Blog Post #11

1.       What religion were you raised with and how does that affect your view of spiritual ecology?

2.       What are your opinions on the Gaia Hypothesis? Do you agree or disagree?

3.       Do you believe we live in a hyper-masculine culture? If so, how do you see it changing?

 

So to begin a context for my discussion of spiritual ecology, I should explain that I really do like using the term "spiritual" rather than "religious".  I was not raised with a specific religion - my family did go to a Methodist church for a few years before my brother and I had too many Sunday morning soccer games.  My dad was raised Catholic, but chose not to raise his family that way.  The main spiritual direction I got from my family was that we believed in "God" - whoever or whatever that was to us - and that we should be "good" people in our lives.  This has most affected me in the way that I first talked about: I have spiritual tendencies and am not tied to a particular religion.  Secondly, I have done the best to keep my mind open and respectful towards the spirituality of others while building my own.  For me, I do consider Nature to be a huge aspect of my spirituality...whatever "God" I believe in, I think it has something to do with that ubiquitous force of the Earth, and that whatever is responsible for creating humanity also creating this wonderful world of biodiversity, and we are intended to help govern each other in a mutual "progress".

 The Gaia hypothesis seems interesting to further the end that we are subject to Nature - a part of it and dependent upon it as well as it being dependent upon us.  I think it is most useful to provide just a broader context of thinking...we are living under specific cconditions, and what does it mean for those conditions to be perfect enough to support life as we know it?

In regards to a hyper-masculine culture, I can see a future where this changes, and I don't think that it is dependent upon first becoming posthumanist and postmodern.  As the social norms are changing, I think that people will begin to question what they were taught - does it represent the way I live my life, is it respectful of the people that I care about in my life (women, etc)...?

Blog Post #10

Social ecology is a study of humanity in the context of nature, as a natural, collaborative part of it as opposed to the conventional institutionalized view of humans and nature as opposing forces in the world. It has to do with what is natural and what is not within our society - what did we invent or build within our society that does not have to exist that way? I thought it was very interesting to note that our society has kept this line of thinking since it's peak in Victorian times, and I definitely see this connection in literature: Frankenstein, Moby Dick, writings of the Bronte sisters, etc. As well, it is obvious that our economy functions in the same manner, against rather than with nature, using human ingenuity for unsubstantiated reasoning and efforts put towards "growth".

To answer the blog question, the unnatural hierarchies that exist in today's society, to give a few examples, are between children an adults and between nations.

The children and adults example I've always found intriguing. We are born into submission as children, but who is to say that children can't teach adults some great lessons if left with more freedom to do so by authority to govern their own thoughts and activities? The other example is in regards to the inequality of different nations - what keeps the first world nations, including the U.S., in power? Without delving into history, it is clear that current social institutions fuel this arrangement.

Blog #6

"What are your reactions to your GTP reading?  What are your preliminary ideas for leading a class meeting focused on this topic?"

I definitely found the readings interesting, but they are not so much what I expected to read in relation to green democracy.  They did, however, span a gambit of political thought - the more conservative Green Party views to the more radical monkeywrench ideology and somewhere in between with the reading on social and environmental justice.  I am having trouble connecting all of the readings under a common message, but I think that the main message could be giving all people as well as the environment power of representation.  The readings seem to identify that there are specific representations missing in our current political system: the environment is not given enough defense from the depletion of its resources, certain races and classes suffer from more pollution than others, and basic freedoms and peacekeeping are not fairly defended for all nations and peoples.

My preliminary ideas for our class would include doing an interactive debate. It would be neat to divide up the class into legislative bodies for the environment, for the classes and races facing social injustice, for business, for the U.S. government, for Palestine, etc, so that all the stakeholders in these issues could be examined and the class could actively see the conflicts of interests.  I also could bring in a few cases from my business curriculum regarding the "race to the bottom": companies chasing lowest-cost production abroad.  These cases and others highlight the export-oriented business development that the Green Party is against; however, they also highlight the devastation to companies' brands when the public becomes aware of this action and how this strategy is becoming obsolete in business.  As well, export-oriented economies are not always bad if they build industry and social provisions for a nation.  I have a good case with Intel in Costa Rica about this that I would like to share.

Blog #5

"...write a blog entry outlining the goals and specific characteristics of a green learning community.  How would you know one if you saw one?"

Drawing from the readings so far on an introduction to green values and green pedagogy and political thought, I think that the overarching goal of a green community would be to serve as a model and a springboard for the development of more green communities. David Orr's project at Oberlin College in Ohio seems to strive for just that, creating a space in academia "to serve as genuine anchor institutions" to create models that can be mimicked in the rest of society. I think that the Learning Center for Sustainable Futures here at USC is really functioning with that purpose as well.  Orr's project takes the green community further, I think, in pushing so strongly to incorporate the entire community and make it function as one system, which I would like to identify as the second goal to a green community.  This means that the sustainable facilities and services must extend out to the community, including food systems and waste treatment as the article talks about. I think that small, local farms are specifically a huge part of this because a green community means that it would be self-sustaining, and thus function on a local scale. The final overarching goal that I see in the text is the focus on the "learning" aspect to the green learning community: the students and teachers have mutual respect built into their relationship and the student is more free to explore what he/she wishes to learn.  The learning style is more open and less directed.