Category Archives: Topics

Qualms About My Demise

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“Political Ecology of Death in the Anthropocene” is a fascinating title––oddly specific, yet broad enough to cover so many things. Signing up for this course, I was hooked.

My death is something that I contemplate quite often. It entails considering the possible ways that I want my body disposed of: I hate the idea of being eaten by worms, so burial and composting are out, and while I don’t enjoy imagining my body burning, at least my cremated ashes won’t be a direct meal for some creature. It entails thinking about my soul––will I have a next life, or will my “soul” and conscious just cease to exist in the universe? It also entails significant FOMO (fear of missing out), which is my ultimate motivator in life to do my best, please as many people as possible, see as many places as I can, and consume without need. To quote the NPR podcast We’re All Gonna Die!, “the fear of death haunts the human animal like nothing else.” I can certainly relate.

Now, only a week into this course, I’m realizing that there are many problematic implications with how I approach the fear of my death.

Using systems thinking, my death and following disposal is individual, in that it is important psychologically to me. It is also part of a larger system of the earth’s ecology. How then should I approach the subject of my body? Do I respect myself and get cremated to avoid the “ew” factor? Or do I respect the Earth, future generations, and climate action, and instead choose composting? The fact that I have a choice is part of the problem and demonstrates how our species is out of bounds. I am inclined to choose an option that hurts the environment, other humans, and the entire planetary system. To the question of “what kind of species will we be,” from Professor Litfin’s Becoming Planetary, it will someday be up to me decide in this one small, yet impactful decision and make the mature choice.

Considering terror management theory, it may be my fear of the unknown that drives my FOMO and qualms of the soul. Maybe if I were religious, I would not feel the need to travel so much or buy so many things because I could find comfort and security in a certain “after.”

I’m curious to see how this course’s content, discussions, and contemplative practices will continue to insight deeper understandings and challenge my views about death.

Image Source: Ken Lambert, The Seattle Times. Recompose, the first human-composting funeral home in the U.S. in Kent, WA.

Possessions After Death

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I despise unread emails — that little number in the corner of my screen taunts me, tallying up missed messages until I inevitably open my emails sooner than I need to. But what about when I die? My habits will be abandoned and promotional emails will pile up in my accounts year after year.

Emails only scratch the surface of what will be left behind. Tubes of chapstick half used. Shampoo bottles 3/4 empty. Torn shoes. Belongings that will be passed to family members, until sentimentality hardens into practicality, and my formerly-essential yet obsolete items end up in landfills. Death goes against the systemic way we move through life in the Anthropocene. We create permanent systems to manage the complexity of our temporary lives. The impact of death on such an individualized, capitalist society is startling.

Sara Schley’s “Sustainability: The Inner and Outer Work” touches on the interconnectedness of life that our modern society disregards. In other species’ ecosystems, sustainability is necessary for survival. Everything that an individual doesn’t use will be used by another, from habitats to food. No species on Earth accumulates individual items like humans do. In the Anthropocene, we know of our death but turn a blind eye and reject nature’s circular economy.

I’m in this class because cycles of human life and death intrigue me. What does it mean to live in a world where, #1, our objects outlive us and, #2, our modernization doesn’t force us to repurpose every item (yet)? I’m here for personal reasons as well. Death doesn’t scare me so much as the complexity of existing and the unknowns in our world. Why are we here? Why am I a conscious being, experiencing life? Why don’t we talk about how insane life is? Does anyone else feel this way?

Image from “history of the entire world, i guess” – Bill Wurtz

Logically I know the science behind life, but the absurdity of it all rattles me. I hope this class will bring me some comfort and appreciation for the unknowable. There’s a positive side to thinking deeply that I wish to find.

In the meantime, when life feels a little too large, I turn to two vastly different pieces of media. “history of the entire world, i guess” is your classic quick history piece that reassures me of the science behind complexity in our modern world. On the contrary, “The Only Reason We’re Alive” is a spoken-word piece that could tug anyone’s emotions in the right ways. It’s ok that we don’t know all the answers – we know and can feel the most important parts of life. Now how can we use that knowledge to live and die in a more circular, sustainable way?

 

Media & Citations

billwurtz. “History of the Entire World, I Guess.” YouTube, YouTube, 10 May 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuCn8ux2gbs.

INQonline. “The Only Reason We’re Alive | Spoken Word Poet in-Q.” YouTube, YouTube, 10 Feb. 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ms7wQI_Q5iU.

Schley, Sara. “Sustainability: The Inner and Outer Work.” The Systems Thinker, 14 Mar. 2018, https://thesystemsthinker.com/sustainability-the-inner-and-outer-work/.

How to Triage Humanity

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As we look forward into the Anthropocene, and our estimated trajectory within it, I find myself thinking about the morality and judgment of humanity.

On Tuesday, October 4th, we discussed as a class the very real possibility of a mass die-off event in regards to our species. The prevailing idea was that it would be caused either by our own nuclear destruction, or by a serious lack of resources to sustain our still booming population.

The UN published a statistic that the world population will reach 8 billion on November 15th, 2022. The Earth has a maximum carrying capacity of 9-10 billion people, and the UN has estimated that the world population will reach at least 10.4 billion in the 2080s if current patterns continue. I find this to be a terrifying thought. Before I die, the Earth and its resources will no longer be able to support the entirety of humanity, let alone the other species on this planet. 

So then what? Let’s assume the current models are correct and we run out of resources to harvest. What do we do then, when we still have 10.4 billion people to keep alive? The short answer is that not everyone will survive, and that’s where the morality of humanity will come into play.

This diagram is the current system from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for medically triaging adults.

The basic definition of triage, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary is ‘the sorting and allocation of patients according to a system that will maximize the number of survivors’. Triaging is a subjective activity that is heavily influenced by a person’s morality, and there is never a ‘right’ answer. So how do we decide on a system when it comes time to distribute our limited resources? Who gets to decide? Who gets to play God with not only humanity, but with all life on Earth? Do we choose the youngest to live? Do we choose those with the skills to help us survive in the future? Do we choose based on economic class or profession? Will this become a genocide of a people or culture? Will minorities or those with disabilities be further exploited and abused and left to the side to die?

To be brutally honest, however this triage of resources happens, it won’t be fair. One group of people will have the power to decide and the rest will just have to hope they are chosen to live. And that thought is terrifying.

Inspirations and Citations for this post:

The UN article “World Population to Reach 8 Billion on 15 November 2022”

The diagram for triaging adults

“Playing God” a podcast by RadioLab released in 2016

DON’T PANIC by Hans Rosling

Welcome to our course blog!

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We are a learning community asking big questions. Because life feeds on life, death is indispensable to the healthy functioning of ecosystems and even evolution itself. One species, however, has developed the capacity to anticipate (and therefore dread) death and commandeer other species in service to increasing its numbers and its material consumption. Humanity is now operating well outside the planetary boundaries that characterized the Holocene, the interglacial “sweet spot” during which civilization emerged. The implications are profound: not only are we facing the end of “nature” as something separate from human culture, we also face the potential death of civilization as we know it.

Image source: Ligorano Reese, Melted Away

We therefore ask ourselves: what are the political and ecological consequences of how individuals and societies approach death? And what can the current pandemic teach us about the political ecology of death? While death is a fact of life, questions of who lives, who dies, who decides, and with what consequences are also political ones. Our discussion is therefore informed by themes of justice, equity, power and authority, and political agency. At the same time, because mortality is also an intensely personal reality, we are deepening our self-inquiry through poetry, videos, contemplative practices, and personal exploration.

As we stand at the threshold of the Anthropocene, we hope our inquiry helps to inspire your own inquiry!