I chose to read C.A. Bower's article along with Levi R. Bryant's article "Stacy Alamio: Porous Bodies and Trans-Corporeality," Both of these articles mentioned that, as humans, or, humanoids we have taken to thinking too highly of ourselves and have begun to value ourselves above our fellow earth-creatures. I understand that both articles encourage humans to realize the effects their actions have on all the organisms and micro-organisms in and around them, but my question is, to what extent would these authors believe that is feasible? In Kolbert's book she talked about how micro-organisms were carried on people who traveled and sickened bats in remote places.  How would these authors suggest that we stop ourselves from contaminating or damaging other species? Not travel?

One thing I'd like to talk about in class more is Bower's idea of how language connects to the environment. I've had kind of a hard time understanding what exactly she's talking about, so I'd like to hear what other people have taken from what she's said. What I've taken is the idea that language isn't neutral, that it carries biases and can control our actions. I like that she calls us to look at the history of the words we use. She uses the term "linguistic colonization" and that's a really interesting phrase that I don't really understand so I'd like to talk about that also. I'm also not quite sure what she's talking about when she says "cultural commons". 

We are educated to protect the environment and saving rare species. It seems like before we really understand what makes up nature, rules and knowledge have separated us from the nature.  “Ecological issues come to seem like issues that are only of interest to people who have a particular aesthetic taste…but these things don’t affect my real life where I have to make money to live.” (Alaimo, 6) Always acting like bystanders makes us no responsibility to the nature “beside” us.

Ecological Intelligence is about how we understand the complex ecology system, the balance between different living beings. The ways of different creatures affecting each other. The other article talked about human beings’ ecosystem, illustrating how human beings and microbes depend on each other to survive. Ecosystem is a complicated mechanism which took human centuries of continuous exploration. As Bower said, the language we use today carries the misconception of the past human who don’t know about environmental issues. But he also mentioned that lost linguistic diversity and intergenerational knowledge are precious  experience that could contribute to a more harmonic ecology. Are these two sayings contradictory?

Didn't post my proposal. My bad. Here it is.

http://prezi.com/buoweqogt1je

Right from the beginning, I think it is interesting the way that Bower introduces the problem we face today. He makes a point to differentiate the intelligence we hold and the intelligence we need. Being a society that has sent a man to the moon, it would be hard to argue against intelligence in some capacity and Bower recognizes this. Unlike Kolbert, Bower begins with the personal hit that our economic and social endeavors are causing. Believably more attention grabbing, I think that is exactly what he needed to really grab the reader and jump into alternative paths of solvency. I agree that a deeper consequential analysis would bring about better environmental awareness and protection.

Bowers' reading of "taken for granted" makes me think of Paulo's reading about connect words and world together. Also, it can be drawn to Kolbert's reading of Anthropocene. Humans from some point in history have escaped from evolution, we invented tools and wrote down knowledge. Still in some point, we started to take things for granted. Then the inventions that are supposed to  help us are actually harming us. (From human ecosystem) So the question I am wondering is, why we are still harming ourselves if we know the things we are using are harming us? Are people aware? Or we just "take for granted"?