Austin Magruder - Global Warming

Are we as humans so consumed with ourselves that we are willing to live in the now and not care about the future because it will be someone elses problem? This issue kind of reminds me of President George W. Bush's statement about the Iraq war "This war started on my watch, but it is going to end on yours." That sort of mentality where we pass on our problems to the next person in line is disgusting. Global warming is very real, and it suprises me how many people are unwilling to deal with it. I have heard many people jokingly say things like, oh i'll be dead before that ever happens. Yes, you will probably be long gone, but what about your children, or your children's children? Do you not care about them? This issue affects us all in one way or another, lets act like it.

Thinking and Awareness in Animals - Katie Lamp

Are animals aware of their existence? Can they think as humans do? Two books I read, "Minds of Their Own" by Lesley J. Rogers and "Animal Minds: Beyond Cognition to Consciousness" by Donald A. Griffin, consider these questions. In Rogers' book, he looks at the evolution of the brain in both humans and non-human animals and how the brain has developed in order to have consciousness, and then finally at what point in the evolution of the animal brain that consciousness could have developed. In Griffin's book, he looks at how animal communication that may seem incomprehensible to us because it is so different from how we communicate could actually offer us a look at what animals think and feel and how their communication is revealing these things. While the idea of animals having consciousness and cognitive abilities similar to humans may seem a bit odd to some people, these two books make a strong case for it.

Images of Animals: Anthropomorphism and Animal Mind- Katie Lamp

In her book "Images of Animals: Anthropomorphism and Animal Mind", Eileen Crist looks at how humans have tried to apply our characteristics to animals over time in order to establish some sort of relationship with them because after all, we do share the planet and oftentimes physical territory with them. With the development of the field of ethology, it comes as no surprise that while ethologists may try to approach non-human animals as natural subjects, there will be many people who want to explain animal behavior through human constructs such as emotions. I think one of the most important things to remember when studying animal behavior is that they are, in fact, not people, and that they should be studied as such. When examining the relationship between humans and nature as we have done in this class, the consideration of the relationship between humans and non-human animals is unavoidable, and I think Crist does a good job of looking at how humans can falsely attribute their own characteristics to animals when trying to establish some sort of relationship to them.

The Botany of Desire- Katie Lamp

Before this class, I had read The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan. When we began to delve into the relationship between humans and nature, I thought of this book because Pollan examines how humans and some plants have domesticated each other over time. Plants domesticating people? Seems like a strange idea at first but Pollan makes a really good argument with his discussions on the relationship between humans and the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato. These four plants have contributed to our shift from a nomadic people to an agricultural society, and looking at how plants have "domesticated" people (rather than the other way around) not only makes us consider that we may not have all the control as we'd like to think, but also shows that the relationship between humans and nature has several different dimensions.

Are We Self-Destructive? (Turtle Island)- Katie Lamp

I think Snyder sums up one of the most important considerations from this class in his chapter "The Wilderness" when he says:

"I don't like Western culture because I think it has much in it that is inherently wrong and that is at the root of the environmental crisis that is not recent; it is very ancient; it has been building up for a millenium. There are many things in Western culture that are admirable. But a culture that alienates iself from the very ground of its own being- from the wilderness outside (that is to say, wild nature, the wild, self-contained, self-informing ecosystems) and from that other wilderness, the wilderness within- is doomed to a very destructive behavior, ultimately perhaps self-destructive behavior" (Snyder, 106)

Are we a self-destructive society? I'd like to think we are not because this makes us look terrible as a species and it seems very fatalistic to say we are destroying ourselves and that the "end is near" so to speak, but Snyder makes a good point as have some of the other authors we have read this semester. We have alienated ourselves from nature so much that those individuals who either live in nature or spend a great deal of time there are the exception rather than the rule. We as a society have made ourselves so comfortable surrounded by our concrete, glass and central heating that most of us wouldn't survive a week if dropped into nature and asked to fend for ourselves without our grocery stores and computers. While Snyder seems to take a very negative approach when he says that we are self-destructive, I think he may, unfortunately, be right and I'm not sure we can ever go back.

Poems in Turtle Island- Katie Lamp

I found the poems in Turtle Island that Snyder wrote to be fascinating, and I'm not surprised that he receieved the Pulitzer Prize for this poetry. Usually, poetry that doesn't have a set rhyme or rhythm can irk me, but I found his writing beautiful and I liked how apparently random words revealed such depth when I read the poems. One of my favorites was "Why Truck Drivers Rise Earlier than Students of Zen" because it gave me a very peaceful feeling and the last line, "There is no other life" really struck me for some reason. I think the reason it resonated so deeply with me is that Snyder was taking what appears to be a very mundane occupation and putting it in such a light that the reader can see the peacefulness and zen quality of it. I enjoyed a lot of his other poems, but for an almost inexplicable reason, this poem struck me and I found it to be the most beautiful.

Jackie Trono - Snyder On Learning From Primal People

In Turtle Island, Gary Snyder is calling for us to rediscover and reconnect with the land that houses us. Along with many moving poems, Turtle Island also contains an essay calling for environmental awareness, “Four Changes.” Here, Snyder posits many interesting thoughts and questions. What I found most interesting was his comment that we, as the “civilized,” need to learn from indigenous people. He writes,

“A line is drawn between primitive peoples and civilized peoples. I think there is a wisdom in the worldview of primitive peoples that we have to refer ourselves to, and learn from” (Gary Snyder, Turtle Island 107).

I prefer the word primal to primitive because primitive pejoratively connotes ineptitude. Primal, on the other hand, refers to that which is most fundamental. I believe primal people are more fundamentally connected with their environments than the civilized people secluded in cities who go off into nature for a respite from the bustle of their daily lives. Primal people live in nature and, as Snyder says, have done a much better job of keeping open the lines of communication with nature.

The idea of learning from indigenous, primal people is of great interest to me. I intend to spend two weeks with a group at the healing center, Mayantuyacu, of an Ashaninca shaman, Juan Flores, in the Peruvian Amazon this August for the purpose of gaining greater access to that gnosis of which Narby speaks in The Cosmic Serpent. I found out about Juan through emails with Narby, so I believe he is a reputable source for ascension. I wish to broaden my understanding of the animated aspect of the natural world. Although I can analytically think about such a concept while removed here in Virginia, I believe that only by total immersion in the environment will I be able to obtain any real understanding of that ontological perspective that insists that plants can communicate and that biomolecular information is something I can extract from my surroundings without the use of scientific instruments. Fascinating! I am really looking forward to this experience.