For the last 6 months I have been enrolled in an Introduction to Environmental Studies program at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA. As part of a research paper we created posters about a specific environmental problem and what could be done to fix it. My research paper and poster focused on the feasibility of reintroducing wolves into Olympic National Park and the benefits this would have for the ecosystems found within that park. Here is the poster that I made. If anyone out there who looks at this has any interest in reading my paper, let me know.
"Trust God and do the next thing."-from a bumper sticker I saw today.
The spiders are laying eggs in the corners of my room. If I leave them to hatch, my room will
be infested with spiders come Spring. If I move them, they will likely die. This, for me, is a moral
dilemma. I truly respect spiders and try my best to treat them right; for me they carry mythological weight.
As I write this there is a very pissed off hornet somewhere in my room. I'll admit that stinging insects
scare me a little. It is February 26th and the flying insects shouldn't be out and active right now. The weather conditions should not be right this early in the year but they are and here are the winged insects. The world is changing right in front of us and most people are afraid to look.
Sometimes at night I hear coyotes chirping, sometimes the deer circle my room grazing. A few days ago, I stumbled from my room in the middle of the day and startled two yearlings chomping on the grass. One exploded into the woods, the other started, stopped and stared back at me.
I am quite lonely and under a lot of stress but luckily I have my little cabin to keep me safe.
When we were in our 20's we all talked so much about community. Now we don't even communicate with one another except for an awkward email here and there. We were all so young and full of shit and we didn't even know it. We thought we had high ideals and now here I am, sitting in the same place I have always been, only now, I am alone. Nearly everyone else has moved on and I just have to say, I miss you all.
Have you been paying attention to the news? If not, let me fill you in. Consider the story of Ethan Couch, a privileged 16 year old, from Texas, who drove drunk, plowed into a group of people killing 4 and injuring 11 others, including two of his friends. Using the defense of "affluenza" he received 10 years of probation and was required to see a counselor. In case you are unfamiliar with the term, Merriam Webster defines affluenza as. "the unhealthy and unwelcome psychological and social effects of affluence regarded especially as a wide spread societal problem." If you break this down in relation to Couch's case, it basically means that because he is wealthy, he was not fully responsible for taking the lives of 4 people. He killed 4 innocent people and got a very light slap on the wrist. He is now in jail, awaiting trial for violating his parole and then fleeing to Mexico with his mother. Or take into consideration the case of Martin Shkreli, a 32 year-old entrepreneur and millionaire from Brooklyn, New York, who purchased the manufacturing license for the drug Daraprim, which is used to treat people who are HIV positive. After purchasing the license he raised the price of the drug from $13.50 a tablet to $750 dollars a tablet, most likely killing people with HIV with an especially cruel focus on those individuals who are both HIV positive and impoverished. Now consider the traits of a psychopath, as described in the article Psychopaths: How can you spot one?, by Tom Chivers. This list comes from the PCL-R, a psychological assessment, developed by Professor Robert Hare, to diagnosis pyschopathy. "The list in full is: glibness and superficial charm, grandiose sense of self-worth, pathological lying, cunning/manipulative, lack of remorse, emotional shallowness, callousness and lack of empathy, unwillingness to accept responsibility for actions, a tendency to boredom, a parasitic lifestyle, a lack of realistic long-term goals, impulsivity, irresponsibility, lack of behavioural control, behavioural problems in early life, juvenile delinquency, criminal versatility, a history of “revocation of conditional release” (ie broken parole), multiple marriages, and promiscuous sexual behaviour." (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10737827/Psychopaths-how-can-you-spot-one.html) It is worth pointing out that the media has fed us these stories, as some sort of entertainment. The sensationalism distracts from the truth of the story, which is that we live in a world where wealthy people are ableto very publicly display a level of greed, that either borders on or leads to full fledged murder. I am not one to downplay the role of personal responsibility, especially in situations like this but in such cases it is also necessary to examine the culture which these people come from. It is harder to say that some people are just born without any feelings of empathy, when the people in question are not from the outskirts of society but instead are from the segment of society with power in that culture. In Western culture power is not earned through strength of character but instead is earned through greed and violence. Now look at the bigger picture of this culture and the story it has to tell. The narrative of the West is that we are the "conquerors". We feel it is both our right and destiny to control the rest of the planet. This goes for other nations as well as the natural world. We lust after submission, so that we can feel in control. This urge to control trickles down class strata as a pyramid. You have the apex made up predominately of rich, straight, white males and the base consists of those who stray the farthest from the demographic at the top. In between you have everyone else at various levels. The more attributes of the rich, white male you have, the closer you are to the top. This is consciously structured, by those in power, with the hope that on each level someone will have someone to look down on, whom they can exert power over, with those at the bottom figuratively cannibalizing one another. Keep in mind, this is only a story that we have been taught and it is a story, that once you remove belief, turns out to be completely untrue. This urge towards domination is what allows us to destroy the very planet that sustains us and to destroy the ecosystems in which we live. It is why we have deforested the planet, it is why we pump carbon into the air, it is why the planet is undergoing it's sixth great extinction event. As Westerners, we are taught that we are in control and if we can't feel that control, we lash out in dangerous ways. I, as a member of this culture, acknowledge that I am a participant and enabler of this behavior as well as a victim of it. I was born into an unhealthy society. This culture didn't give me the rituals needed to integrate the large cycle of life and death and so I, along with the majority of my fellow Westerners, lash out at the Earth. All of this is to make the point that the story that our society tell us has gotten off track. Think of this behavior, from the affluent killers on down to the pollution we are all complicate in, as symptoms of a sickness. If you are still with me, here comes the bright side of things. Wherever you are, step outside. Look around you at the grass, the trees, the birds, the insects and even the other people. Wherever you are, find something alive to look at. If you are in a city, you may have to look harder but I assure you it is there. Now slow down for a minute and consider the immensity and complexity of the creations of the planet. Realize that you are an animal, that is a member of a diverse biotic community. Look up at the clouds and back down at the ground and realize that this all real. Unlike notions of heaven, this you can touch. At the same time, realize how strange and mysterious this all is and allow your mind to not be overly rational, look for some metaphor and some poetry. Humans have always needed story to make sense of the world and one way that this manifests itself is in religion. For a moment put away any notion you have of the afterlife, pull down any god or goddess you worship from the sky. Sit in the mystery of reality and the intense beauty of the biology of life and death. From out of nothing comes consciousness, we experience this consciousness, as do all living things, for some undetermined amount of time. To a mountain this span of time would not even register but to us, it is this time that makes up a life. When you die, the cellular energy that was you, will be recycled and carry on in body of whatever consumes you, be it carnivore or bacteria. We are all part of a cycle that has been going on since the birth of this planet and even before that on into the deep depths of eternity. You share one form of consciousness with tigers, elephants, crickets, whales, dogs, owls, spiders, bears, horses, fish, mosquitoes, gorillas, turtles, pigeons and the list goes on and on and on. You trade breaths with trees, flowers and grasses and these two experience some form of life beyond our ability to understand. There are mountains and oceans and there is an atmosphere. There are stars and clouds to look at and rivers to swim in. Take all of that in. Breathe deeply and really think about what you are experiencing by being alive on the planet Earth. Reconsider the earlier story, the one that we were born into, the one that urges us to consume and destroy. Don't you think we can and should do better?
After a 16 year break, I recently returned to college. I am now two quarters into an introduction to environmental studies class and one of the main things I have taken away from the class is a confirmation that my greatest fears are coming true. The world is changing and it's most likely not going to be an easy transition. Currents that have impacted the climate are beginning to slow and lose power. Extinction is a very common event. We are killing ourselves and we don't know how to stop. These are some of the hard realities of being alive today and denial isn't going to be an option too much longer. There are voices in my head that think that maybe I am paranoid or a little bit crazy or maybe I romanticize the role of the doomsayer. In my head, as in the world, there is no more time left to question these assumptions. The world is changing and it is our doing.
One fault of our culture is our unwillingness to look at despair and sit with it. Another fault of our culture is that we do not know how to support someone who is sitting with their despair. All of this must be a product of the fear of death that is part of the narrative of the West.
This is why small victories are important. Small victories allow us to temporarily lay down the burden of fear and despair. We must remember to take note when something beautiful is accomplished and allow that beauty to carry us through, a little bit further.
In many cultures we have developed a strange practice in relation to the arts, the award show. A group of people, with neither eye nor ear to the pulse of deep culture, select which works of art, in various fields represent the best that "we" had to offer that year. Usually, what this boils down to is which actors movie sold the most tickets and which song did corporate radio tell us was the best? This is by no means a valid way to judge art and usually, anything posing any sort of challenge to normative culture receives no acknowledgement.
From time to time, something from out in the deep, pure blood of culture somehow makes its way to the surface. There is an uproar in the media over the non-inclusiveness of the Academy Awards. This is a valid critique of a worthless system but for the first time in 30 years and only the second time in history, a transgender person has been nominated for an Oscar. This is made particularly exciting because the nominated musician, Anohni, isn't completely black and white about the idea of gender. The medias primarily representation of transgender people has been very limited in it's scope. There are men and women and it is okay to pick which one. This is a great stride but for some people gender is more fluid. Anohni's expression of gender is something that is far more challenging to conventional notions of gender and doesn't dwell in the land of either or.
The song, which is nominated for best original song and is a collaboration between Anohni and J. Ralph, is from a documentary, Racing Extinction. The film explores humanities role in the 6th great extinction, which is something that is happening now. The acknowledgement of climate change and mass extinction are themes that have lately been running through Anohni's music and unlike most protest music, her songs manage to be both poetic and beautiful.
Let's not forget the fact that she identifies as a witch! In summation, a gender fluid, environmentalist, witch has been nominated for an Academy Award and there is something incredibly beautiful about that. It gives me a little spark of hope that maybe, just maybe our culture can adapt and becoming something more beautiful. It's unlikely but lots of small sparks are the building blocks for a fire.
It is always important to remember history and those brave first pioneers who first came and challenged the conventional thought of our culture. In this spirit, please read about Angela Morley, who was the first transgender person nominated for an Oscar, all the way back in 1974.
