Eco-Literacy 2014

 empathy—the ability to understand and share the feelings of another

            Empathy is one of those qualities that we’re constantly told that, as “good” people, we should possess.  From elementary school character education to high school literature classes, one purported purpose of education (at least in my American public school experience) is to teach us how to care about and understand the feelings of other people.  I’ve always considered myself an empathetic person, someone who cares about and understands others’ feelings, but lately I’ve been questioning whether this quality I’ve prided myself on even exists.  Is it ever possible to truly “understand and share the feelings of another”?

Is that a necessary dichotomy? Reading Steve Chase's Changing the Nature of Environmental Studies made me think a lot about my relationship with and confusion around social change and activism. I have this constant fight within myself about whether I'm being too radical or not radical enough - and then I worry that I'm being too wishy-washy, not fully committing to working with one faction or another and therefore feeling totally useless. I read Steve Chase's account of the Environmental Justice Workgroup's successful "collaborative and educational approach" to their fight to raise awareness and discourse about environmental justice at their school, and I experienced conflicting responses. On one hand, I was impressed and felt regretful that I haven't done more work like that at Bryn Mawr. And then immediately after that, I'm like, "no, my work isn't about helping a bunch of privileged white people see the truth about racism and oppression! I wanna smash the patriarchy! I want to destroy capitalism! I'm radical!" I don't deny that the change that Chase and his group accomplished was important and helpful, it just doesn't feel as necessary or exciting to me. And it's not just because of the hippie anarchist that lives in me and craves adrenalyn rush-style direct action and in-your-face lockdown blockades. I approach this from a "rational", academic standpoint as well.

It was interesting to read "Teaching Urban Ecology", a text that explicitly talked about how "nature" and "culture" are so siloed from one another in the classrom and how Di Chiro used intersectionality in teaching Ecology in her classroom. Di Chiro raised many interesting questions in her class, one of them I was especially struck by: "How are environmental scholars and community activists re-thinking and re-connecting the ideas of ecology and social justice with the commitment to creating sustainable communities?" She then encouraged her students to explore this question more deeply by participating in action research which provided them with very interesing and enlightening insight. I think the original question she posed is so central to this course as well as being a question that should be explored in more classrooms across the country. All too often, students learn about "nature" and "culture" not only as separate, isolated concepts, but also without this intersectionality layer to explain how different people experience culture and the earth differently. How might this question be explored in a middle or high school classroom? How can educators and schools integrate the ideas of "nature" and "culture"? How can social justice and environmental jusice and activism be better linked in the classroom/school setting?

Everything that any living being does, thinks, and feels is unchangeably its own perspective. I exist only within my own reality, only able to read and interact with the world through my own senses. My perspective is the most constant factor of my existence – ever-changing and developing, but solely my own. I am always drawn back to thinking about our universe: “the totality of known or supposed objects and phenomena throughout space”. Not “the totality of all phenomena throughout space”, but the known and supposed. Humankind has ‘claimed’ the universe as its own. We have established ourselves as the focal point of existence. And just as humanity has claimed the universe, I like to believe that us people all exist within our own ‘personal universe’, for the totality of our own existence is comprised of what we know or suppose. This sounds like a very individual-centric approach to thinking about people, but it is because of this truth that our webs of porous connections and togetherness are so powerful. Everything we do is a choice, what we ourselves decide to do. And despite the fact that we exist in our ‘personal universes’, it seems to be a common link of humanity to constantly push ourselves to escape from our own singularity and choose to share, combine, connect, understand, and feel the perspectives of others. We have the choice to be selfish and self-centered.

I really enjoyed our visit there y'day; my images capture some of the stories on the gravestones (what are Isaac Hull's "private virtues," affectionately remembered by his wife? where was Olga Demidoff "laid"?--since she clearly didn't make it back to Laurel Hill, as she had hoped? what are the "rare merits" of William Wood? and what does "mayhem in the bedroom" REALLY commemorate?)--as well as the river, the budding trees and flowers, many of the images of angels, pointing upward, and people preserved in their life activities (not to mention you all, in various states of rest and reflection....;)

Turns out there are links (bodies moved) between the cemetery in Morris Woods (behind English House)
and Laurel Hill (where they are marked by an enormous memorial--a great granite obelisk--and three gravestones).  Agatha and aphorisnt--this campus cemetery is where you should go this weekend; of particular note is that this graveyard, on Bryn Mawr College property, contains the remains of enslaved people who worked at Harriton House (while the bodies of those who served as field slaves are in unmarked graves on the plantation itself). More @ http://www.lowermerionhistory.org/burial/harriton/ and from my own earlier visits....we look forward to hearing what y'all have to add!

This is so in tune with everything we've been talking about this week, I'm not even sure what to think about it. Thoughts?

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/04/09/291887381/banning-traditional-animal-slaughter-denmark-stokes-religous-ire

If the link for the Tim Burke speech is down for anyone else (I know I can't get to the site right now for some reason) I found a back-up here