After the first full week of class, I am ready for more. Death in the Anthropocene, what is that and why is there a college class on it? From what I have gathered in our three sessions together thus far is that this class is a space for our minds to grapple with the issues of our systems (world, Earth, and noosphere), our mortality, the current political climate, and how to factor in sustainability into all the above-mentioned spaces. First things first, I needed a concrete definition of Anthropocene, which is as follows: “the current geological age, viewed as the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and environment” (Oxford Languages). The Anthropocene is where we are in time and space, easy enough. How do our lives fit into the Anthropocene? Well, we are a part of the noosphere which is the human side of the geospheres living system. The noosphere is something I had never heard of before, but after learning about it I understand how necessary it is to our Earth system. The humans are their own entity on this Earth, our systems work with and against the Earth system, but are also independent of the Earth system and require our own category. When I googled noosphere just to see what pops up, a satirical blog popped up with this image.

https://planetpailly.com/2017/08/11/sciency-words-noosphere/

I found this to be funny and a little too real. Jokes aside, the blog had some interesting thoughts on the noosphere, more predominantly that they were not ready to claim humankind as the Earth’s brain-and I have to agree with them (J.S. Pailly). We are not the system that run’s the Earth, we are currently just the system causing mechanical issues for the system running the Earth. With all this in mind, all of the Earth systems- atmosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere- they are all interdependent. All the system can be individual and do their own process, but they also work with the other systems to create something beautiful: our home. After this first week of class and the weekend to digest my thoughts, I have come to the conclusion that this class will teach me the intricacies of the noosphere and how it fits into the Earth system as well as how we as the noosphere can make our sphere a healthier sphere for the Earth system.