Hello friends,
I hope your week is going swell and you are enjoying the crisp fall days upon us. Yesterday in my Environmental Education course, we were lucky to have the opportunity to venture into The Arboretum and The Outback, the protected forest and 5-acre garden on campus respectively. While sitting in the outdoor classroom and watching sunlight catch the yellow maple leaves slowly drifting to the forest floor, we discussed the blurring lines between technology and animals in addition to a similar set of blurred lines between animals and humans.
With the onset of refined fields of biological study including microbiology, cell biology, and the like has come an onset of confusion between advancing technologies and the native inhabitants of our earth. GMOs are the prime example of this phenomena. This is not to say that all GMO research or practice is "bad" because much good has come from genetic research especially with regard to the medical field. However, I draw the line at GMO crops and other important plants especially when large companies (*cough*Monsanto*cough*) force their GMO seeds onto our farmland and into developing countries. Also, the lines between humans and animals have been blurred primarily by human-animal hybridization. In short, when we cannot distinguish between animal and machine or between human and animal, I believe we have a problem.
On the flip side, I think that the blurring between humans and animals has the potential to do a lot of good for our world and our society. Raising pets as a child teaches about respect, care, and love toward our fellow animals. Historically, animals are often sacred specifically to many Native American Indian tribes. Blessings prior to feasting, the discovering of spirit animals, as well as animal worship are evident in many cultures. I think that as we face decreasing biodiversity and ecosystem degradation a rekindling of the fire between us and every other living animal could potentially instill stewardship and a desire to protect, preserve, and love the environment and all of its inhabitants.
One of my good friends pointed out the fact that today, we bury our bodies in coffins as if to separate our remains from the rest of the earth. It seems to me that this observation is indicative of the fact that we have simply forgotten that death is
part of life. We are no longer raised on farms, we are raised in tall buildings in stifling cities. Here, there is no sense of the cycle of life and death. You do not see the chicken slaughtered before you eat it and you do not grow lettuce on land you care for. We fear death. We do all we can to avoid by way of prescription drugs and advanced medical treatments. And I am not convinced our quality of life has improved with this phenomenon.
On this note, I would like to share a Mary Oliver poem with you. Thanks for reading and I hope this is some food for thought.
When Death Comes
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps his purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
~ Mary Oliver ~
LivE.
