Web Paper or Special Event

Just this morning, a professor remarked, “It amazes me how efficient we as a species have come to destroying shit.” This destruction fits with the definition of an invasive species as defined by the National Wildlife Foundation, which declares any species that “grow and reproduce quickly, and spread aggressively, with potential to cause harm” to be invasive (nwf.org). When brainstorming ideas for a paper, my esteemed colleague rokojo suggested the idea of humans as invasive species, as put forth by Elizabeth Kolbert’s novel The Sixth Extinction. Even earlier, gmchung and I were kicking around the same idea; there were indeed some parallels between humans and other invasive species.

Selena Martinez

ESEM                             

Paper #11

November 19, 2014

Allie Cavallaro

Paper #11

21 November 2014

Simple

A couple mornings ago I awoke to read: “There is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness and truth,” on the inside of my yogurt wrapper.

As any sane person who had already woken up late would, I felt defeated. I asked myself, hastily discarding the wrapper, eating and walking, “What is simple anymore, and how can I possibly be great Mr. Leo Tolstoy?” Even getting out of bed that morning was a struggle. How could I be great if I couldn’t be simple, and couldn’t things be complicated and great, or does complexity just lead to absolute worthlessness? What did Tolstoy know anyway?

 How can simplicity lead to greatness?

Sydney Huff

Esem Paper #11

November 21, 2014

The Extinction of Selfish Ignorance 

Rose Kooper-Johnson

Nov 20 2014

Paper #11

Alisha Clark

ESEM

Professor Jody Cohen 

Novemeber 21, 2014

The Activation

      In Elizabeth Kolbert’s book The Sixth Extinction, she describes that facing the severe environmental crisis and the possible Sixth Extinction, humans are saying “As long as we keep exploring, humanity is going to survive.(Kolbert 268)”, “people have to have hope. It’s what keeps us going.(Kolbert 263)”. The world has already gone into the Anthropocene without people even notice it. Now humans are trying their best to do whatever they can to let the “humanities to go on”. However, the question here is: How did these happen? When did we step into the era of Anthropocene?

Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Six Extinction seems to be talking about different extinctions without much relationship. But in my opinion, it has a clear logical relationship beyond the simple extinction stories of different species. The order of the stories unveiled the whole process of how human came up the idea of extinction, how they gradually understood and developed the idea of extinction, how human are destroying the nature and how we’re sensing our damage to the environment. Finally, the author brought up a question at the end of the book: could human avoid extinction or are we doomed to extinct? Analyzing the deeper relationship between human and extinction, I tried to find our choice to the question.

            It is an innate sentiment of mankind to search for definition, belonging and purpose. We try to find groups to label us, activities to give our days meaning and people to find ourselves with. It is this eternal endeavor, this search for identity that brings out the beauty in life. We seldom realize how incorporative all the elements of our surroundings are to our identity. Whether it be with the physical or social environment, we are shaped by our experiences and interactions. In trying to understand what we come to uncover, we are faced with the question of what to do with our new knowledge of ourselves. In Elizabeth Kolbert’s novel, “The Sixth Extinction,” we are presented with the knowledge of our own detrimental acts against the earth.