Man…how to sum up this semester so far? Looking back through old blog posts, it is really cool just to see how good meditating on the outdoors has been, and how wonderfully needed it is to share with friends by your side. The wall of snowflakes approaching us at the Potomac? SO much less worth screaming about without a few of you at my side. Or how about walking the Belle Isle bridge with Civil War dates and events without y’all next to me making those giant steps? Not the same. Just as Chris McCandless discovers, happiness is meant to be shared, and this semester has been memorable so far sharing it together.
Looking back to our first discussions and walk on the Gambles Mill, it frustrates me that there is still a lack of answers in my own understanding of how we exactly fit with nature, and it is a balance I feel not only I, but our generation as a whole will be pursuing for many years to come. It is encouraging to see the tip of the iceberg begin to take shape, and it cheers me to think about what the future holds. For example, today, in Dhall, a Kellogg representative came to showcase new cereals they’re trying to sell. I was amazed and psyched to see that NONE of them had high fructose corn syrup or partially hydrogenated oils in them. In my (very basic) understanding of science, these are essentially creations of food corporations to make food cheaper, and have taken natural things (corn syrup and oil) and morphed them chemically into highly toxic substances that are highly detrimental to the human body. They are just a sliver of the problem of the “American way”- mass produced, lacking nutritional value, and all-together toxic, and it was encouraging to see a corporation as big as Kellogg beginning to change things. Our generation is peddling as fast as it can backwards to undo some of the major environmental blunders the previous generation has perpetrated nationally and internationally, and we are on the very cusp of it. That is what makes the class so relevant, because it is crucially pertinent how we treat the world around us.
Jared Diamond came out with a new book recently, Collapse, which is very relevant to this issue. His thesis of the book is that the success or failure of a society can come about through a variety of factors, one of them being environmental. There is an urgency to understanding the relationship between man and nature that upon it will be built future policy and the future of the United States and other countries. As we graduate, enter the job market, begin our professional lives, these are things to be considered. The “green” job sector is growing constantly, and the need for independent green consulting firms to help existing businesses wisen up is only going to go up as it becomes more and more necessary to be living in harmony with your surroundings. This can already be seen with some companies like Starbucks, who, although not stellar practitioners of environmental justice, have done some good things in raising awareness and setting an example for other large corporations. Check out their environmental policies here.
Adrienne makes an awesome point in her blog on this environmental impact- it is so intricately tied with our responsibility to be active in the community around us and being engaged citizens, and it spills over into other responsibilities as well. This is why it makes so much sense that TLB made it a requirement to do service learning- we as social creatures and creatures in community have a duty to be involved and constantly fighting apathy about the world around us. Also, taking environmental responsibility leads to taking ethical and moral responsibility for the world around us as well. Like the liberal arts, it’s all tied together! …Inter-relatedness is so wonderful.
Finally, in thinking further and attempting to synthesize all that I’ve written about so far this semester, I am still trying to put words to it. First of all, I am not a science person whatsoever and don’t experience the outdoors with that train of thought. I have tried, believe me, to get interested about things like the periodic table and cell structures, and have failed miserably. I am far more caught by the experience of nature and people with people in nature, and how it affects my soul and worship than I am by the science of it. I wish I could look at something like the snow, as Carolyn so wonderfully explained, and see the deeper processes churning underneath the fluffy exterior. However, it is really cool that we can both look at one thing so differently and appreciate it for entirely different reasons. I think one of the greatest lessons that I have mentioned earlier in this blog post and in others and that I keep running up against is this inability to be a passive agent any longer. WE are empowered, we are educated about what’s going on, we’ve seen the trash, the need for the community garden, the effects of man not living in harmony with the environment, what are we going to be doing about it? How are we going to fight apathy in all levels of our lives? It could manifest itself in a variety of ways, from humanitarian work like Kelly in Africa this summer to Adrienne being super pumped about SEEDS, our involvement and the need to do something to serve and live outside of yourself is a necessary response to our knowledge. MLK puts it beautifully: “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”
We have a responsibility to the world around us, dear friends. This is the greatest lesson I have synthesized from this semester so far.