A Final Goodbye

Posted on December 15, 2022 by dafenir

Taking this class was honestly surreal. At no point in my academic life have I ever engaged in death in such a rich and generative way. Through our discussions and the weekly readings as well as our action project, I’ve began to find the answers to the multitude of questions that kept arising:

Why do I feel this helplessness/lack of control in the face of global catastrophe and death?

What is my true relationship to the earth and the earth’s system, and how am I impacting it?

The Overwhelming Feeling of Helplessness –Image credit: https://i0.wp.com/lakesidelink.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/bigstock-Stressed-Man-Sitting-On-Floor-289059874.jpg?fit=838%2C1024&ssl=1

I was able to understand that the topics that we discussed such as climate change and death as multi-dimensional: the issues permeate into social, political, and economic issues as well. Some examples includes death anxiety and political polarization, climate justice and environmental racism, disillusionment in our political institutions, and even contextualizing ourselves in the grand cosmic scheme of things.

Working through the action project allowed me to process these issues in a very productive way. Our group was tasked with design five social media posts to promote the campaign’s platform Working with WashPIRG: Save the Orcas was both an enlightening and insightful experience. Since this type of work was something I’ve never really done, it was great to learn what works and what doesn’t. The entire StO campaign was just getting started, and while that may explain some of the disorganization that my group experienced, it was nevertheless a point of frustration. Furthermore, I felt that the project that we were given to do wasn’t “enough.” I guess I didn’t really know what I expected, but given the topics that we discussed, I began to feel a sort of obligation to make real change during the class. I questioned all of my own choices and how I could not only change myself but my environment. Although the social media campaign did achieve the goal of promoting StO’s platforms and disseminating information, I felt like it didn’t do enough. Perhaps I envisioned this action project as my own immortality project, and doing what we did felt somewhat “incomplete,” which in a way felt like I wasn’t able to cement my legacy. Nevertheless, I felt that I was able to navigate some of the important themes that we had discussed all quarter in the action project.

Protesters at a Global Climate Strike protest –Image Credit: 2019 Getty Images

Final Blog Post: Solving the collective action problem

Posted on December 14, 2022 by qyap

Collaboration Is a Key Skill. So Why Aren't We Teaching It?

My paper is about solving the collective-action problem that inhibits humanity from creating sustainable communities. I highlight five major key points.

We must understand the insecurities created by fear of death.

Worm at the core gives examples of how insecurities lead to violent tendencies and self-destructive behavior

TDM is essential for creating strong communities that are necessary for fostering sustainable habits

Worm at the core gives solid evidence that explains individuals with strong bonds are more likely to collaborate.
Strong communities mean that individual values and goals become group goals
People are more likely to live selflessly, this means giving back to the community in a sustainable way. Recycling, Reusing, etc

We need to cultivate a culture that promotes sustainability

Cultures are a set of informal rules and norms, often times they are more influential
Culture can spread awareness

Sacrifice is needed for change

Self-sacrifice must be ingrained in a sustainable culture
Litfin mentions that a sustained cycle of life and death must involve sacrafice
The planets life-force functions on the earths organisms taking but also being able to give back
For example, planting three trees after cutting down three trees

Solving the collective action problem

The tipping point (motivating the moderate voter)
Pressuring key legislature
Organizing a movement
Public accountability
Incentivizing the public

Although I don’t mention it very much in the paper, my project, beyond plastics, is about creating legislation that incentivizes people to recycle, reuse and reduce. It’s also very important to note that the legislation Beyond Plastics is trying to pass is intended to be the groundwork for future sustainable practices. But I think the most important part of the project is getting people to collaborate. To answer the question of solving the collective action problem, we can look at our group projects. The assignment is structured where individual goals are aligned with group goals, thus incentivizing individuals to work together toward a common goal. This is a selective incentive that is critical to understanding my paper. The paper is structured as follows, understanding how we can optimize individuals into a group activity and optimize groups efficiently and get more people involved in the group.

My conclusion is this: Our deaths have meaning through our actions and the sacrifices we make. Our histories are built upon the collective contributions of every individual who has ever lived. Group action is crucial to progress, but individual action is the first step.

Death Anxiety as a Barrier to Climate Action

Posted on December 14, 2022 by Sofia Leotta

Death acceptance is a valuable tool for building a more sustainable future. If humans overcome death anxiety, prioritizing natural systems and far out goals for the future become easier. This is because environmental movements often deal with long time frames and forward-thinking. Terror Management Theory suggests that humans intrinsically avoid death reminders. How can we think about climate change without envisioning a world in which we don’t exist? Thinking critically about sustainability means thinking beyond our own lifespans.

In daily life, humans don’t often choose to think outside of our 100 years. Even though, geologically, 100 years is practically insignificant, our lifespan feels long and monumental. To think beyond 100 years is to perceive mortality. Humans disregard sustainability because it forces them to contemplate their own mortality. To live for the future is to acknowledge that you are acting to benefit a future that does not include you. Sustainability is hard because we don’t want to think about that.

My experiences during our group’s action project directly counters this fear of mortality. By having conversations with people I normally wouldn’t speak to about death, as interviews for our video project, I opened the conversation to denial of death, personal beliefs, and our collective fears of the idea of not existing one day. What initially seemed like a rough conversation quickly began to ease my uncertainty and helped me form stronger bonds with the people I interviewed.

While death anxiety may encourage us to limit our thinking in terms of sustainability, conversations about death give us room to process our emotions without falling into the false belief that we’re alone in our thinking. As we learned through Terror Management Theory and in this course, humans seem to internalize fears of death in similar ways. Discussing death directly addresses the elephant in the room. I found that after having a conversation about death, rather than spiraling in my mind, I was less adverse to thinking about large-scale worldly issues, like climate change.

Death conversations increase humanity’s tolerance to mortality as a whole–a state we must reach to survive. We are mortal beings. Denying this drives us to ignore a future without us. Throughout history people even like to feel like they’re “building a better future” for next generations. To accept death is to open conversations about planet Earth in the coming centuries and prioritize protecting our natural resources for future generations.

How then shall I live?

Posted on December 13, 2022 by Heidi

My major takeaway from this course regards how I want to proceed with living my life.

We have learned that death anxiety rules our lives and decisions, and that we cope through various forms of terror management. This constant fear drives our species to war, industrialization, colonization, exploitation, and now to the brink of a planetary climate disaster.

One of our contemplative practices asked us to consider three mindsets. Where 1) the world is generally getting worse, 2) the world is generally getting better, and 3) the world is how it is. I find the 3^rd mindset to be the most realistic and empowering. In this view, we see the world as it is without sugarcoating it or focusing purely on evils. In this view, humanity has agency. We can sit back and continue our trajectory toward a terrible future, or we can choose to collaborate, innovate, and save our species from collapse.

With this mindset of agency, I am struck by the question: “how then shall I live?”

I need to start with my forms of terror management. Before this course, my management consisted of spree online shopping to fill a non-existent gap in my life and constant distractions because silence allowed intrusive thoughts to run rampant. These are unsustainable strategies.

Professor Jem Bendall in his video about Deep Adaptation asks viewers to cherish what they have. To enjoy life in the short time that we have it. Though I talk about why I dislike Bendall’s perspective in another blog post, I have come to accept this concept when taken alongside the strategies presented in Active Hope, the relief and fulfillment of volunteer work like my action project for WashPIRG’s Save the Orcas, and the hope that humanity still has agency to change.

Image Credit: Syracuse Peace Council

To answer the question “how then shall I live?,” I must adjust my terror management. Rather than needlessly consuming, I can focus on being grateful for what I already have. Rather than constantly distracting myself, I can spend more meaningful time with friends and family to feel reassured that I have people I care about who also care about me. I can take part in local efforts that better my community and environment. I can make changes like being better about recycling and using my purchasing power to favor local, sustainable businesses. I can choose to live with hope.

There are easily implementable things I can do to live a more conscientious and sustainable life without drastically changing my lifestyle. I don’t know if this is enough, but I hope that between collective individual action, death anxiety harnessed by corporate inventors to find technological solutions, and global politicians trying to one-up each other, we will find a way to persist as a species.

Fear Within our Anthropocence and How We Can Over Come It

Posted on December 12, 2022 by grotem

My biggest takeaway about the political ecology of death in the Anthropocene is that people are ruled by fear. Political leaders, religious leaders, everyday people, and everyone in between has some amount of fear in their lives. Fear of our death, fear of failure, fand ear of how our world is being run.

This poem by Shakespeare speaks of fear:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50428/song-fear-no-more-the-heat-o-the-sun-

Fear does not have to be a negative influence. Letting fear control you allows for it to have power over you. But, acknowledging this fear creates a new opportunity. An opportunity for love, desire, hope, and a life full of adventure.

The Worm at the Core states “Why not depart from life as a sated guest from a feast” (Solomon) and I agree. Why not take our life for everything it has to offer. Living in the depths of despair does nothing for for anyone. This class has shown me that yes, our world is dark, has several demoralizing issues, and needs some fixing-but the beautiful thing is that we have the power to change this. We can be the light in our own world.

My action project was built around WashPirg’s Save the Orca Campaign with the goal of breaching the Lower Snake River Dam to allow more salmon to be available for the Orca’s to feed on. This is a passion project, and as I reference in my paper all passion projects are a way of coping with death anxiety. Passion projects to me are a positive way of working through personal death anxiety on some level. Being a part of something greater than oneself is an incredible feeling, and to me gives the feeling of hope.

Hope is stronger than fear, but when paired together can create opportunities to better our world

Shakespeare’s poem talks about how we will all come to rest as dust eventually (Shakespeare), and The Worm at the Core talks about how we are no more valuable to this Earth than a lizard or a potato from a biological perspective (Solomon), so then what is the point of being riddled with anxiety. This ay be a blindly optimistic point of view, but with how things are currently going… What do we have to lose by giving our best effort to enact change?

Chocolate and Chip

Posted on November 29, 2022 by ryandhjr

During our most recent contemplative practice, which Professor Litfin recorded for us to listen to over Thanksgiving break, I took some time to reflect on where my holiday meal came from.

My aunt hosted our annual family dinner this year, so we were incredibly lucky to enjoy potatoes, green beans, eggs, and various fruits straight from her farm. But some of our food, like the turkey, needed to be bought from the grocery store. That turkey is what (or who) I thought most about during the contemplation exercise. Specifically, I considered what that turkey’s life must have been like before it ended up on our table. The article we read last month about slaughterhouses (Working Undercover in a Slaughterhouse: an interview with Timothy Pachirat) had a profound impact on my thought process.

As the article points out, death is widely normalized in our culture, but, at the same time, we all take great care to willingly ignore it. Deep down, I’m sure my family and I all understood that the turkey on our table had suffered for most of its life. It probably lived in awful conditions in a factory farm, where it was forcefully fattened up and bludgeoned to death, all for some family to eat in celebration of a holiday whose origins are rife with much of the same exploitation and violence. This reality is not one that many of us want to think about, but it’s one I forced myself to confront to help me be more appreciative of the (unwilling) sacrifice that animal made.

(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

After gaining this clarity, I found myself thinking back to Thanksgiving morning, when President Biden officially pardoned Chocolate and Chip at the White House (pictured right). When I was watching this event, I felt joy that these turkeys would go on to live happily and healthily for many more years. However, I’ve realized instead that our country has this tradition of sparing the life of one or two turkeys every Thanksgiving merely to obfuscate those we’d rather not see.

In closing, I am thankful for the many insights I have gained throughout this quarter from our weekly contemplative practices, and as this class comes to an end, I am beginning to realize the positive impact they have had on me. Setting aside some time to just sit with my thoughts is something I plan to do more of in the future.

Pondering death can make or break society

Posted on October 31, 2022 by Sofia Leotta

Thinking more deeply about death has shocked me out of my daily rhythm. In some moments I’ve wished I was more religious as a way to “beat” the fear of death by utter belief in something else. The Worm at the Core tested me – it made me think, how is grappling with death culturally beneficial? Is finding my way through intense existential thoughts going to build me into a better person, or only blur my focus of reality more?

A holistic and healthy relationship with death, rather than blind ignorance and avoidance, is the path I want to take. In The Worm at the Core’s “Living with Death” section, the authors propose that “being mortal, while terrifying, can also make our lives sublime by infusing us with courage, compassion, and concern for future generations.” (225) I strive to find this.

Sometimes the idea that I’m going to die one day doesn’t scare me though, but rather gives me a sense of nonchalance and indifference, which can often be equally damaging as fear of death. Climate change seems too overwhelming? Many of the repercussions will be hundreds of years from now, it’s not worth stressing about! Might as well give in to consumerism, it’s the path laid out for me!

This is a coping mechanism that I believe many people, especially from industrialized consumer cultures hold. They warp fear of death into destructive acceptance and use the idea that they’re going to die at some point to justify overuse that sets future generations up for failure.

Purposeful thinking about death that The Worm at the Core describes provides a different outlook. Everyone needs to grapple with death in their own way, but understanding death as a cyclical continuation of humanity lessens the fear for me. For more people to come after us and experience the joy and beauty of Earth, we all must die. Not die with the intention of draining all of the resources we want to experience before our own mortality – die with the intention of leaving room for a new generation of people.

I want future generations of children to marvel at trees – to walk through forests with soil staining their feet and adore waterfalls, to see the remarkable diversity of animals in our world, and to gain joy from the things we take for granted. We will die, but our legacy and “immortality project” lies in preserving this remarkable place we call home.

Death, Institutions, Capitalism, and Climate Change

Posted on October 31, 2022 by medhag

This week in class we began with a reading of James Rowe’s article “Is a Fear of Death at the Heart of Capitalism?”. The article reflects and derives its thesis from Ernest Brecker’s work. Brecker theorized that humans act reactively to their mortality in the sense that they create structures and cultures that allow them to redirect their fear of their own death or the feelings of impermanence and smallness that accompany their understanding of death. The fear that our death is inevitable and thus out of our control leads us, as a species, to try to create structures that we feel can immortalize us. This leads to us creating systems such as capitalism allows us to determine a way to value one’s existence in a tangible way. These systems allow us to act to win within these systems in order to immortalize ourselves in these assumably immortal structures. Thus, such structures have contributed to the incredible innovation but also to the destabilization of the conditions needed to allow life to flourish. Rowe believes that the solution to reconstructing capitalism and other such detrimental systems is by understanding and changing how our fears of death enforce our desire for permanence in the form of these institutions. Through discussion concerning these pieces, I find that though there is value in this approach in the long run it doesn’t seem to address any of the problems we face in the short term, specifically that of our climate crisis. However, a potentially more suitable solution for our current situation is one that Mark Hertsgaard posits in his piece the God Species. Hertsgaard claims that humans should posit that we should also understand our role in death and rather than use that to shift the foundations of our destructive activities refine them with our current capabilities that though the byproduct of destructive practices gives us a godlike power to positively shift or minimize our impact on our planet to sustain our current systems simply not at the cost of the planet. Ultimately, I believe that the idea of explaining these generally exploitative and oppressive systems, as a result of our discordant relationship with death as a species, does very little in changing the very damning impact of them on the state of our planet. Realistically if we want to address the climate crisis we must question if we have the time to reconstruct institutions that will then adequately address the pressing crises we face now or whether we must learn to work within the constraints of our current institutions.

The false choice between capitalism and saving the planet Photo: David Cliff / NurPhoto via Getty Images- The general discontentment with systems such as capitalism by climate activists Climate Change And Global Pollution To Be Discussed At Copenhagen Summit JANSCHWALDE, GERMANY – NOVEMBER 24: A loan wind turbine spins as exhaust plumes from cooling towers at the Jaenschwalde lignite coal-fired power station, which is owned by Vatenfall, on November 24, 2009 in Janschwalde, Germany. The CO2 emission will be one top of the agenda and will be discussed at the summit in December in Copenhagen. (Photo by Carsten Koall/Getty Images)

Terror Management and the Meat Industry

Posted on October 30, 2022 by Heidi

Credit: Nasser Nouri, Flickr

“Working Undercover in a Slaughterhouse” by Avi Solomon raises several questions from our course theme: why do humans care about separating ourselves from animals? How is our indifference to slaughtering farm animals similar to our indifference to loss in worldwide biodiversity? How do we frame this for ourselves so that we can remain moral and virtuous?

As The Worm at the Core and our class have discussed, animals are a harsh reminder of our mortality. Our pets die, we see roadkill as we drive down the highway, and we watch nature documentaries where wild animals kill each other. Animals remind us that we are not immortal, so we distance ourselves hoping to overcome their failures. In the meat industry, we separate ourselves so that we can continue to eat the products, work in the slaughterhouses, and excuse ourselves of wrong doing. If we embraced animals as our kin, are slaughterhouses not the same as Nazi death camps? Is our man-made 6^th mass extinction not a multi-species genocide?

Solomon’s article describes how the meat industry has been designed to minimize human contact with animal deaths. Only one person works in the room that shoots each animal in the head. Everybody else works along the conveyor belt handling “beef,” allowing them to wash their hands of regret and blame because they weren’t responsible, they’re just working a job handling the aftermath.

Credit: maol, Flickr

This brings up an uncomfortable parallel for me and my desensitization to plastic waste at Starbucks. When I first began working as a barista, I was very away of every plastic cup that I unnecessarily threw away. Now I do it with ease––it’s so much faster to throw away a lid with accidental whip cream on it than to wash it. I save myself time and an irritable customer. This minor convenience for me comes at the expense of our overflowing landfills and the countless creatures that will have to endure that lid for 450 years while it slowly decomposes.

For many people, even if they refuse to become desensitized to the slaughtering of the meat industry, or the plastic waste of the food industry, they can’t escape it. As is described by Solomon, a majority of the workers in the slaughterhouse are illegal immigrants, desperate for any work and money. As I’ve seen at Starbucks, many of my coworkers are without other job prospects––sure they could move to another fast food chain, but they are stuck in the system of constant, unnecessary disposal of plastic. They’re stuck relying on terror management––distracting their consciousness, relying on culture for purpose and beliefs, and maintaining their self esteem by reminding themselves that their job is necessary to provide food to millions of people around the world.

When The Bee Stings

Posted on October 30, 2022 by ryandhjr

credit: Ryan Haskins

I have a facts-based, biological view of mortality and existence, which I think is what has allowed me to find peace. I’ve accepted the simple fact that when I die, the same thing will happen to me that happens to all organisms on our planet: my corpse will be feasted on, and I’ll be turned into energy for other living beings.

As far as why I exist, I recognize that an organism’s singular purpose in life is to reproduce and contribute to evolution. Yes, this seems like a depressing outlook (especially because I’m gay), but it has led me to pledge to use my time here on Earth to “maximize what [I] can get out of life and minimize the harm [I] do to others” (Solomon et al. 224). Maybe this is emblematic of Terror Management Theory at work.

I’ve found it useful to apply that same ‘hard place’ worldview to my thoughts about living in a time of so many uncontrollable crises. I’m afraid of where America’s current struggles with capitalism, democracy, and international peacekeeping amidst the Anthropocene might take us. However, it motivates me to try to make a difference (however small), even when it seems futile. I choose what I get out of this life, so I am going to make the most of it and do my best to make society better for those who will come after.

When I started reading The Worm at the Core, I’ll admit that I had doubts about Terror Management Theory’s explanation of why people behave the way they do. In some ways, I still do. The book focuses almost solely on Western countries in experiments, ignores different gender perspectives, and overgeneralizes some claims without evidence. However, upon finishing the book and reflecting on some of my life decisions, I can see how TMT played a role, especially regarding my worldview.

As I review our other (sometimes quite bleak) course materials, I try to stay committed to my ‘hard place’ worldview and remember that change is possible if we envision it. I think this is why I’ve particularly enjoyed “The Ecomodernist Manifesto” and The God Species: Saving the Planet in the Age of Humans. When the bee stings and my time here on Earth is up, I may not have fulfilled my animal purpose, but I am confident that I will have fulfilled my human one.

Political Ecology of Death in the Anthropocene

Political Science 486 ::: Honors 392

Category Archives: Consumption