The Assignment: A Reflective Essay

From the Teacher: Right at the beginning of the semester, in Module 1, you planted a seed. To jog your memory, here is a segment of the instructions: Now let go of your more focused thoughts about the seed and just open up your mind to the thoughts that come up. This is a bit like the deep listening exercise described in the Tobin Hart article. Perhaps the seed exercise evokes certain memories or emotions in you. Perhaps you feel resistant to this exercise and your mental chatter is very negative. Whatever it is, just notice the thoughts like bubbles or clouds in the sky, and try to just notice them with non-judgmental interest. Whenever your mind wanders off, just gently bring it back to the exercise without criticizing yourself. Now plant the seed, either outdoors somewhere accessible to you, or in a pot indoors. It is your job to nurture this seed during the semester. It will be the foundation of more contemplative exercises, and is also a metaphor for your learning process over the next six weeks. Try to maintain your contemplative state of mind while you plant the seed. Think about all the causes and conditions that must combine to make growth possible, including your action in planting and tending the seed. Many weeks have passed since you completed that exercise your seed will either have thrived or died. Your lives, and the world in general, have undergone many changes in the intervening weeks. The only assignment you have for this module is to reflect upon some of these changes and write a posting about them. Specifically, I invite you to revisit the seed planting exercise, this time focusing on the plant that the seed has become, and seeing it as a metaphor for the change(if any) and development of your ideas as a result of your studies in this class. What factors nurtured your learning? What challenged it or threatened to endanger it? What are the fruits of your learning? What, if anything, can be represented as the blossoming of your learning seed? You dont need to be too analytical in this process remember to adopt the contemplative, deep listening approach, and feel free to just write without too much analytical censoring. In addition to seeing your plant as a metaphor for your learning, you can also write about your reactions to the plant in its own right. Try to listen deeply to the plant and the process of growing. What does it tell you? Please write your comments in the discussions area, under Reflecting Back. You will continue this reflective approach in your final paper, which is due on Sunday 22ndth April. Please click on the Reflective Writing link on the homepage for instructions on this assignment.

My Reflection

At the very beginning of the semester, the question was asked if Judeo-Christian religious worldviews have contributed to the environmental crisis we are in. I truly believe they have. Like the seeds we were asked to plant and watch grow, these religious beliefs were planted centuries ago and allowed to flourish till their roots grew into the very meaning of our core existence. The many Christian beliefs like Divine Creation, Man was made in Gods image, and the belief this earth was given, by God, to man for him to bear fruit of, have all affected thousands of years of individuals worldviews and regards for nature. These religious ideologies, in specific, have been heavy mechanisms for shaping my own consciousness and footprint on the environment. Knowing that there are two underlying key principles at work, which often collide with one another, help in opening the door to understanding. First, the earths natural resources are finite and commonly shared among mankind. (Hardin) Second, Man has set himself apart from Nature, limiting his concern for it. Neither I, nor any other person, can truly understand to what extent our lives have contributed to the environmental disasters occurring today without first questioning what factors, beliefs, and values have formed our worldview. With that said, it is known that, All forms of life modify their context (White 1203). Man, since his beginnings, has modified his environment notably. People, then, have often been a dynamic element in their own environment, but in the present state of historical scholarship we usually do not know exactly when, where, or with what effects man-induced changes came (White 1203). What is known is, Newtons Third Law, which states that For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Man, not too long ago, embarked on a journey towards civilization, which was not conducive to the laws that govern ecological cycles and common pull

resources. The human domination and manipulation of the environment is stirring changes in its ecological state. The growth of the human population, and growth in the resource base used by humanity, is maintained by a suite of human enterprises such as agriculture, industry, fishing, and international commerce. These enterprises transform the land surface (through cropping, forestry, and urbanization), alter the major biogeochemical cycles, and add or remove species and genetically distinct populations in most of Earth's ecosystems (Vitousek, Mooney, Lubchenco, & Melillo, 1997, p. 494). This means with every interaction between man and the environment there accompanies it a positive or negative outcome.

Therefore, we know that man has made significant changes to the natural processes of Mother Earth. What we categorize as positive or negative is shaped by our worldview. According to our textbook, written by Richard Foltz, how people view the world and interpret their selves in it essentially make up their worldview (2002). The first evidences I noticed of this were in my first environmental sciences course. My teacher asked each student individually to define Nature. Each person gave a completely different definition of the word because each student used it in a different context. The reflective exercises we were asked to perform in this course have had me pondering on that same question again. Is Nature the tree, I rested under just a few weeks ago, whose growing limbs reach for the gleaming sunlight or is it the untamed and famished beast, made into a family house pet, that fed on its owners infant daughter? Is Nature the quaking earth that caused the tsunami to engulf the shores of Japan or is Nature the beautiful landscape and gushing geysers of Yellowstone? Is Nature the instinctual senses of an animal to danger or the ravaging need of the caveman to mate? If Nature is innate should it not be allowed to run its course or should its raw, uncultivated, and uncivilized everyday mechanisms be tamed? The differences in context, it seemed, were fluid in the aspect that the

students opinions changed depending on how they interpreted nature should interact with their lives. How each circumstance contributed or affected man formulated the students perspective of nature and reflected their views on mans placement in the hierarchy of life. A persons self consciousness, their place and reason for living on this earth, effects their treatment of nature, the things that surround them in life, and has done so throughout our civilized existence. The students definitions from class demonstrated their elevated ideal of man and outlined a principal concern of environmentalists.

That is, it is the externalities from our worldviews which have led us into the ecological crisis we are experiencing today. I have been made all too aware of this anthropocentric point of view from the exercises instructed from this course. A few weeks ago, I was overwhelmed with thought while I sat against an old tree. As its trunk became my backbone, my nervous system became a telepath of communication between my receptors and its senses. The tree could finally come to life and have a voice but, what it had to say, I didnt want to hear. It had hit me. As I thought of what this tree might be feeling or the stories it might tell, I realized that I, my body, wasnt a vice it needed at all. There was no pulse. There were no sensations. All I heard was nothing at all. Complete silence led me to my horrid thoughts. My backbone was of no use to this tree because my receptors werent tuned in to its frequencies. They never were, they never have been, so why should they be now? This tree would survive in this world whether man was here or not. The real question then came to thought, Where would man be if this world had no trees?

To answer, I had to question what shaped my own worldview and definition of nature. Man could not possibly survive in this world without nature as defined by earth processes, living

organisms, plants, and trees. Mankind is completely reliant upon those things for essential life. Historical events, spanning over billions of years, and scientific testing, studied across multiple fields, have proven our natural dependency but, one would not denote this from our treatment and discern of it. Why, then, are we to believe we are of any greater value or deserve any better treatment than that which makes up the world around us?

As Foltz states, one of the greatest obstacles impeding the serious discussion of the environmental crisis is a lack of a strong public conviction because cultural blinders, imposed by the dominant ideologies, have obstructed our perspective (2002, 3). Man is blinded and, therefore, paralyzed by his lack of regards for his actions and consideration for its equal and opposite reaction. What sets humans apart from nature is our self awareness. This consciousness evolves from childhood when we are told the story of how the world came to be. The story gives mankind personal meaning and a true place in the vast expanse of time and space. As children, we do not only become conscious of our own place on earth but, how the world functions around us and, how we should function within it. The story makes children responsible as they become self aware that their actions will have an effect of some kind. Though it is how the story has been told, since the beginning of civilization, which implicates man to have caused the negative environmental effects.

Namely, the story, or theory, of how the world functions in mainly told in two contexts. The questionable beginning is usually told in a meaningful manner by the dominant cultural communities with the tendency to present it from a basis of either scientific understanding or religious ideologies (Berry, 1988). The secular community looks for answers to life through physical scientific findings and observation. As Thomas Berry states in his article, New

Cosmologies and Visions, The Darwinian principle of natural selection involves no psychic or conscious purpose, but is instead a struggle for earthly survival that gives to the world its variety of form and function (Berry, 1988, p 124). Here, the form then is, throughout evolutionary dimensions man has evolved into a being through which the universe is made conscious of itself (Berry, 1988). This is problematic for the environment, Because this story presents the universe as a random sequence of physical and biological interactions with no inherent meaning, the society supported by this vision has no adequate way of identifying any spiritual or moral values (Berry, 1988, p 124). Evolution, though, is a fairly new concept but as it still makes considerable contributions to the environmental problem, it is the religious based theology that has nourished and drove humanities lack of concern for its maintenance.

Specifically, the Judeo-Christian ideologies have sown and nourished a seed of doubt into the foundations of which civilization has ascended. As a child, my brain was flooded with the Baptist thought and beliefs of God, Creationism, and the Rapture. I believed that God created this world and would also destroy it. Tied in closely with these beliefs were my beliefs in heaven and hell and that God would ultimately make the decision as to which I would go to. This made me responsible to him for my actions, but not to the environment. Especially when I was told God would be coming back, with no estimated time of arrival, to redeem his believers and destroy all who do not follow him. Trusting believers do not think to reserve resources for the future because they believe God will come back and redeem them before ever running out? In addition, to the Creationist thoughts and beliefs, I was told the man was made in Gods image therefore, setting us apart from all other living things. This has made believers who look up to God as the ruler of the universe and human kind, which were made in his image, to look

down at nature. This has led many who believe it to assume that they can concur, control, and manipulate nature. Yet, as the third law of ecology states, Nature knows best, and that humankind is at best a poor judge of how their manipulations of the environment will impact nature (Smith, 2009, p 3).

Furthermore, I have lived my life believing that God bestowed nature and all the living things of this earth onto man, as by which, we are to go out and bear fruit of. I am not alone on this thought, Although religions differ in their formal theories of the relationship of people to the natural world, in practice none of the worlds major religious belief systems have motivated their adherents to exercise sound environmental practices (Smith, 2009, p 11). This idea, of giving man reign over all land, seas, and creatures, has stowed beliefs into societys thinking that man is superior to nature and all living things. Societies therefore harvest little moral responsibility to nature or hold themselves much accountable for their actions.

In conclusion, when the question was asked whether my Judeo-Christian religious roots have contributed to the environmental crisis we are in today it started me on my journey towards enlightenment and self discovery. It made me question my own significance and enabled me to identifying the fallacies in the values and beliefs which have molded my worldview and by that my opinion of nature. By doing the reflection exercises from this course I was able to answer that and formulate another. My own upbringing and worldview which roots are planted in Christianity have directly contributed to my neglect and lack of accountability I have for my actions and the externalities they have caused to the environment. The question I then asked is whether or not nature would be better off without mans influences upon it. Well of course, given the surmounting data showing the implications of mans dominance of the earth, it is well to be

believed the tree which I leaned upon for basic life would be much better off and, at that, free from the tyranny of our actions. It is now, that I realize, that the definition of nature has not changed but, the connotation in which I see it has. The information I received in class has completely changed my perception of mans engagement with the environment. My worldview, which formally had me believe man was a gift from God and only positively influenced the environment, has considerably changed.

Berry, Thomas, The New Story. in Worldviews, Religion, and the Environment by Richard C. Foltz. 2003 525-531.

Foltz, Richard C. <Worldviews, Religion, and the Environment>. Belmont, CA: Wadworth, 2003. Print Hardin, Garret. Tragedy of the Commons. 162 <Science>. 3859 (1968):1243-1248.

Smith, Zachary A. <The Environmental Policy Paradox>. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2009. Print. White, Lynn Jr., The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis. <Science> 155(1967)3767: 1203-1207. Vitousek, Peter, Harold A. Mooney, Jane Lubchenco, and Jerry M. Melillo. Human Domination of Earth's Ecosystems. 277 <Science>. 5325 (1997) 494-499.