Category Archives: Topics

Course Synthesis: Leaning Into Fear

Posted on by
Reply

 

I almost dropped this course a few times. Especially towards the beginning, it was deeply uncomfortable for me to spend such long periods of time thinking about death, dying, and environmental destruction. I was often overwhelmed by feelings of impending doom and sorrow.

And this was how I initially felt about my action project as well. Although I had worked somewhat with the Animal Rights Initiative before, the extensive research we were tasked with opened my eyes to the sheer scale of animal suffering on this planet. It was already painful for me to think about the plights of suffering humans. And, by intentionally expanding my circle of empathy to the roughly 60 billion land animals raised in factory farms each year, that pain greatly increased. It was depressing and infuriating to spend so much time doing research on such mass amounts of suffering. I became angry and disillusioned with the way in which society tolerated these mass amounts of violence. As author Timothy Pachirat writes in “Working Undercover in a Slaughterhouse,” an interview with Avi Solomon, the globally affluent live in a system that requires the “active complicity in forms of exploitation and violence.”

However, I soon found calm in the contemplative practices. In these, I was purposefully leaning into the fear I felt instead of shying away from it. I learned to accept and embrace my anxiety, which in turn, calmed me. I experienced similar feelings of catharsis in the advocacy involved in my action project. Even though the problem of industrialized animal agriculture is unfathomably large, it felt good to have a part in helping address it, especially because I was working in a team of others who cared. Throughout the course, those two coping strategies became my lifeline while wading through difficult course content and dealing with death in my own life.

This image is a draft of the Animal Rights Initiative logo, which depicts a group of volunteers passing out literature on the animal rights and welfare movements. The underlaid image of the volunteers brings me so much joy because I think it encapsulates the feeling I had working with my group in the action project. It is a beautiful feeling to work on a team of passionate people, even against a seemingly insurmountable problem.

The Not So End of a Journey

Posted on by
Reply

These past few weeks have been full of challenges, but also growth has emerged. Growth in knowledge and awareness. This quarter has flown by but this journey we collectively experienced is something that will live on. My group’s action project surrounding Terror Management was an enlightening experience. Being able to conduct a similar study of what the authors in The Worm at the Core but making it our own by using our own community and tying our own mortality to death in the Anthropocene was a great first-hand experience.

Our action project was the highlight of the quarter. It presented many challenges, but at the end of the day presented a piece of work that I believe was engaging and beneficial to the UW community. Even though I and my group were the ones that came up with the questions that were asked I found myself noticing, a different emotional response once hearing everyone’s answers. This video interview not only opened people’s awareness of their mortality intertwined with climate change but also mine in a deeper sense. It was exciting to hear everyone’s responses even on such a heavy topic as death. There were a lot of inspirational statements made that gave me a sense of hope. Hearing from people in my community about some of their actions in terms of achieving sustainability within their own lives was also intriguing. It reinforced my active hope and belief that everyone has their own way of being sustainably, but collectively we can make changes in collectively achieving sustainability on higher levels.

Overall, this class wasn’t as disheartening, or dreary as expected. I see myself consciously thinking in new ways about my mortality and death in the Anthropocene, that I wouldn’t have foreseen. Personal decisions such as, if I want to bare children or be turned into the soil instead of being put in a casket are all thoughts that have emerged from the material in this course. The fear of death is less prevalent as I continue to learn to connect myself, to the universe in a way that gives hope to future generations and our planet.

Terror Management Theory and the Afterlife – BahaiTeachings.org

 

Final Reflection of This Journey!

Posted on by
Reply

What I learned during the quarter is more of the details of the Anthropocene and the aspects of death as a big concept to politics, society, and the future. I have learned more about the idea of death and realized how society utilizes death and immorality as a personal gain and a political gain. For example, the food and the laws on death and immortality projects. The one that I learned the most is how the concept of ecology and the earth is dying due to the innovations of humans. How everything we do has a feedback loop of systems. And the hardest lesson from this class that I learned is to accept our death and the earth is dying. Beforehand, I always thought death and the end of everything shrugged off negative things as “oh, we are changing for the better.” But that whole concept was not the truth, and I faced it. Besides cultural differences or religious differences, we are dying, and the earth is dying. As for the project itself, I learned that having your trauma can overshadow the more considerable collective trauma but adversely affects individuals. Therefore, many conflicts within our personal lives can intertwine with more significant aspects with people like climate change or covid.

What I gave in my action projects was my experience with trauma and relating it to collective trauma and the aspects of factors that can connect to a collective trauma like racial injustice and personal hardships related to trauma. As for the class, I will be honest and say that I wish I gave frank discussions, but the topic of death in this class hits home to me because I lost someone this year, so in a way, it was terrible timing. But I tried my best to participate in the zoom chat discussions on my thoughts and experiences. 

How does this whole experience relate to ecology, death, and the Anthropocene? The class helped me connect with my death and others, the realization of the immortality project discussions. Those discussions made my peace with death instead of fearing the concept and the afterlife due to religious constraints.

I can take away from this class because I accepted Anthropocene and death. It was a challenging course for me with the readings and the discussion, but I realize this was a great class to learn from and change perspectives.

The Interconnectedness of Political Ecology: Utopia, Terror Management Theory, and Being Deeper in the Moment

Posted on by
Reply

In working on the action projects, it was a curious challenge and quite an interesting experience trying to come up with an ideal utopia. We spent so much time brainstorming and discussing various ideas—which often clashed with each other. Eventually, we choose to make our own utopian concepts. That way, we could better establish simpler utopias, that later would become more complex through the synthesis of our utopias. My utopia, in particular, inspired me to delve deeper into the idea that we, as a society, should have a greater emphasis on the arts and culture rather than economic gain. How we could also change our relation to the planet through the Half-Earth Project, making half the Earth protected in the form of national parks and protected regions, including the sea. And through the lens of political ecology, we can see how our interrelation with the Earth’s systems echos with similarity to how we interact in society. Whereby our capitalist desires are destroying the planet, separating what is useful and not, similar to how we treat people who do not partake in the capitalist system, labeling them as poor, crazy, or not worth our care. 

In thinking back about this class, I had skimmed over a key aspect of the class, “Death.” I had learned about terror management theory, never imagining that our conscious and unconscious fear of death could affect every facet of our lives. How it fuels capitalism and nationalism, or creates desires for literal and symbolic immortality. Personally, I don’t think terror management theory changes my personal outlook of the world that much, but I do believe that it changes my political perspective, and how I view the interactions and decisions of the people I hope to one day win over. 

Looking back to my first blog post, I had desired to have a better understanding of why the issues of the Anthropocene were important and worth my attention. And honestly, I didn’t know if this class would be able to answer that desire. But it was—through a process I was initially quite resistant to: the contemplative practice. After a few of these practices, I began to realize that living in the moment is one thing, but striving to live further and deeper into the moment is another. They showed me how to care for all the Earth’s systems being affected by the Anthropocene, beyond just climate change. 

https://media.itsnicethat.com/images/nat_geo_double_cover.width-1440_SKNGANTs5lcnrGZm.jpg

Power-With: Citizenship in the Anthropocene

Posted on by
Reply

The most impactful theme for me this quarter has been practicing new ways of thinking. Engaging with both the action project and course material, contemplative practices led me to a more relational point of view, which helped me to manage feelings of frustration or stagnation. When I perceive disfunction, my response is more effective when I can let go of the impulse to “overcome” and instead consider how I want to relate to a challenge. Thinking in systems, I can develop a stronger sense of identity as a citizen to find inspiration rather than depletion in the face of the Anthropocene.

My group’s project was focused on the concept of collective climate trauma. In reviewing the literature on the topic, I noticed a consensus among the authors on the importance of reflective witnessing in one form or another. Rather than overcoming or moving beyond the trauma, authors emphasized practices designed to honor and reflect upon it- thereby opening space for new collective stories in relation to the traumatizing phenomena. This reminded me of an argument presented in The Worm at the Core ­­– human beings cannot overcome the terror of death, so should instead remain mindful of how it impacts our lives (221). In both cases, as with my own experience in the class, there is a chance for renewed energy through a relational reframing.

In Active Hope, Macy and Johnstone parallel this with their distinction between “power-over” and “power-with” (106-108). While the exercise of “power-over” is a zero-sum resource game, “power-with” is a model wherein power is a practice, generated by action in relationships. Instinctively, I can see this “power-with” when I imagine an ecosystem, but it has been harder to conceive of in political systems. As an individual, grief and frustration regarding the Anthropocene deplete me, and “overcoming” the emotions, much less the global phenomenon, feels impossible.

With practice, I can lean into a “power-with” identity, working with the emotions and as a citizen – (a node in a human-system response) to guide my orientation to anthropogenic crisis. In this framing, a citizen mindset provides an opportunity to respond to Death and the Anthropocene from a place of diffuse and renewable strength. I look forward to a “power-with” relationship between the human and natural world, and the reciprocal healing that will facilitate. I am grateful for the tools this course has provided to support that vision.

Image source: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/tippling/2020/01/22/life-as-an-emergent-property-and-rocks/

The Benefits of a Walk in the Park (While the World Ends)

Posted on by
Reply

As humans, we have created remarkable things while simultaneously manufacturing horrors that scar the land itself. Oceans and mountains of garbage will long outlive us. To combat the plastics that plague us, we must feel the connections between us and Earth and each other. Especially, in today’s world, with pandemics and polarization pulling us apart, we must hold on to our humanity.

My group’s action project dealt with the practical and political part of the plastics problem. Working with WashPIRG, we had a petition for people to sign, but my action project group decided that we wanted to get a little more hands-on with our work. To engage our community, we organized two plastics clean-ups around campus, taking paper bags and gloves to the streets for a couple hours at a time to pick up the plastics and other litter we found. By also including people outside of our class on these clean-ups, we were able to introduce the idea of contemplative practices and mindfulness to those who had not previously done it with a leader in a quiet classroom. Trading the hum of the air conditioning system for the breeze and glimpses into strangers’ conversations as we walked by, we reflected on our intentions for the clean-up that day.

Through my reflections, I thought about how in a pandemic, our collective fear has certainly been heightened – this is the largest and most communal death experience I have lived through. Though I have been beyond fortunate not to experience anyone very close to me passing away from Covid-19, the constant news of climbing death tolls has certainly been a weight on my mind. When confronted with the fear of death, people tend to become more insular, more tribal, and more isolated – and I felt those urges as the pandemic polarized public health. But our in-person meetings and connections have encouraged me to reach out more and soften my boundaries, accepting others’ limits and being more open with mine. The only way forwards is together, and my action project has shown me that it is possible to make progress when we connect with each other. Though the fear of disease and death remains a background noise to my daily life, neighborhood walks with bags of trash and sunshine help hold it at bay.

My action project group on one of our clean-ups!

Inner Work: the Key to Battling Capitalistic Values and Assuming Shared Responsibility

Posted on by
Reply

Throughout this course, I have done more unlearning than learning, trying to address my own misconceptions about society and our views on mortality. Most of these misconceptions arose from a misunderstanding of the importance of death as well as an ignorance of capitalism’s true impacts. I came to this realization when we started discussing terror management theory (TMT). I found that my fear of death was buffered by attempts to be “successful,” as deemed by our capitalistic society, and I wanted to see if my peers coped similarly. 

To determine what kinds of TMT are most prevalent, we surveyed 25 participants, asking them 7 questions that prompted thought about their mortality as well as their connection to the world system. From these interviews, we gathered that our peers were avoidant of death, saying they did not fear it, but preferred not thinking about death. Some identified self-esteem related forms of TMT, including having offspring or finding value in success and fame. Additionally, almost all participants were unable to draw the connection between their mortality and their impact on the environment. These results show that the denial of death is prevalent in our society, and that not considering death can inhibit potential climate action. 

The denial of death and self-esteem forms of TMT are both the product of living in a capitalistic society. We are constantly bombarded with the capitalistic values of individualism and consumerism, which each influence how we value our own lives, and eventual mortality. Capitalism forces us into an individual mindset, convincing us that we are “existing above or beyond biophysical process,” (Oelschlaeger). This allows humans to deny death, and live a life free of accountability to the world system. This is the root of climate change and cause of the creation of the Anthropocene. Humans have exploited the world for decades, searching for individual worth, while also destroying their own system. 

In order to acknowledge death and shift how most of society manages their terror, inner work should be encouraged. Participating in contemplative practices gives people the opportunity to understand the connectivity of the world and assume responsibility for their impact. Encouraging inner work among activists could begin a grassroots movement to mitigate climate change, with a focus on shared responsibility. I believe in the power of the people, and think that inner work among a few may instigate systemic change within our federal systems.

We are a part of nature, and nature is a part of us. This symbiotic relationship needs to be preserved through shared responsibility
Source: https://sites.tufts.edu/alexagaluppo/2018/10/06/nature-builds-far-better-than-we-do/

WORKS CITED

Oelschlaeger, Max. “History, Ecology, and the Denial of Death: A Re-Reading of Conservation, Sexual Personae, and the Good Society.” Journal of Social Philosophy, vol. 24, no. 3, 1993, pp. 19–39., https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9833.1993.tb00522.x. 

 

Contemplative Practice ; A Deeper Thinking

Posted on by
Reply

These contemplative practices we have been engaging in this quarter has increased my self-awareness. I have mostly become more aware of my body positions throughout these and, will perform tasks such as unclenching my jaw or fixing my posture. The connection of the poems to what we discussed that day also bring a deeper connection and I feel like it opens my mind to analyze these readings. I see these practices as tethering course materials with my own life in these moments of deeper thinking. This quarter has been a particular rough one with a lot of health complications that have really borne a weight on my performance. My life, like everyone else’s is chaotic and busy so the few moments of thought in these contemplative practices have opened this opportunity for breath and reflection. Which in my experience has led me to refocus on this class content with an open mind not so full of distractions. The material we have read in this class is heavy and I have experienced these practices helps develop capacity and increase mindfulness for these types of discussions.

One reading particularly that stood out to me and I seemed to reflect during contemplative practices was  Is a Fear of Death at the Heart of Capitalism? – Ernest Becker Foundation. Going back to that TMT that we learned about in The Worm at The Core, this reading examines how capitalism could be at the heart of our fears of death. This idea that being reminded of death increases our part in contributing to our capitalist society helped me see my part. When reflecting on the way my personal fear of death plays a part in contributing to those in power and big corporations the practices this reading helped me connect my personal behaviors with it. I connect my own purchase behaviors, jobs, and activities that I perform to this idea and see that the reasoning behind why I work or why I shop immensely is to cope or pass time with the fear of death in my subconscious.

On the ecology level, my impact on the earth and a lot of the readings in class have intertwined with the contemplative practices around this subject. The article Häagen-Dazs and Tide are turning to reusable packaging to fight plastic waste – Vox, gave me hope as well as a increasing awareness of the plastic products I use. The state our world is in, is extremely alarming to me and hearing about progress and companies that contribute to this becoming more sustainable, pushes me to increase sustainability in my life. I am persistently pondering how to change my actions to make as little impact on the earth with each new information I learn, and these thoughts have emerged extensively throughout these contemplative practices.

See the source image

Source: Deep thinking man – Zodiac Fire

CONTEMPLATIVE PRACTICE

Posted on by
1

I never really thought of contemplative practices before I signed up for this class. I have never done it before. But here I am, learning new things even if it’s out of my comfort zone. My life before this class was fast-paced. Even with covid hits, my life was fast-paced, and I never really took the time to use contemplative practices to clear my mind or have a different perspective. Being a first-generation kind made me not slow down in my life to think because I am always expected to get a degree, a job, and a family. I could never stop and think about my feelings or my reflection on life, which affects my mental health. I kept moving on and ignored those thoughts until I took this class. This class made me more aware of my inner work and got to know my inner work. The practices every morning during class time, when we close our eyes and the professor would give us the prompts to think about. I appreciate how I can breathe and think about what’s around me.

 

One practice that resonates with me is the one contemplative practice about the first time I did it in class. I am translucent on the contemplative practice’s subject, but I remember Death and what the matter of Death means to me. The way I experimented with my thoughts on Death as a personal subject was a gateway for me to understand the Anthropocene in this class and how Death should not be a taboo subject. It’s a part of life. The class and the practices made me realize that Death is part of our cycle. It shouldn’t be taboo or to avoid it. My family always talks about immorality projects, or they seem to want a legacy of wealth and prosperity. Our lives are so in tune within the system that we can never stop thinking and realizing our faults as people and our environment on this planet. I believe that’s why many people within my situation and my social status are struggling with it so that they could never stop and think. They keep surviving until Death or the end of the world hits them. To conclude, those contemplative practices do help see what’s ahead of you.

 

Getting in the Moment of the Anthropocene

Posted on by
Reply

The contemplative practice: the unified act of a small group of students closing their eyes to reflect on the hard subjects of the Anthropocene. These practices are supposed to be meditative, accessing different wavelengths of the brain. For the most part, all my early experiences with them have been lackluster in terms of how they affected me inwardly. I saw them more as a respite from my long commute and my active, sometimes anxious mind. The subject matters of this class never really hit me emotionally, that is, I don’t think I was ever shaken to the core. Even the hard subjects, like from the film Albatross, were simply emotions for me to experience. I would acknowledge them, my emotions, but I would move past them, so to speak. I wouldn’t let them bring me down. I’m an optimistic person, always have been. I think it’s just in my personality. I live by the moment. I can’t think of the what-ifs like a terrorist getting ahold of nuclear weapons from a destabilized Pakistan or a disruption from Saudi Arabia’s oil supply causing “a social earthquake,” as Thomas Homer-Dixon put it. 

My view of life is sort of a flexible one. Often, my days look pretty much the same, but given the chance, I will change with the wind. I, for example, never thought I would see myself maintaining my relative sanity commuting so many hours each day. I managed it by living in the moment, and eventually, about halfway through the quarter, I took that philosophy of living in the moment to the contemplative practice. I finally allowed myself to relax, instead of rest. My posture was usually sluggish, slouching slightly. During one of the practices, I decided to sit up straight, and strangely more important, I kept my feet flat on the ground. I don’t know why, maybe it makes me closer to the Earth, but there is something about keeping my feet flat on the ground that allowed me to be more in a meditative state. Through this contemplative practice and others, I began to realize that living in the moment is one thing, but striving to live further and deeper into the moment is another. I am living in the Anthropocene—and I am learning to die in the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene is a moment in time that I am learning to live in, every second of it.

https://movementmonthly.com/2015/05/01/keep-your-feet-on-the-ground-the-key-to-staying-vertical/