Tag Archives: system

An Experience in Psychosomatic Studying: An Epiphany!

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The definition here of a contemplative practice surprised me, as it is referred to as a skill. While most will see it as something to participate in, an action that’s not necessarily capable of someone describing it as being good at it or being bad at it, it’s highlighted in this blog post that it provides an increase in focus and comprehension qualities. When analyzing this statement myself, I realize the relationship between the distant facts in coursework and the everyday reality is woven with the threads of the learner’s perspective.

The reference to the living systems practice also reminded myself of another contemplative practice which stood out to me, exotic foods. Being a first generation American in Washington, I have experienced first-hand the view historical American generations have on food unfamiliar to them. I was raised on both sides of the coin, by my Egyptian family and the American society.

Most Challenging Foods - The Secret Traveller

Via The Secret Traveller

The heightened emotional response to these contemplative practices was affirmed and enhanced when I experienced a direct and intimate connection to course work. This involvement resulted in me stretching my hand out to reach for this intimate connection to course material I did not have a direct, familial connection with, to develop it instead.

It is this epiphany that I’ve concluded from this blog post. I want to agree with and applaud the description of contemplative practice being a skill of both emotional awareness and informational awareness. Without this skill, what are we really learning? I feel as if everybody can agree that facts and feelings rest gently on a sensitive scale, even if it doesn’t seem like it. The two, much like everything else in the world we share, are interconnected in a complicated, yet beautiful system.

Climate Change and Everything Else

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Throughout my experience participating in the Our Climate Action group, I have acquired new skills that enhanced my learning. My project members and I participated in multiple listening sessions run by other fellows from the Our Climate activists explaining the Evergreen New Deal:  a comprehensive climate change reform policy that will introduce greener solutions to current predicaments. All of this exposure to the bits and bolts of how our state and country runs in regards to introducing laws and regulations has added to my sense of citizenship and provided me with a clearer path to contribution. Before this experience, I felt like I was staring at the system from a distance, and it was too entangled in itself for me to get involved.

One interactive portion of our activism involved spreading a survey to Washingtonians under the age of 30 focused on collecting opinions on what prominent complications must immediately be addressed in our direct environment here in the state. During role in lobbying to Tina Orwall, spreading the voices of concerned residents, I especially made an emphasis on how COVID-19 should not get in the way of climate change policy because the underprivileged community is affected negatively by both COVID and climate change, and these two issues interacting creates an even bigger obstacle.

Climate change is obviously a complicated interconnected system woven through everything from our bodies interaction to the weather, to how our climate changes drastically in the atmosphere. There’s an undeniable chain of consequences between our climate and food. For example, “As reserves are depleted, changes in production would have a bigger impact on the price of food….Scientists have warned hotter temperatures and more erratic rainfall could increase the frequency and intensity of droughts (Reuters).” Droughts will affect how much food is yielded and therefore affect how people will be able to sustain themselves globally. Learning about connections between climate change and the food system, as well as climate change and COVID-19, it was easy for me to realize that underprivileged communities are not only affected by certain disadvantages individually, but also how all those disadvantages come together and create increased adverse challenges. This is why climate change needs to be addressed among the other issues, taking out one factor of damage out at a time, we can salvage what, and who, we are hurting and destroying.

Please watch this short animation on how climate change interacts with the causes and consequences of other global dilemmas:

Tons of Hungry People and Tons of Wasted Food

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It is the age of a global pandemic and for many Americans, it is a time of heightened economic vulnerability. The services of food banks are in increasing demand from both old and new customers as food insecurity explodes as unemployment skyrockets amid the COVID-19 crisis. At the same time, experts predict that we will be seeing a stark increase in our already high levels of food waste. In a good year, America would see 40 percent of its food wasted – 63 million tons. 

Source: Getty Images

This is not a good year. This is a year of panic buying and closed down markets and cafeterias, meaning that we can expect to see more than 40 percent of our food go to waste. The interconnected problems of food insecurity and food waste are certainly not new, but with the rise of COVID-19 they have gained higher visibility and have more far reaching impacts than ever before. 

Food waste management stretches from farm to table. With farmers leaving up to half of their crops unharvested due to cosmetic imperfections and American households representing the largest source of food wasted, food and money are lost at every step of the food system. While it may be tempting to think that our individual choices about how we consume don’t matter within the larger food system, it is this type of thinking that yields high volumes of food rotting in refrigerators and leaves misshapen foods in grocery stores to go to waste.

By changing our individual behaviors, we can dramatically decrease the waste we contribute and thereby improve the food system. And instead of allowing imperfect foods to go to waste on farms, we should be supporting infrastructure that enables these foods to be transported to food banks. If we make change now, we will save lives.