Author Archives: tsamo

Apple in a box

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This past week we have explored how the fear of death cannot only shape our personalities but also our perception on how we see the world. As analyzed in the book “The worm at the core”, every achievement has been motivated by the terror of death. This terror has even created religions, art, economies, societies, innovations and more.

Some days ago I came across a really interesting video that was part of a documentary called “a trip to infinity”. ‘I am bigger because I know how small I am”. In the excerpt, there was a box, a perfect box that nothing could come in or come out anymore. Inside the box there is an apple. As time passes by, the apple decays, becomes dust, the chemicals temperature increase and turn into energy. After billions of years, neutrons will decay to and the other fundamental particles, so if the apple has 10 to the 24th particles, then there would be 10 to the 10th to the 24th states that  these particles can be, although that is a huge number, it is not infinite. If we could wait infinite years, then all of these states would happen and according to the theory one day, we could open the box and see the apple again. The documentary ends with the controversial phrase of “And why should we are? Maybe because one day we might also end up in a box”.

The surprising thing is that after reading the book “The worm at the core”, instead of watching that video as a scientific exploration of infinity, I could only see a reflection of the desperate battle of humans against mortality, like we had the need to develop a theory like that so we don’t just accept that death is just death, the end.

The shared book.

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I have been wondering what can I write for that final post that I haven’t already, what can I reflect on that we haven’t yet touched, but I am finding it really difficult. For that reason I decided to embrace my “half-baked” thoughts, and see where I will go, while I am writing.

Eleven weeks ago, before we start this class, if someone was asking me “In what era are we living?”, I would probably give a much different answer to what I would say now.

Never in my life I have wondered “the epoch” that I am living at. Usually people identify these eras when they look back in the past. We look at the past like a chapter in a book and try to give it a title that would contain all the important events. We detach ourselves emotionally and see the events as part of the history. You meet older people and they tend to talk to you about the glory of their past years, about how beautiful, charming, seductive, motivated, active they were when they belonged to a different “era”, their twenties, thirties, forties. But people don’t set a name in the era they live now, not until they close the chapter.

If I was asked in what era we, human race, are living right now, I would probably think of a “post pandemic era”, a “social media one”, the era of Artificial Intelligence, or closer to what it is now “the era of cimate change”. But even on my answer about the climate change, I would be so detached emotionally and clean of blame. “Anthropocene”, the unofficial epoch in which humans have been the main source of impact to the Ecology of Earth. It really took me many weeks of this quarter to understand that even young, I am also part of the problem. Reflecting on the action project in a deeper level, maybe it was my redemption, a way to get rid some of the guilt or maybe a project I had to be engaged to feel special as a byproduct of death anxiety, having to feel that I am contributing to the solution of the problem.

The Anthropocene might be a dark chapter in the shared book of Human and Planet Earth, and might already have a title and a “plot” but the end has not been written yet, we have time to improve the storyline, and write a happy end.

Lonely in an 8 billion crowd

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November 15, 2022.

It is the morning of a Tuesday, 10:30 am. I am heading to our class and everything feels so normal. When I entered the classroom, I heard some of my classmates talking about something, some with excitement and some with concern. “We hit 8 billion people tonight”, “That is a new record”….

Fast forward to this week, Most of our readings for last were about how birthrates decline. USA, Spain, Japan, China, Portugal and more, are countries that expect to have a declining population, some even going to half, by the end of the century. According to the Washington Post article, “More Americans say they’re not planning to have a child, new poll says, as U.S. birthrate declines”, Americans between the ages of 18 and 49 were asked how likely it is for them to have kids at some point of their lives. The data made clear that less people wanted to have kids, but that is not what had my attention from the article. In 2018, the most popular answer of why adults without kids do not want to have kids, said that they just don’t have any desire to become parents. In the next research though, that took place on 2021, the most popular answers were medical issues, financial insecurity and lack of partner. That was so surprising to me. Eight billion people on planet earth, and people are still struggling to find a match. How is that possible?

I cannot answer that without referring to the pandemic. All of us felt isolated, feared for the our lives and the lives of our beloved ones. But the pandemic also brought to the surface. We all got a better understanding of climate change, of how vulnerable economies are, the impacts we have to the environment etc. I find a huge correlation to the changes in the responds and the “moments” of clarity that this pandemic gave us. If countries and governments want to find solutions to the birthrate that keeps declining, then they should probably start finding solutions to the actual problems that cause the uncertainty. Some days ago I saw a video about the creation of a “baby factory”, where lab babies will be created and developed in technological advanced wombs. Scientists will be able to interfere with every step of the development and potentially “fix” any anomalies that occur in the dna. With that technology, 30,000 babies will be born every year. That just left me wondering, is that another distraction so we don’t face the real problems?

Living Statues

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As an athlete, I have had the opportunity to do contemplative practices all the time. In my “athletic world”, a lot of the times, these practices have the name of race visualizations. Me and my boat would gather the night before the race, close our eyes relax and have our coxswain (the person that give the directions in the boat) “walk” us through the whole process of getting to the start line, race and finishing the race. The say that for the brain it is like you are actually doing the race. That practice prepares you in a mental way so you can keep your emotions in control the day of the race. “Your body will do whatever you command, it is the brain you need to convince”, that is a phrase that we hear all the time in my sport and it is said so when we start experiencing severe pain from how hard we are pushing, we keep pushing harder. We push so hard that a lot of rowers pass out after races. That keeps reminding me how powerful the brain is. I am glad that we get the opportunity to reflect on the contemplative practices we do in class. I really feel more connected to the present in every practice but there was one that really got my attention. Some weeks go, we did a standing practice. After standing we had to walk but only looking down, making zero eye contact for some minutes, just us and our thoughts, so alone in a room full of people. It was just like everyday life, walking around the campus while looking on our phones, taking for granted the moments and the people that walk past us. After walking around in the class looking down, we were told to start making eye contact. After so many weeks of class with these people, iIt was like I was meeting everyone for the first time. We would look each other and giggle for no reason, something so pure that almost made me feel like a kid again. I saw the smiles of some people in the class for the first time. On the documentary we saw last week, “Journey of the Universe”, there was a part that it was talking about living among statues and how it changes our self perception. And that go me wondering, if we take a moment to actually notice the world, by seeing all people running through their lives and be these moving “statues” what can change in our consciousness and self conception?

Earth without Humans

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Hello everybody,

I would like to start this post by introducing myself. My name is Dimitra Sofia Tsamopoulou, and I was born and raised in Athens, Greece. In 2019 I got recruited from the women’s rowing team, here in the University of Washington. I am doing a Political Science major with a double minor in Human Rights and Law,Society and Justice. The honest reason I chose the class of “Political Ecology of Death in the Anthropocene”, was basically because I got really intrigued by the usage of a word that is greek, the word “Anthropocene”. Although greek is my mother language I had to look the meaning of it in order to understand that it refers to an era, the era that the Earth’s Geology is the most impacted by the human “hands”.

So far, most of the classes I have taken are really theoretical. They cover subjects of justice, legislation, economics etc. What took me by surprise with this class is the hidden spirituality of it. In order to succeed and learn in that class, you cannot just keep up with the readings and the course material, you really need to connect with yourself, acknowledge the way you feel about the topics being taught and reflect on these feelings. A deeper understanding of the political ecology of death requires a deeper understanding of the internal processes we have as humans. These internal “exploration” brings a lot of questions on the surface. One of the questions that was brought to me is “What would happen to Earth if the Human race was all of a sudden going extinct?”. We live our lives thinking that we are the center of everything, and I think by trying to answer that question we can understand that we are not as essential as we would like to be. The biosphere, hydrosphere, geosphere and lithosphere do not need the noosphere in order to survive and thrive.

While trying to answer my question, I came across a video that I would like to share in our forum. In the video we can have a little “taste” of what would actually mean for earth if the human race was disappearing. I would love to read your reflections on the video and also my post. Thank you for your time. Have a great day!

Link for YouTube video:
https://youtu.be/EWXdTwFHETA