“He had given up his self to the alien, an unreserved surrender, that left no place for evil. He had learned the love of the Other, and thereby had been given his whole self” (LeGuin, “Vaster...” 37). The lines, from Ursula k. LeGuin’s short story ‘Vaster Than Empires and More Slow’ read like a celebration of empathy. This is surprising in its contrast to LeGuin’s other  tale, “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”, which portrays empathy as too weak to overcome fear, an ineffectual emotion that appropriates the suffering of others in order to provide a more complex emotional experience. In the story about planetary explorers on a conscious world of interconnected plant life, empathy plays a very different role.

Dear Anne,

In my last essay, I expressed my fear of “nature with all its infinite silence and unpredictability”. Does silence help me or us (humankind) as a society? In education, teachers/professors tell us to be quiet for a test or to take time alone to think about a concept, but does silence allow us to actually reach any solutions? When we are young parents tell us to time out, leaving us with only our own frustrations and anger, alone in our own silence.  Yet in in these interactions we are hardly ever in actual silence. Even right now as I write this, as I think I am in silence, I hear the hum of my computer and the mumble of the TV coming from downstairs. So why would I be afraid of nature’s silence, and why does it leave me feeling vulnerable to an unpredictable world?

The Power of Education

Slippage: The Stubborned Mind 

Effectiveness of the Novels

As the World Burns, by Derrick Jensen and Stephanie McMillan and “Collapse of Western Civilization” by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway are both books targeting towards the same points: the severity of our environmental issues and urgency to make a change. Both of them are effective but to really different audiences. However, one is more effective regarding the aspect of education and really making a change. 

My friend once asked me, half joking: does crab think fish can fly? In response, I asked him back: how do we know birds are not swimming? 

Dear Jody,

Over the course of the six-week project I did with Kate Weiler, which was meant to explore the question of what it means to attend a historically women’s college while not identifying as a woman, we conducted many hours worth of interviews to get a variety of perspectives on our central question. One interview in particular, with a nonbinary Film and Media Studies major stands out, as they had a particularly interesting take on the process of embracing one’s gender identity. We were talking about why we both disliked the prevalence of the phrase, “It gets better” as a means of comforting LGBTQIA+ youth.

Before we began this 360, I had considered taking this semester off for mental health reasons. My health had gotten progressively worse over the summer and I had a few real conversations about *not going to school* but I also felt a responsibility to be present for this cluster. After having to apply and having been accepted to the program, I felt like there was a reserved seat for me in this cluster and that I should rise to meet expectations. It also felt very necessary for me to spend a substantial time thinking about race, since I spent a good part of my summer trying to explain how it feels to live in my body to white people.