Soap Box

https://www.wevideo.com/hub/#editor/897852528

Five Degrees

        Crazy flooding and massive droughts. Due to this war is a huge possibility, well more like a necessary thing for most. China will have to invade Russia and the United States will need to invade Canada to find habitable land. Everywhere, the soil will be bad in one way or another, the availability of fresh water will be scarce and humans will be compressed in the small places that are suitable, but many or most will die off.
         In a world where humanities existence is in question, no other species matters. If humans can find a way to survive that takes from another species, they will do it. Interesting enough, 55 million years ago a similar global warming event happened but this time it wasn't due to humans. There was a huge release of methane gas and other greenhouse gas emissions then, showcased by fossils of animals that only lived in warmer climates being in areas of tundra. It was a huge volcanic eruption that lasted a long time.

         This event was called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. Many scientists are taking a very close look at this episode in time because it is so like what is happening today. What is different about today is we are adding carbon at a much quicker rate, in PETM there was 10,000 years from beginning to end. We have given our Earth only a few decades to adapt but that is impossible. Tsunamis can also be a result of such climate change that we must watch out for.
      It is very interesting because the book describes a reverse of globalization happening because we will have to localize to survive. When there is widespread famine and drought then civilizations in the lower regions will move up to the cooler regions and wars will begin if they haven't already begun, "conflicts that were once fought with spears and swords, however, will now be fought with guns, grenades, or nuclear weapons." This chapter ends very grimly, hinting at an even worse future in the sixth degree.
http://people.earth.yale.edu/paleoceneeocene-thermal-maximum This site gives you more information on PETM.

Native Son, Native Seeds

http://www.stthomas.edu/news/native-son-native-seeds/


Engebretson, Kelly. "Native Son, Native Seeds." St. Thomas Newsroom. N.p., 01 Apr. 2016. Web. 28 Mar. 2017.

       The Mesoamerican Institute of Permaculture, IMAP, is a place that I have actually visited, lived and volunteered. The man, Rony, in this article is someone I have worked closely with and I will actually be bringing him to Westerns campus with a grant from the Office for Sustainability so that he can give people information on his amazing ideas. This article focuses on permaculture from the lens of Mayan culture, a way of regenerative instead of just sustainable living.
      When I first visited Guatemala and IMAP in particular I fell in love with the design of the place. I had no idea what permaculture was but I wanted to be a part of it, this thing that had the answer to everything from human waste to CO2 emissions from cooking. I was blown away that they had all the solutions in the global south and in the United States we are still struggling with so many of these small things that could be so easily fixed. 
      Rony speaks on the fact that permaculture is not difficult because all you have to do is let nature do n and observe what it does naturally and then help foster that growth. He makes use of everything from abandoned tires to the pulpe left from coffee beans. We are just a part of nature, not excluded from it so we must act the part.
This is a photo of some fresh dragonfruit I had just pulled off of an overhang of one of the structures along with some sweet plums.

Environmental Documentaries

Cowspiracy and Forks over Knives
      Both of these documentaries and a lot of research I did this past weekend proved again and again that the biggest impact you can make as an individual against climate change is to go vegan and not put in a demand for any animal agriculture. One hamburger takes 2500 gallons of water. Here are all the sources that cowspiracy uses. They are all legit so that's exciting.
      http://www.cowspiracy.com/facts/
And here are some articles about this documentary. This one also talks a lot about the health of humans and how eating meat and animal products leads to cancers of all kinds and many other health risk factors.
https://www.forksoverknives.com/articles/

Integrated Permaculture
      This documentary was awesome, we watched it at the WeSustain internship. Permaculture is regenerative whereas agriculture takes from the soil and kills the microsystems within it. Your ability to exist is predicated on the Earths ability to exist so if you undermine the Earth then you are undermining yourself. This is a step further than sustainability because we aren't just sustaining what is already there, we are giving back to the Earth and adding good things to it.

Valuing Footsteps - towards a valuation model of indigenous knowledge and cultural expression

https://academic.oup.com/jiplp/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/jiplp/jpu043

Burfitt, B., and M. Heathcote. "Valuing footsteps--towards a valuation model of indigenous knowledge and cultural expression for the sustainability of indigenous people's culture." Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice 9.5 (2014): 383-88. Web.

     My topic is basically looking at different indigenous cultures around the world and understanding that they have been here much longer, as a group, so they know more about how the world works. This particular article is from Oxford Academic, written by Brian Burfett and Marion Heathcote, and it was found through searching in Westerns Library online. As I have been reading it a lot of things have stood out as interesting and surprising. First of all, this resource is from a Journal of Intellectual Property Law and Practice so it is a bit different than I am used to because I have never read something like this.
      It speaks on Indigenous Cultural Property and how we want to get the information from them on how to live but just taking pieces of what they know will not give us what we want. Everything works in a system and especially in an indigenous culture there is a certain holistic way that they work so in order for us to replicate that we need to look at every part of this system, if that is even possible. Another problem is that we can't just take from another culture and call it ours, as much as we have forced our own "culture" on indigenous people for years, it wouldn't be right to turn the tables. There are a lot of logistical problems that we must address in looking into indigenous knowledge.
    My sources sources are very reputable, it is a scholarly journal after all.

Ishmael 10-13

        The end of this book brings everything full circle, all things getting more and more interesting even though Ishmael dies. Again, so many parts stand out to me, especially as an anthropology major. In these last few chapters we learn about culture and where leaver and taker cultures split off. "Leaver peoples are always conscious of having a tradition that goes back to very ancient times. We have no such consciousness. For the most part, we're a very 'new' people. Every generation is somehow new, more thoroughly cut off from the past than the one that came before."
         Due to the ancient times reaching back so far there is some evolution in the culture that we do not have as a society. When I went to Guatemala and lived among the descendants of Maya I was baffled because they seemed to have everything figured out about how to live because they didn't just take from the Earth. "The Takers accumulate knowledge about what works well for things. The Leavers accumulate knowledge about what works well for people." This is so true.
         A lot of times I want to give everything up in our society but then I still have this irrational fear about living in the "wild." It is because Mother Culture tells us that the Leaver lifestyle is like a dream or nightmare, "a man is scrabbling along a ridge at twilight.. The man is short, thin, dark, and naked. He's running in a half crouch, looking for tracks. He's hunting, and he's desperate. Night is falling and he's got nothing to eat...[he is on a treadmill] because tomorrow at twilight he'll be there running still-or running again..." The book goes on explaining how frightful this life seems to us but in reality it is such a free life to live.
This is very interesting.

Ishmael Chapter 9

     When we spoke about Ishmael today it was brought up that this chapter was particularly uncomfortable and jarring because what we know is true is being tested. This brings up the topic of veganism. I have so many conversations on this topic and a lot of the time the other person is defensive or uncomfortable because what they know to be true is being tested, but that doesn't mean the new information is wrong in any way. Here is something I wrote yesterday that relates:

Who would be down to go shoot a dog?

Did that question strike you in any way? I hope so. How about this one: Who would be down to go shoot a deer?

Hmm, that one probably doesn't phase a lot of you, but why?

A deer and a dog are both animals with no real distinction apart from domestication, but cows(animals that we murder, rape and exploit) are also domesticated so that shouldn't hold much weight.

If it would bring you sorrow to see a dog shot but not a deer, what is the disconnect? Why does our society make it okay to murder some animals but not others?

Animals are animals, that is a simple truth. Loving animals is loving animals, that is a thing we say that discriminates against many and prioritizes few.

Doesn't this go against what so many of us seem to be fighting for, equality?

Think. Question. Research.
Don't do something just because it has been done before and don't justify your actions with meaningless claims that you know nothing about.

Ishmael Chapters 5-8

     I am in love with this book. It describes our society so well in so many ways and how it came to be. It is applicable to all of our lives though some may not be so receptive to what it tells us because it is jarring and provocative in relation to what we believe as true and moral. I have brought this book up in many situations already, especially my WeSustain internship because we are constantly coming to the problem of "why is society so messed up?"
     There are so many amazing quotes in this book that I will just have to put some in here. Daniel Quinn, through Ishmael, slowly brings us to some conclusions about life in a very effective manor, in my opinion. He addresses that we have never really sought out the knowledge of how to live as humans though for three million years we were fine.
      In my internship we discussed that yes this was a good time but we can not go back to it because of Globalization and the amount of people on the Earth. Hundreds of years ago we weren't able to see if people were starving in other countries so we did nothing about it and we let nature run its course. All of the humans on the planet now can not be subsisted in the places where humans are readily adapted to, like the tropics. We can't all move to the tropics and be gatherer/hunters, a lot of us would die, probably due to war on resources.
      "Obviously Mother Culture must be finished off if you're going to survive, and that's something the people of your culture can do. She has no existence outside your minds. Once you stop listening to her, she ceases to exist." This has to do with a lot of things but especially the way people interact with the world around them.
        Since reading this book I have noticed myself ignoring mother culture, and this isn't a change I have made because of the book, just an observation. Today, for example, I asked a friend for a tampon and she was trying to be discreet and I just blatantly said, "don't be ashamed of feminine products!" and proceeded to grab them in front of the whole class and walk back to my seat, tossing them all on my desk.
        As I am looking for outside research or pictures I am finding people trying to convince others to be themselves but Mother Culture doesn't allow that. There are laws that everyone has to obey and that's it, if you feel like grabbing your tampons and not having to hide them and not having to feel ashamed that it is there, hidden in your hand, it doesn't matter, Mother Culture has told you that you should feel this way.

Walden Part Two

       I had to finish the entire book to get to the end and unfortunately that took me forever, this book is not exactly a page turner, and I have also had a crazy week. Anyhow, the second half of the book was a little less enthralling than the first but I got through it finally. The beginning of The Pond in Winter poses an interesting question, well to question at all, the human condition. Thoreau says, "but there was dawning Nature, in whom all creatures live, looking in at my broad windows with serene and satisfied face, and no question on her lips." Serene and satisfied, some things almost no human can keep for long but are always wishing for.
       Those things could be interpreted as happiness and that is the eternal goal for humans and therefore something we will never get to because we are always aiming that way. "Nature puts no question, and answers none which we morals ask." This statement also elaborates on that which humans have to struggle, constantly.
       We often think to question is a blessing or a gift because we know better but that is so far from the truth, in my perspective because there is no moral truth in my perspective but I can go on with this for hours due to my brain and stuff, because when have you thought that an animal did wrong? They are creatures of instinct, told by their evolutionary past and therefore there is not much to be wrong about as long as they are surviving and reproducing.

Walden Part One

      In reading Walden I have found many things I enjoy about Thoreau's writing style, let along what he has to say. I have a hard time reading things out of order so I had to read Economy before I could read Where I lived and What I lived for. In economy, Thoreau talks about many things and kind of rambles from one idea to the next, sometimes putting me to sleep I will admit. Among the sleepy parts there are a lot of good, quality things that Thoreau has to say, sometimes I don't understand how they relate to the economy but nonetheless I enjoyed them. In the premise of this book,
      Thoreau addresses that he is "confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience." The theme being that of his life and how he perceived and went about living it. You can only be you, even if you would wish otherwise, you are stuck, sometimes it feels eternally, within the bounds of your own experience. He goes on to talk about the self and the constraints it has on itself being "the slave and prisoner of his own opinion of himself, a fame won by his own deeds." We are in control but we are also enslaved by that control and therefore the control the ideas around us inflict.
       I could very well relate to his line, "when one man has reduced a fact of his imagination to be a fact to his understanding." At the end of our fast-write we did a few weeks ago I came upon the conclusion that most of the time I am confidently saying things that I imagine to be true and I simply speak them into existence. It is a beautiful power but and often thwarted one.
      Another piece that spoke to me, being an anthropology major was "none can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty." Traditional anthropologists believe that they could go into some foreign land, live there for a few years, gain acceptance from whatever tribe was there and then go home and write an exhaustive book or essay about how those people came to be and how they live day to day. This was supposed to help humans figure out how best to live but really it was to convert all that did not live as white folks did to the white folk way. Here is some good stuff from Anthropology and other sciences.

Ishmael, chapters 3 and 4

       I am going to admit that I have finished the entire book already so my posts might be a little off-kilter with what I am writing about. What can I say, when a book grabs me it takes me all the way. I am so very fond of this book, I would recommend it to anyone. Correction, I will recommend it to everyone. Simply put, this book clearly guides us to the knowledge of how we came to be, rather, how we came to be so messed up.
       Concerning these chapters in particular, I really enjoyed the beginning of chapter three when Ishmael explains that "No creation story is a myth to the people who tell it. It's just the story." and then he goes on to tell him the story of the first being that found land and how they thought. Because the creature could only speak about what they knew, that is what was their truth. They didn't know what they didn't know, and that rule applies just the same to humans.
       The creature believes they are the most intelligent being there ever was and this is where it stops because everything was leading up to their existence. After this story was told Ishmael explains it to the narrator, "the pinnacle was reached in man. Man is the climax of the whole cosmic drama of creation." This part struck me, that is exactly how we think, the takers that is. Pardon all my quotes but they are so good, "the Takers regard the world as a sort of human life-support system, as a machine designed to produce and sustain human life." We believe that the world was made for us, the entire universe, everything. We are at its core and therefore it is ours to explore or exploit or concur.
       Humans think that we are this special gift to Earth, to finish what the gods tried to do but failed to do. Ishmael says "without man, the world was unfinished, was just nature, red in tooth and claw. It was in chaos, in a state of primeval anarchy." We obviously need to fix this, or so Mother Culture tells us. At the end of chapter four Ishmael says that when we split from the Leavers we had to choose "a brief life of glory or a long, uneventful life in obscurity." We chose the former and we are still enacting that story, the story that has us as the enemies of the Earth.
       This book is a gift, quite similar to a bible or other divine-influenced works. It is not much a book of fiction but more a guide to an idea, a true one nonetheless. This book gets at exactly what must be done in order for us to keep the Earth, not our Earth, alive. No spoilers but I did do a bit of crying towards the end of this book, quite a relief it gave me. An interesting Ishmael community? I suggest we all go on after this and read The Story of B and his other works, he is currently working on a book right now that he says might be his most important.
Daniel Quinns: Meaning of Life

Eaarth - Lightly, Carefully, Gracefully

"Diversity is everything. It goes all the way down to a handful of soil - which has more species, more biodiversity, thank a whole square mile above ground. And the way we farm is killing a lot of that right off." (174)
       This excerpt from the book Eaarth is really at the heart of the issue we have as humans. As I have been reading Ishmael by Daniel Quinn I have seen that humans think that they are above all other species because the Earth and universe were made just for them. From there humans continue to conquer everything that falls into their paths, including other species. This causes for us to want to control these species which means we have to take out the variation among them. Without variation there is no longer diversity or any robust makeup of species because if one thing goes wrong everything does.
       The more we control the world the less complex it gets. As we all know we are constantly killing off species of plants and animals each day. You can see here of all the effects that humans have had on species degradation. We must focus on diversity as we do with social issues, but instead with special variation. We must also realize that this world is not ours to have.
       There is nothing that definitively states that we are entitled to everything here or anything at all. Agriculture in itself is a manipulation of the natural world that is a consequence of us thinking we can control such things.
       

Ishmael; chapters one and two

      This book has a very interesting beginning. At first, I read it as a piece of nonfiction because that is all I have been reading recently but then the gorilla came to be and I could not quite fit that into the real world any more. Not to say that there isn't magic and nonsense in the world, because there is, but you would be hard pressed to find it in a book that is trying to get you to believe something, objectively speaking.
      At the very beginning of the book there is a quote that stuck out to me, "Get a job, make some money, work till you're sixty, then move to Florida and die." It is quintessential to our society today and how we view the world, a single path to success. Daniel Quinn, the author of Ishmael, has a narrative that is very spirited and excited about another pathway. The narrator only desires this alternative pathway to "saving the world."
       I really enjoy when Ishmael first explains his story and how he came to be. It is very interesting that the author gets deep inside what he believes an animal may be able to think. Animals, supposedly, have no idea of their individualism especially if they live in a pack like a gorilla. They have a family so they are a family, not necessarily a part of it because without it the individual would not exist. It is a complicated phenomenon to think about because as humans we are extremely individualistic. Ishmael says that he is a "member of a family - of a sort of family that the people of your culture haven't known for thousands of years."
       Ishmael makes me think of my beginning studies of Anthropology, the evolution of the human and what that means. You can learn a lot about that here at this Human Evolution site.

Eaarth Backing Off

        Backing off means to decentralize, to take into account that we have made vast nations and they no longer work. This chapter talks about how the system is no longer effective and that we need to build a new one, or rather, go back to one we used to harness. The one that carried us through most of our existence before the invasive revolutions we thought seeded so much growth in the right direction.
        McKibben talks about going back to communities where we actually talk with our neighbors and find use in them. This reminded me of a documentary that I watched called Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things which talked about only possessing what was absolutely necessary.
         Here is a good question, why do you need that jar that holds those colorful trinkets? What purpose do those trinkets serve other than please the eye or create ambiance? Do we need to indulge in that frivolous luxury? When everything goes to shit those trinkets will not do a thing to help your situation.
         McKibben also tells us about practicality, soon we will have to let go of childish things and understand that things such as fashion only do something for a world that is stable. He states, "As a culture and an economy, we've had the margin to afford a lot of abstractions." Now we must focus on what is actually needed, not what we think is adding to our value of life or somehow describing us with its special "thing" quality.
          My favorite part of this chapter was when McKibben mentioned that we will have to actually start working, not the 9-5, log everything into the inter-webs, but the work for the Eaarth. A lot of people expect this to be a lot but really "hunter-gatherers 'work' [was] about two hours a day" so we should really be excited. This obviously does not account for climate change but at least we have something to look forward to.

Eaarth Chapter Two

        The second chapter of Eaarth was just as striking as the first but in different ways. The first chapter spoke in large distant numbers while the second focused on small problems all over the world that are even harder to combat because of their multitude. When sewage and roads were brought up I had a hard time continuing the reading. Forget about the pollution in the air, what are we to do without a sanitary way to get rid of human waste or roads to commute on. Yes there are alternatives to these matters but they obviously can not take on a scale large enough to allow us to keep living the way we do.
        The infrastructure is failing around us and we are still impervious to it. The question, "what will it take to get us to realize?" comes to mind but then I think, this is what it should take, this is the damnation we have brought upon ourselves. When the Earth is full of ruins and chaos, will there still be those who don't realize that everything has changed, that everything can not be "fixed" or patched up to the way it used to be? I feel as though we are there, in a dystopian novel that only a few are aware of the forces that make the pages turn, that eventually come to an end.
         Progress aims at a goal, tells us everything happens for a reason, everything has a purpose, basically everything is guided. All of these share an end. Our end is nearing and no one sees it. As I write this, I look around and see people working tiredlessly to do well in their classes, to get into a good grad school, to get a successful job, to provide for their family/travel, to then to do what? Like the book says, we do not live on the same Earth we originated on so these structured thinking patterns are going to have to be broken at one point or another.
        The Club of Rome wrote the Limits of Growth 1792, which essentially predicted the future though, of course, no one heeded their warnings. During this time we could have fixed everything if we had listened. Instead, all we did was fix some minute issues like smog and some pollution but that didn't touch what we needed to do. We must get away from our obsession with Growth and "gracefully decline" as the McKibben tells us to do, where we know that life is not as it has been and there will be dire changes in the coming present.
       I personally suggest we look for some kind of zen within ourselves/nature, protest, do as much as possible, find a safe place to live with necessary supplies that will stop your house from being ravenged by climate change and intruders and just go out and research for your own sake because I wholeheartedly believe that we will fall and it's not going to be graceful.

Eaarth Chapter One

       Eaarth, by Bill Mckibben, paints a very stark and little known present for we who inhabit Earth. The extra a explains that we are no longer living in a world that our ancestors waged wars against one another, today we wage war against our world and we have won, we have changed it entirely. A large part of the change is due to our perceived knowledge of progress and what that entails. Humans believe that to be successful is to get ahead, go higher, go bigger, climb the ladder, among many other metaphoric pieces of language that tell us the only way to go is up. This means that progress is linear and can only be made in strides going forward. Just this language in general shows us a linguistic viewpoint of how our culture is centered.
       Modernity has become a goal of almost every human being, to get ahead is to do things right. To get ahead is to have "[modern] medical science, information technology, modern cityscapes, and countless other aspects of our modern technology-intensive lifestyles" (30) such as large animal agriculture businesses. The main fuel for these modern artifacts is oil, a lot of it. Due to our ravenous hunger for more we have destroyed our environment and there is no going back but we can do things to slow the process.
       Another thing that surprised me was that the book did not mention animal agriculture and its affects on the environment. I know through a ton of research that this is the number one cause of climate change and it has many devastating consequences. This brings up the point of veganism, the largest thing you can do as an individual to help slow climate change. If you are a true environmentalist, I believe that veganism is a step in the right direction.

Walking

         Humans are merely a small part of the puzzle of nature, very destructive but still a small part. We think we possess all that we see and feel and sense in any way but that is not the reality. Our species may have made the direst of impacts but that is not to say we are the most prevalent in the animal kingdom. This is to say we belong in this animal kingdom, a part of it, not sitting in boxes occasionally glancing outward.
Here are some photos of me on walks in Guatemala. 

We often believe freedom is to have the most financial freedom, money to buy things “freely.” To be truly free you must have no obligations, no things left undone where you came from, no affairs left unattended. You must be free of any worldly ties to become a walker, as Henry David Thoreau tells it, this is something no money can buy.

This is to say that one must lose themselves in their walk, in the wood. To use the legs for walking, bipedal as we are, this is the proper use instead of sitting on these mechanisms like no other species in the animal kingdom has the luxury to do. This makes it a true crime to take for granted the woods just outside of our cement walls.

Here, in the woods, we find experience that toughens our hide and thickens our skin to the perilous attacks of society. To walk is to be in the present moment, it is to meditate and have your soul and body in one place at the same time. A thing we all search for but hardly ever find. I believe this is because we are searching in the wrong places, rather, the wrong investments. Time should be seen as a gift that is given and not taken for granted and where you spend this time should not be to buy more time. 

The Audit

        The Audit is a short story by Rachel May that details a possible future in consequence to what humans have done to the Earth. It specifically deals with the over consumption of products that humans are addicted to as well as the over consumption of fuel in the means of energy. This is a large point because many people do not understand that their energy comes at a larger price than the monetary value. Burning coal and natural gases have costed our environment irreparable damage.
      Though this short story seems to be taking place in a futuristic society, it really could just be looked at as an alternate reality. The problems we are facing are already large enough that we need some serious intervention such as this. The government forces management through a Global Climate Audit that takes the family by surprise.
      The author follows the father of the family around on his journey to cheat the system. The father, Bill, finds a man who lives off the “grid” and supposedly has a low enough carbon footprint that might be able to make up for his excessive one.

       A piece of dialogue near the end of The Audit that I found quite profound:

“Exactly. So you’ll start figuring out what you need-good bus service, wind farms, bike highways, zoning that allows you to keep chickens and grow vegetables instead of lawns…”

“Tell me about it. We’re not even allowed to hang out laundry out to dry.”

“And once there are enough of you,” Goodwin concluded, “you’ll change the whole geography of your lives.”

       If this were to truly happen there would be no squandered hope and progress would be made in the right direction. Especially when we see, at the individual level, a man changed so drastically by a new perspective and a little mountain air.

Scandalous Beginnings

         Hola, mi nombre es Brie y mis especialidades son antropologia y espanol, obvio. I am not sure how to change the language settings on here so I am sorry that my spanish is incorrect, grammatically speaking. Anyways, a few things about me, I say yes to almost all opportunities I am faced with. This leaves me with having many hobbies and sometimes too many obligations than I can actually manage. I will just give you my resume of things I partake in.

         Clubs: Students for a Sustainable Earth, Broncos for Animals, Swing Society, and Emerging Leaders, also thinking about joining outdoor club.
         Internship at the Office for Sustainability!! Very exciting.
         Hobbies: cooking, singing, yoga, reading, learning piano, beginner level karate, hiking, biking, backpacking, meditation, veganism(more like a belief system than a hobby), art(in many different forms), purposely sitting with strangers and traveling among many other things. 

Basically if you ever want to try something new or weird or different, I am your girl. Ask me questions if you'd like, I love exchanging different perspectives and expanding what my own ideas are so go ahead and challenge me! 

         I also have a roommate cat, I try not to say that I own him because he is his own person and I want to respect that. I named him Oliver but he might refer to himself as something else and I have no idea what he named me, hopefully something majestic. And no I did not make my cat vegan. I guess I don't really know his dietary preferences but he eats what I put in his bowl and we both seem to be okay with that.