I have taken a lot of Environmental Studies so far at Richmond and the Tragedy of the Commons and Free Rider problem always come up in those classes. As noted in the reading, these problems are so relevant to our current climate crisis. Everyone thinks that their single action will not have a seriously negative impact but overtime if everyone thinks that way these negative actions multiply and end up having serious consequences. One person using plastic products all the time would not be a big deal if most other people chose to only use reusable products but that is certainly not the case. Everyone puts the responsibility to be environmentally conscious on other people’s shoulders to the point that there are only a few people that are actually environmentally conscious and everyone else is escaping responsibility. Additionally, there is tremendous profit to be gained by being the corporation that chooses not to be environmentally conscious at all. Individual people and large corporations can only benefit this way for so long before we have environmental consequences that harm all people and nobody is benefiting.

A lot of the reading had me think that humans are just selfish and completely irrational. It was almost sad to see how many of the problems outlined in the reading could be solved if we just communicated with each other and acted more rationally. People are always trying to ensure the most benefits for themselves even if that means taking on a lot more risks than they need to. If we just thought things through more and acted less selfishly we would determine that there are solutions that are a lot easier and mutually beneficial. I can understand that in certain business situations this may not be practical but in most everyday situations it is very practical.

Throughout the reading, I continued to question the validity of many of the laws we have. I was especially interested in the point brought up in the Hidalgo reading about democratic societies tying us to unjust laws. I am kind of stuck on what to think about this. I agree with what Hidalgo is saying. We live in a democracy and ultimately our votes lead us to have certain laws. However, the entirety of the population is not going to agree with that law. I see the importance of having laws because there are certain rules that must be enforced in order for us to have a functioning society. There are some rules that come down to more moral issues that people are going to have very different views on. I agree with Hidalgo that it is acceptable to disobey laws surrounding immigration because to obey them would be unfair to people that should have a right to come here anyway. I would, on the other hand, be very uncomfortable with people disobeying gun control laws even though they might also have moral reasons for why they disobey gun laws. It seems an impossible line to draw in terms of what laws you can disobey which ones you cannot.

The Flanigan reading made me nervous. It makes me very nervous to think about people having open access to drugs that could be really harmful. I also am someone that knows I am not a doctor and would definitely rather have a doctor make decisions like these for me. To me, it just seems a lot safer to have doctors making medical decisions for us, but I also see where she is coming from. Some of the data she presented in support of a non-prohibitive drug system surprised me. Even when she provides information about their being fewer poisonings in countries where people can self-medicate my brain still does not want to believe it.

These readings made me want to both take more IATs and not take anymore. On the one hand, I don’t want to take anymore because it seems like it will tell me things I do not want to know about myself. I like to consider myself a good person that does not blindly follow stereotypes, but the reading suggests that I do follow those stereotypes much more than I would like to think I do. On the other hand, it would probably be to my benefit to take more IATs to illustrate to myself what/who I am biased against. This would likely help me catch patterns of my thinking that might be leaning into stereotypes. I think it would be beneficial to at least acknowledge when I am listening to stereotypes I should not be.

Both readings made me think about intersectionality. Throughout the readings, we were largely talking about one specific group that faces the negative effects of stereotypes. It seems hard enough to handle the disadvantages of being negatively stereotyped, but when you begin to think about intersectionality it is a whole other ballpark. As a white woman, I understand how challenging it can be to be the only woman or one of a few women in a male-dominated space. In female-dominated I am able to feel comfortable because they are likely to be majority white and I feel comfortable in that space in a way that black women cannot. At least there are frequently spaces that I can go to where I don’t face stereotyping, but for people that fall into more than one stereotyped category, that is far less true.

Throughout the readings, I was also thinking about a unit we did about women in the workplace in my FYS. During this unit, we talked about imposter syndrome, which is when you feel like you are not qualified to do/be something even though you totally are. This seems to me very similar to stereotype threat. One way I felt this in my own life has always been in math classes. Every time I took any sort of calculus throughout high school and college I always got an A even though I would never have called myself good at math. When I was reflecting on that during my FYS it was clear that I never felt good at math because I always had this subconscious understanding that women were not meant to be in STEM and so this is probably not an area I would have thrived in. It always felt like much more of a risk to me to take classes like Calculus because I was telling myself that I probably would not be good at them, even though my past was telling me the opposite. It is frustrating to be able to see that, but also not feel like I can do much to change it because even though I recognize the stereotype I still find myself giving in to it.

I took two implicit association tests. The first one was tested associations between tax breaks or social programs and good or bad. My data from the first test suggested a moderate automatic association between social programs and good. This result did not surprise me because I am definitely very much in favor of social programs. If anything, I would have expected a strong automatic association. I will say that it felt like for a lot of the test I was always having trouble going in between keys, which I understand is part of how they test for association, but I feel like this could be skewed just by slow response times in general. The second test I took was the one Dr. Bezio mentioned in class about a preference for either Gay people or Straight people. On this test, my responses suggested a strong automatic preference for Gay people over Straight people. I am a little bit surprised by the results of this test. I can totally see myself having a preference for Gay people, but as someone that identifies as straight, I would have expected the preference to be more moderate. I feel like I have a preference for Gay people because their political beliefs are frequently in line with mine and they are more tolerant and accepting of others.

The article on mindbugs reminded me of some of the concepts that we talked about in leadership 102. It is clear that humans are basically incapable of seeing the full picture and that definitely worries me. I was thinking about how often members of my family and I remember the past differently. We are both positive that we are right, but tell different stories involving different people, places etc. It is clear here that we are filling in gaps in our memories, but doing it differently based on what is convenient for our brains. People always want to claim that they are in the right, but based on this reading it seems that both people might never be in the right.

The implications of these mindbugs are scary. We are making decisions with faulty information most of the time. This affects how we make choices all the time, even if we do not realize it. To me, it is frustrating that we can know that we make decisions using faulty logic all the time, but not really know how to stop that. It reminded me of the book Predictably Irrational which talks about how we know that humans make completely irrational decisions, but are comfortable that way. Certain decisions might make sense in our heads, but are completely not grounded in reality. It’s frustrating that even though I am aware of mindbugging and some of its implications, it would still be hard, and probably impossible in some cases, to train myself to think differently.