day and brace myself for micro management became a struggle. I also had two coworkers who were not managers try constantly to overstep their authority. But more than anything, the job grew to be very repetitive. When I’d wake up in the morning, I already knew what the day would hold.

            Eric didn’t mention what it was about journalism that “unhemmed his innermost life.” I wrote for the Guilfordian for a while, and my favorite aspects of that were the new experiences that it brought into my life. I was pushed to meet people I never would have met otherwise and I was given license to ask questions that in other circumstances would have been too blunt or too personal.

            Ginsburg’s article Exposure: An unexpected friendship leads to the recovery of a photo archive, was so well written. I felt like I knew the people he was writing about just from his descriptions. I was even emotionally invested in them. So many people have a story to tell, and I’m glad that Smiley got to have his told.

In the chapter Time, Space, and the Eclipse of the Earth, in the Spell of the Sensuous, David Abram claims that written language is to blame for today’s lack of oral cultures. He also claims that this has attributed to our sense of time as linear, and to a declining relationship with physical space. Abrams says, “Writing down oral stories renders them separable, for the first time, from the actual places where the events in those stories occurred,” (pg. 183). While I think writing played a crucial role in allowing stories to spread outside of their landscape, I believe that much of our lack of connection to a place is aided today by ease of transportation and the homogenization of the towns we live in. My hometown is disappointingly similar to Greensboro. Greensboro has the same strip malls, restaurants, etc. and without getting out to the outskirts of town and really experiencing the landscape it could for all intents and purposes be the same place. Greensboro has patches of forests within it’s borders so it’s less difficult to escape city life, but to really experience Louisiana’s landscape you have to get out to the swamps since most of the natural swampland of Baton Rouge has been drained and built up. Human’s have made every attempt to alter the natural landscape, from draining swampland to leveeing the river to steady it’s course. Back in Mark Twain’s day, riverboat captains were such a thing because the river literally changed all the time so that you couldn’t anticipate where the bends would be. But, we’ve tried our damnedest to put restrains on those aspects of nature that don’t fit with how we want our society to function.

Perhaps this is such an indication of my cultural heritage, but I do think that time seems to progress linearly- it is also cyclical, I’ll agree, but the notion of past, present, and future seems to occur within my mind naturally. Western society does accept the idea of cycles I think, the calendar year is based on the cycle of the earth around the sun. Many of the cyclical qualities of indigenous cultures mentioned by Mircea Eliade and David Abram are not lost to all of western culture, though their symbolism might be. The farmer is aware of the harvest and planting season, when to turn over crops and when to plant winter peas to nourish and replenish the ground for the next season, the landscaper aware of when to plant trees to increase chance of survival or harden off bulbs, and the hunter aware of migration patterns. Unfortunately, we’ve so structured our interactions with the environment that they don’t occur as naturally as they once did. Instead of gathering wild crops we grow them, instead of catching fish anytime we can, fishing and hunting has to be managed to preserve enough animals that their populations don’t dwindle. We have to govern these aspects of our interactions with nature largely because of our capitalistic society. Whale populations were wiped out for oil, otters for pelts, and the native goldenseal plant for medical tinctures. A few people have taken advantage of what the earth offers so that the rest of our culture can disconnect with the natural world.

What all the readings for this week have in common is the idea of paradigms and how certain paradigms either replace each other or add on to each other. This issue is basically a question of what to do when new knowledge surfaces and how to reconcile that new knowledge with past beliefs/ knowledge. The way we think about religion and science comes down to an issue of semantics. We’ve categorized them as linear paradigms, in which science replaces religion. In my opinion, this is a faulty way of thinking. By thinking of them as linear paradigms and paradigms that are mutually exclusive to boot, is to disallow a world where one can believe in science and also have faith and find value in the religious system.

Stuart Kaufman’s argument in The Galilean Spell is that the culture of science has given rise to the reductionist belief that everything can be explained by science, thus seeming to render all human experiences meaningless. He also argues that scientific reductionism perpetuates the belief that, “all phenomena are ultimately to be explained in terms of the interactions of fundamental particles” and from that, it logically follows that there is no human agency and that value systems are meaningless. “Reductionistic physics has emerged for many as the gold standard for learning about the world. In turn, the growth of science has driven a wedge between faith and reason,” (Kaufman). This is the same conundrum we discussed two weeks ago, addressed in Steven Pinker’s article “The Moral Instinct” and in his dialogue with Richard Dawkins titled “Is Science Killing the Soul.” Pinker said, “I can’t imagine how anything coming out of the laboratory, computer, or theoretician’s notebook could possibly subtract from what is the meaning of life, or Richard’s sense of Soul two. Why keep on living if our minds are the physiological activity of the brain? Well, for starters there’s natural beauty, and works of great art, and ethical ideals, and love, and bringing up children, and enjoying friends, and discovering how the world works — I could go on. Why should the worth of any of those activities depend on the existence of a ghost in the machine?” Just because science can’t quantify our value system doesn’t mean it isn’t there. While I think that many of Kaufman’s concerns are valid, I don’t see our value systems simply disappearing as our world evolves into one of pure logic and abandonment of emotion.

            One point that Kaufman makes that jibes closely with my own sense of spirituality, was when he said, “This web of life, the most complex system we know of in the universe, breaks no law of physics, yet is partially lawless, ceaselessly creative. So, too, are human history and human lives. This creativity is stunning, awesome, and worthy of reverence. One view of God is that God is our chosen name for the ceaseless creativity in the natural universe, biosphere, and human cultures.” What God is and what spirituality is to an individual is a very fluid idea. It varies from person to person within the same community or church and it varies from day to day to each individual.

            Bill Moyer’s interview with Neil Degrass Tyson made an important point in regard to the idea of religion vs. science. Moyer’s opened the interview with the statistic that 46% of Americans today believe that humans were created by God in their present form within the last 10,000 years and didn’t evolve. It’s this type of literal belief that has brought the debate about science and religion to where it is today because this creationist belief cannot coexist with scientific evidence. According to Thomas Kuhn’s article, “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,” “scientific revolutions are here taken to be those non-cumulative developmental episodes in which an older paradigm is replaced in whole or in part by an incompatible new one.” For argument’s sake, assume religion to be an older scientific paradigm; the issue for me is whether the theory of evolution replaces the older paradigm in whole or in part. Many in the scientific community (like Richard Dawkins) subscribe to the idea that religious belief is all or nothing, and that by proving one aspect of belief to be false then the entire system should collapse. It doesn’t work that way for many American Christians today. Many have been flexible enough to allow for the new scientific paradigm to replace the old paradigm in part, so that their beliefs in science and religion can coexist. However, some more stubborn Americans view the new paradigm as a threat and find justifications to “logically” support the outcome they seek. Kuhn made this point, “Yet, whatever its force, the status of the circular argument is only that of persuasion. It cannot be made logically or even probabilistically compelling for those who refuse to step into the circle. The premises and values shared by the two parties to a debate over paradigms are not sufficiently extensive for that. As in political revolutions, so in paradigm choice – there is no standard higher than the assent of the relevant community.” The religious right argues with the religious right and finds validation there.
I thought the most interesting point that Lawrence Krauss made on the Science Friday podcast was how billions of years from now the universe will have expanded so far that intelligent beings will have no awareness that other galaxies exist because those galaxies will have grown so far apart. I’ve definitely never thought of it that way. I’m used to thinking about how fortunate we are to live in this age of the world, in which scientific revelations are constantly being made about the nature of the universe. Krauss’ comparison of the universe to a balloon with dots drawn on it and then the dots expand away from each other when the balloon expands was perfect. It was simple but highly effective in understanding this concept. At one point Krauss says, “In the far future, and by the far future I mean hundreds of billions of years, astronomers and radio hosts on planets around other stars will look out on the universe and what they’ll see is the universe we thought we lived in a hundred years ago. All of the other galaxies will have disappeared except for our own and people will assume, or beings will assume, that they live in a universe that is basically infinite dark and empty except for their own galaxy with no evidence of the big bang. So we’re living in this rare cosmic instant in which we’re lucky enough to observe the big bang.”

Neil Degrass Tyson was so entertaining to listen to because of the pure joy and excitement he has for his work. He said, “I hate to sound cliché about this, but my favorite questions are the ones, dare I use the word, yet to be divined, because there’s a discovery yet to take place that will bring that question into the center of the table. I live for those questions. So that means I can’t tell you what they are, because they derive from something yet to be discovered.” The rate at which our worldviews are being challenged in this day and age is thrilling. People who are worried about values and beliefs changing have every right to be. They are changing. They have already changed over and over again. Human history shows a bloody, violent timeline left in the wake of those who were inflexible to those changes and those who pushed for them.

 

 

 

I always thought this fish was an urban legend!

I really liked the first story that Majora Carter shared in her TED talk about prisoners and beekeeping. It reminded me of an article I read recently about a non- profit program called New Leash on Life that takes pound pups and assigns them to a prisoner to be trained. http://www.forsythhumane.org/new-leash-on-life/  I don’t know anything about the cost effectiveness of this program- I imagine it doesn’t save money but also doesn’t cost more than was already being spent. However, it does serve to help two different issues in the community, which was the main point I took away from Carter’s talk. By doubling up and working to resolve multiple community issues through one program, that program is more effective. By offering well trained and socialized dogs, the likelihood that those dogs will return to the pound after being adopted is lower, I would imagine.

Her story about the Los Angeles school that realized THAT by planting trees instead of laying asphalt, they could provide long-term jobs, lower air-conditioning costs, and benefit the mental health of students reminds me of some of the local issues my hometown of Baton Rouge is experiencing. The city is constantly expanding and constantly being developed. Every time I go home there is some huge, new apartment complex or shopping center. What the contractors insist on ignoring is that the green spaces that existed there before served as wetland areas and a place for the water to drain. Flooding is becoming more and more of an issue and the state can’t/won’t do anything about it because these lands are for the most part privately owned.

Throughout this semester many of our readings and discussions have centered on how money factors into the issue of conservation and resource management. It’s unfortunate that money is the main motivating factor behind so many human initiatives, but it would seem that is the case. Both Majora Carter and Andy Sharpless crunched numbers in support of conservation efforts. In the past, more money could be made by ignoring sustainable practices, back when the oceans were healthy and the land was covered by endless forests. But we have reached the point where it is now more cost-effective to use the land in sustainable ways. The issue that remains is cost effective for who? Both Majora Carter and Wendell Berry touched on the issue of mountain top removal. Carter spoke about how it was more cost effective in the long run to install windmills on top of mountains and create energy that way rather than from the coal gathered through mountain top removal. But it’s more cost effective for the locals, not the coal companies. In the U.S. companies have been given the rights of a person under the First Amendment and as Berry puts it in his interview with Bill Moyers, we are governed by the corporations. A corporation has more power and more money and more influence in Washington than any one person or, in most cases any one group.

Much of the work that Majora Carter does is exactly the sort of work that I want to be involved in. Small farms are good and I feel they definitely offer the community a closer sense of interaction with the food they consume and THEY ALSO offer environment benefits. However, I have a deep interest in urban farm projects and how to revitalize city communities through green initiatives. In a video on the Majora Carter Group’s website, Carter discusses an initiative to build a greenway through the Bronx that not only enhances natural beauty in the area, but also offers environmentally beneficial storm water management- an issue that is becoming more and more important given the pace that humans are depleting freshwater reservoirs underground.

I love city life, so long as it’s not too much city. Greensboro is making great strides in this direction and it’s largely due to a combination of city initiatives and community involvement and volunteer efforts. Country park is probably my favorite part of Greensboro. It’s right up the road from where I live, meaning I go for a jog without wearing out my knees on the asphalt, while enjoying a patch of woods full of native plants and bird songs. The trail I run on is maintained by the volunteer efforts of local mountain bikers.

The Money Girl podcasts says that you can work with any lender you choose in order to consolidate your student loans, and then the lender pays off the loan while you pay off the lender. But is it tricky to get someone to be that lender? Aside from student loans, I’ve only tried to get a loan once (car loan) and it was a huge hassle because I don’t make much money and have virtually no credit. I’m just wondering if I’ll face the same problems trying to consolidate loans. It sounds like Laura Adams thinks this won’t be an issue with federal student loans but will be tricky with private loans. It would appear that consolidating loans will make them easier to manage, lower monthly debt (which would be nice when starting out), increase how long you have to pay off the loan though that will increase how much money you spend on interest, assuming interest rates remain the same. But since you can pay off the loan early if possible, it seems like consolidating loans is a good idea because it buys time.

It will likely be some time before I start thinking about retirement funds, but I do believe I will have solid opportunity to start saving money as soon as I graduate. I’ve accepted a job on a small farm in Virginia and my housing will be provided as will eggs and vegetables. So for the next six months, I will live rent-free and my grocery bill should be pretty light. In addition, I’ll make $200 a week, so with a strict budget, I hope to put aside $500-$600 a month. Eventually I’ll have rent and bills to pay again but it is a relief to know that I’ll have some money in the bank when I get to that point. I suppose I should get a credit card as well…

Personal finance is a very difficult subject to get a handle on. I’m beginning to get a basic understanding of taxes and my dad has thankfully been a huge help with that since he understands tax credits. Maybe one day, I’ll even learn what deductibles are. For now, I’m trying to take things one-step at a time. Tracking expenses so I can work out an appropriate budget is my next step. I’ll have to worry about the 401K later.

 

 

As someone who has studied moral relativism and cultural relativism and philosophers such as Emmanuel Kant and John Stuart Mills, much of the philosophical debate presented in Steven Pinker’s article, the Moral Instinct is not entirely new. However, Pinker brought much new scientific evidence to the discussion.

The story of the brother and sister having sex definitely set off my own moral instincts. I think this is one of those cases involving a strict social taboo, and a legitimate health concern for the offspring that could be produced from that union. Even though they took steps to ensure that the sister did not get pregnant, I have definitely been programed to have an emotional reaction to incest.

I find Haidt’s argument of moral rationalization to be reasonable. “They begin with the conclusion coughed up by an unconscious emotion, and then work backward to a plausible justification.” In the aforementioned scenario I felt it was wrong, but I can’t explain why other than the possibility that at a later time, and perhaps as a result of the social taboo, Julie and Mark will have mixed feelings about what occurred that could lead to social health issues for them.

 Another scenario mentioned offers the difficult decision of sacrificing one person to save 5. In one case, you could do this by changing the route of a train and in the other case you could actively throw someone on the tracks to stop the train. The first scenario is much more passive and makes sense on a rational level whereas the second scenario is technically (legally) murder. The MRI data supporting Joshua Greene’s theory that evolution has equipped people with revulsion to the idea of manhandling an innocent person suggests that morality is not completely flexible. Certain issues of morality are fixed and others are culturally relative. I see no harm in challenging our own sense of morality. I think that if YOUR morals cannot stand up to scrutiny, they likely aren’t worth having. Many of the “lesser” morals and social taboos have historically been based on the time period in which they were founded and their purpose in the world today is lost. Biblical prohibitions on consuming pork were relevant at the time because they reduced disease.

             This issue of “spineless relativism” was particularly interesting. It is based on the concern that accepting morality as relative will revoke people’s right to criticize other cultures, or those in our own culture, for doing things that run counter to our own moral beliefs. I don’t think that this will ever become a true issue because of that inborn disgust reaction we all have to actions that seem without a doubt wrong. There are many aspects of other cultures that give me pause, such as wearing burkas (which is a complicated issue, some practitioners find it liberating while others don’t), and then there are practices like female genital mutilation and I know that no matter how culturally sensitive I want to be, I’ll never be able to wrap my head around.

Moral realism sounds to me like the driving force behind Darwinism. By sharing values, our community is strengthened. The reciprocal fairness and sense of justice that is hardwired into humanity on a genetic level will prevail against such concerns voiced as amoral nihilism. An openness to the idea that morals aren’t based on a fixed, external factor doesn’t erase their validity.

 

So much about the wording used throughout the dialogue “Is Science Killing the Soul?” between Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker was problematic to me as a religious studies student. Even in the introduction, Tim Radford says, “There’s a wonderful passage in the Book of Job, Chapter 38, I think, in which the poet who composed Job speaks as if God, and asks Job a series of questions which begin, Hath the rain a Father? Who hath begot the drops of dew?” He doesn’t even pretend to entertain the idea that God might actually have spoken those words. Which is fine, he’s entitled to his own opinion, but that wouldn’t stand up in a religious studies class at Guilford. There is no way to know who said those words and to write of the idea that God actually said them is to write off those who believe in the literal truth of the bible. The way we approach our studies at Guilford would be to say that that approach is culturally insensitive and close minded.

            Other controversial definitions included in Dawkins’ words, is that of religion itself. He quotes Carl Sagan, “How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, ‘This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant’? Instead they say, ‘No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.’ A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.” This happens. This does exist. The Dalai Lama has famously said “If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims.” Religion is much more than dogma. It includes people who live in the modern world and many of whom have no problem reconciling their spiritual beliefs with their scientific ones. Dawkins says, “Religions are not imaginative, not poetic, not soulful. On the contrary, they are parochial, small-minded, niggardly with the human imagination, precisely where science is generous.” I think this statement is false. History has show that religion has adapted, typically unwillingly and with violent retributions but it has changed. I don’t know how anyone can live in the same world as the poetry of Rumi and say that religion is not poetic or soulful.

            I approached this reading with wariness, expecting fully to find Dawkins’ remarks distasteful as I have in the past, and that is still my opinion of him. He’s in such a hurry to dismiss all religious and spiritual virtues completely and I think that shows close-mindedness on his part. Scientific research has found health benefits from all sorts of religious activity such as meditation and yoga, http://www.sfgate.com/health/article/Stanford-studies-monks-meditation-compassion-3689748.php, but it seems that Richard Dawkins would claim this for science. He operates on the assumption that science and religion oppose each other and an idea that was originally religious and proven by science as fact is no longer actually religious. The way that Dawkins defines religion is to exclude any aspects that can be verified by science.

            I do find, however, that I agree with much of what Steven Pinker has to say. I’ve never been caught up in wondering if the soul (some ethereal non bodied quality of personhood that survives after death) exists. Whether it exists or doesn’t exist doesn’t make much difference to me. Whether our motives are fueled by genetics long adapted through evolution or motivated by morals passed down from on high doesn’t change the fact that humans pass moral judgment on our actions. It comes back to this idea of external reality that Pinker mentions. The people who wrote to him wondering what is the point in living if we are so strongly influenced by our genes sought validation in an external reality. Morals are clearly relevant to humanity, even though they change over time, even though they vary from culture to culture.

“In that sense, as soon as you understand something about human behavior, and as soon as you can predict something about behavior, free will has evaporated. I think that sense of free will doesn’t exist. On the other hand, there may be a sense of free will that we need as a construct, or an idealization in our system of moral reasoning, to get the answers to come out right. We may want to distinguish between people who are literally in a fugue state and hallucinating, and people who are compos mentis and who can be held responsible for their actions in the mundane sense that punishment may deter them and others. It may be that free will is the most convenient way of summarizing that difference, in which case it would continue to exist, but in a scientific translation, that is, a brain state within certain normal conditions.”- Pinker

In regards to Pinker’s comment here, I think that just because we are born within a moral matrix of tendencies and behaviors does not divorce us from responsibility for our actions and the ability to reason through the situations that life throws at us. If things were truly this simple, this debate wouldn’t have happened. This debate occurred as a result of the free will and ability to think about these complex issues.

In Elisabet Sahtouris’ article After Darwin, I think she gives more credit to the bacteria than it perhaps deserves. They did become more competitive but I wouldn’t say they invented technologies to carry out their hostilities. Rather they found a niche in which they no longer competed for the same resources as other bacteria. And those other bacteria did the same and it became a cycle where one made use of the other’s waste. The cooperative phase that Sahtouris speaks of did not happen intentionally. The difference between the scenario she offers and human life is that we are conscious and we can intentionally find ways to offer the earth useful waste and byproducts of our lifestyles. Unfortunately we are failing to do this.

            Her proposed plan to seek to do no harm and consider the implications of our actions for ourselves, families, ecosystems, nation, and world seems like a good one except for the fact that we often cannot anticipate the effects of our actions on such a large scale. Genetically modified foods were created on this principle. The thought was that they wouldn’t cross-pollinate with other species but they did. It was also thought that they wouldn’t be susceptible to bugs and other pests, thus lowering pesticide use and damage to the environment but they are susceptible. This attempt to help feed the world started out selfless but has only led to more problems. It’s easy to say that if only the world worked together as the cells of the body work together then humanities crisis would be over and it’s another thing to make that happen. I don’t mean to be pessimistic but this has been a problem for a long time. It’s impossible to ask countries who can’t feed their people to make sacrifices so that this can happen when people in this country are well feed and still unwilling to change their lifestyles. Sahtouris’ article offered a beautiful metaphor, but didn’t offer concrete, attainable goals to change the world. I’m much more in agreement with Andy Sharpless, who acknowledges humanities selfishness. Instead of seeking to fight human nature, he seeks a sustainable model that works with that nature.

 

                     Unpacking the backpack was a thought-provoking article. In my time at Guilford I have been a part of conversations on white privilege but have never personally studied the topic and still remain largely unaware of this tremendous issue. What came to mind for me when reading through the list of privileges that the author lists were models and the portrayal of ideal body image. The author mentions how well represented the white race is in the media, but it’s more than just a white presence. As the author said, the white race is portrayed as normative, but in media it also represents an ideal that is to be obtained. There has been a discussion for sometime on how super skinny models or photo-shopped celebrity’s tears down the self-esteem of teenage girls who seek to look the way women in media do. I can’t imagine how it would feel to be a teenage girl of color and to face that idealization through a very different lens.            

                     There are many aspects of my life in which subtle racisms persist and I myself am most definitely guilty of perpetuating these notions in an unintentional unself aware way. Many of my extra curricular activities are white dominated in the same way that we discussed on the camping trip that environmentalism tends to be white dominated. I’m pretty heavily involved in the organic farming community and as much as I hate to admit it, at markets I tend to assume different backgrounds based on race. White farmers seem to tend to have chosen their careers. For the most part I assume white farmers came from middle to upper class families and have turned to farming for a “simpler” way of life, to get more in touch with the earth and it’s cycles and there can definitely be a holier than thou air about the situation. But I don’t credit farmers from other races with the same yuppiness (for lack of better word) about them. Having any kinds of assumptions like this are inherently racist because regardless of race we are all individuals who make choices based on any number of things and to assume something based on race erases that individuality. This is definitely a form of racial profiling which is an impossibly critical issue in the U.S. There is a very powerful video going around on the internet in which a white male attempts to steal a bike that has been left for days. He makes it abundantly clear to passerby that the bike is not his but he’s going to take it anyways. People seem to think about saying something to him but then keep walking. When the video stages a white woman in the same situation after telling others that it is not hers, people actually stop to help her. But when a black man attempts to break the lock on the bike people aggressively stop him and call the cops. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge7i60GuNRg. This issue of trusting someone and their intentions based on race feeds into so many situations, from how the police treat citizens to seeking employment to comfort levels just walking down the street.             

              In Patty Digh’s blog I read a post called A is for Advocate in which she discussed wanting to be a better advocate for those voices that are not heard when they stand alone. This post went hand in hand with the Unpacking the Backpack article because the example she used was of a young Iranian who was being deported during the Iran hostage crisis. Patty felt that had she not been at the immigration office supporting this Iranian he would have had no chance of changing the deportation decree. It is unfortunate that in an office that deals with immigrants on a daily basis, the officers would have such little regard for the foreign nationals they work with unless there is a white voice speaking up for them.

 

In additional news, I spent one day of spring break fourwheeling in Mississippi on the homachitta river with a mess of dogs and found a pile of rocks that our geologist friends can hopefully identify! I also interviewed for a job on a farm close to West Point, Va and I’m keeping my fingers crossed about that! The farm itself seems great and well organized, which is essential for me since I worked on a horribly mismanaged farm in the past and it got to be a drag. But more than that I fell in love with the area, the coastal pine forests and the endless number of breezy rivers and canals and inlets and bays on which I could spend my summer weekends in a kayak. 

 

 

I found this red-tailed hawk gorging on unsuspecting campus squirrels; seems he’s making a habit of it. 

The letters to a poet were beautifully written. It definitely made me think back to Abrams and his thoughts on the alphabet and language. I think language is a beautiful and very spiritual thing and I think spirituality wouldn’t exist without language. It doesn’t require written language, but it does require the ability to communicate with one another and the ability to share an experience with others. The point that the poet made in the first letter about answering to no one but yourself struck me as very true. With all of our talk about success in this class it is becoming more and more apparent that most ideas of success require that someone else recognize your accomplishments as such. To seek your own approval before that of others is common advice, but it is a difficult task and we must be reminded constantly. 

The other thing that occurred to me throughout these letters was the simple task of writing the letters themselves. The closest I’ve come to writing a letter in a very long time was a birthday card with a note. This observation takes me back to our class discussion about cellphones and how we as human beings connect with one another. There is definitely something about letters that is more personal than an email or a text- especially letters as beautifully written as the ones we read for class.  I spent the weekend at the NC potters conference in Asheboro- though this plate is not raw nature by any means, it really is amazing what humans have managed to do with clay, fire, wood ash, sand and salt. 

Tom Robinson’s comments on college struck me as very true. I have definitely been brought up to believe that a college degree means success. Not that it guarantees a successful life, but that not having a degree nearly guarantees an “unsuccessful” one. I don’t like that I have a tendency to think that way, but it’s been ingrained in me from a very early age. And I think that’s been the influence of my parents and society as much as the school system. Most people think being a plumber or a mechanic is fine for others… but there is some assumption as to lack of ambition associated with such career paths. Even if one is happy and makes money and chose to be in such a career, there will always be some assumption by society in general that they do it because they couldn’t do better. When I dropped out of school most people were like, oh….awkward… Why?! And I found it very difficult to justify my decision even though I owed no one an explanation. In my defense now, it was clearly a good idea. I gained a lot of clarity and maturity and life experience from the decision though I’m far from any true clarity on the subject of careers. When we were discussing gap years around the campfire on the camping trip there was this idea of an institutionalized gap year being required and it was met primarily with positive attitudes. I definitely think a gap year would serve future students well but I don’t like the idea of it being designed by the college. I see it turning into a situation where parents pay for their kids to be handed some semi-glamorous job in a non-profit like situation either in the U.S. or in a foreign country that would come with housing and meals provided in some organized fashion. I think there is something to be said for working full time in a low level position, learning to live on minimum wage and to support yourself and go to work when you don’t want to and to think about budgets and bills and your future. For me, that experience gave me a reason to want to be in college and to know better what I want to get from this experience and better still, how to make those things happen one day at a time.  

 

Robinson is right when he says we’ve been steered away from seeking careers in the arts for the promise of a job or a paycheck in some other field. It’s not even any one person who does the steering; I do it to myself because these ways of thinking about success are so much a part of me. I’ve been fighting with myself about whether to pursue the ceramic arts post graduation. It doesn’t strike me as a lucrative career even if I were successful at selling my artwork. Part of my hesitation is this assumption that I won’t make money but part of it too is a fear of being self-employed, the hard work that goes along with that and the lack of certainty.

 

We’re trained to prepare for the jobs we know exist- like go to a job site, put in an application, interview and then do what your boss tell you- but not trained so much to create the job we want. Part of being self-employed or freelance is that in reality, you have a million small jobs- and you have to always be on the job hunt for grants, commissions, teaching or consulting opportunities.

 

 

 

As Robinson says, the whole school system needs a revolution, but so does the way society thinks of success in life and in a career. I think the experiential learning goals of the Center for Principled Problem Solving is a good place to start that process. It’s hard to know what you really want to do in life when all you’ve ever done is read about it. In my department of religious studies we read a lot of case studies but we never really conduct any studies ourselves. There is no research methods class to teach us how to gather and interpret data ourselves. There are a lot of fields where the experiential approach seems natural- I took a field botany class that took place outside in the woods every class. Ceramics obviously is very hands on, but I’m only now- three classes in- learning to make clay and glazes. Ever since the mishap where basically none of my pots were put in the kiln, I’ve been thinking a lot about the kiln process. There’s one person in the class who always stacks the shelves and I’ve never made an issue of it but that’s gonna change. The majority of our class have taken three or four classes but only one, maybe two people have ever stacked the shelves in the glaze kilns. From here on out I plan to make it my personal duty to ensure we take turns with that, for fairness sake but also because when one person does it every time they’ve taken that experience away from others and without that experience we can’t go on to be independent potters in the real world. There’s also a great benefit to an integrated approach- experiential and book learning. I personally want to see the integration of the farm into the academic sphere. If the college offered classes on the farm I would be all about it. I do work study on the farm and have worked on farms in the past so I have a good bit of experience doing farmwork. But I have little knowledge of soil chemistry or planting schedules or hardening off plants etc. It’s an area of my life where I wish I didn’t just have experiential learning because with just a little bit of study I could take so much more away from the experience. 

          My buddy Tallyn tells me that after his 12 years of experience with the Forest Service, the BEST way to shit in the woods is to kneel on a slope facing the top of the hill. You don’t have to worry about balance, or pooping in your clothes like that one story mentioned. I was surprised to learn of the extent that Giardia is found in our natural environment. It’s strange to think that poop could have that effect given that this class is all about considering the relationship of the human animal to the environment. Poop in the woods just seems like the most natural thing.

            The discussion with Andy Sharpless was definitely illuminating. I really liked hearing about what sort of answers he was looking for when interviewing people. My boyfriend worked as a door to door salesman for a spell and said he’s always been wary of emphasizing that fact since most people think of door to door salesmen as the worst kind of people. It was intriguing to hear Sharpless’ perspective on canvasing door to door and how it is an experience that everyone who works professionally with people should have.

            I’m not an excessively ambition person in the typical sense and Sharpless’ comments on family life as a big time CEO in Washington certainly didn’t change that. It is not a sacrifice I’m willing to make. I just don’t think I’d be happy in his position even though, undoubtedly, he’s probably considered the most “successful” person at any high school reunions he might go to. I just want a job that I love, that I’m good at, that makes a beneficial contribution to the world- no matter how small, and that leaves me free to pursue other passions when I’m not at work.

            The other thing that struck me about Andy Sharpless was how he presented himself- how he talked and how he dressed. It reminds me of how you said you worked at an outdoors store because you liked the outdoors. I’ve always thought I’d like working for a non-profit that does the kind of work Oceana does but I think I’d much rather be the person out in the field gathering data and getting no recognition than the person running the joint or fundraising in the city. I think I expected him to be more of a rugged outdoorsman but he looks like he belongs in Washington. Now, about how Andy talked. What stood out to me from his lecture at New Garden Friends was that little moment when he asked the audience to guess which countries pulled the most fish out of the sea. It was fun! And it was such a simple gesture to get the audience awake and involved and invested in what he was saying.

Last week was honestly the first time I’ve ever regretted living off campus. I wanted to walk in the woods so bad! There’s a nice park by my house but it just doesn’t compare to the Guilford woods. I LOVE snow days. Something about not being able to drive anywhere just makes me experience my environment differently. And even though I always have a stack of homework waiting to be done I can’t help but feel that time has stopped for me. It’s the same feeling I get when backpacking. Like it doesn’t matter what the rest of the world is doing, or what responsibilities or deadlines are waiting for me, all that matters is the here and now. It’s nice. Life is so busy sometimes that it’s hard to stop and enjoy the moment without thinking ahead.

The readings from The Perfect Protein were really interesting! And definitely represented a range of academic disciplines. Nutrition is something I’ve become more interested in over the past two years or so. I’ve dabbled with the paleo diet,  which is similar the Inuit diet in that it’s high protein, high fat, low carb, and low sugar and no processed foods. It may all be hokum, who knows, but I’ve never felt more alert and consistently energetic as I did when I followed it strictly. The premise is that people should eat the foods we were genetically adapted to eat- so no cereals or grains since they were developed well after humans dietary evolution had occurred.

I especially liked that Sharpless brought a little bit of chemistry into his explanation of fatty acids even though it really means nothing to me. It’s crazy how big a difference a couple of hydrogen atoms can make to your biological processes. Additionally it was interesting to consider how human development has occurred. Sharpless mentioned that folks who live in mountainous regions have deficiencies caused by a lack of Omega 3 in their diet. Did you know that Tibetans and people who live in the high Andes have a genetic mutation that allows them to handle high altitudes much better than we could? It’s just fascinating how people have or haven’t adapted to live in extreme areas.

The article The Real reason for High Gas Prices was too focused on money I thought. To me, the issue is larger than whether to drill or not to drill in the U.S. We the consumers are still going to create ademand for oil no matter where it comes from. To buy that oil from foreign countries is to excuse ourselves from consequence or blame when drilling causes problems. So many of the issues that Sharpless addresses fall into the same camp. These are global issues, not national ones and they cannot be effectively dealt with as long as different countries act individually.

The first issue addressed in the interview with Andy Sharpless is one of great importance. As long as countries compete with each other and argue that they deserve to pollute and overfish as much as anyone else we’ll never reach a status quo that allows the oceans and the land to function in a healthy way.  

The discussion of top predators got me thinking about this really great book we read in Intro to Environmental Studies called The Death and Life of Monterey Bay. The book basically represents everything I know about how the oceans ecosystems function. It starts by chronically the decimation of animal population after population starting with the whaling industry, to the sardines on cannery row, to the Abalone. Once the Abalone was gone, the sea otters moved on leaving the kelp forest to grow unruly. But then a marine preserve was established in the area and the otters returned and their return gradually brought about the restoration of the area. It’s just crazy how fragile the ocean is, how little is really understood about it and how important one species can be to the entire ecosystem.