Post-Class Post Week of 9.9.09

This past class the main idea that stuck with me is "What We Do With Our Dead". It makes me wonder not only about how different rituals surrounding death effect the earth, but to what extent we need to respect these rituals regardless of the changes they cause in the earth. Soo, again all hail google, I've looked up some death and funeral rituals to see the way that different religions impact the earth using death rites.

Jewish: Upon death eyes are closed and the body is covered. Embalming, the removal or organs, and cremation are all prohibited. Contact with the earth is essential and bodies are generally buried wrapped only in linen.

Muslim: Bodies are never cremated and always buried. Bodies are draped in linens as soon after death as possible. Postmortem examinations are considered sacrilegious as they desecrate the holy body.

Orthodox Christian: Cremation is forbidden and the body must be returned to the earth. A grave is required as well as a grave liner or vault. A grave marker with the sign of the cross must be placed on the grave.

Hindu: Cremation is ideal, though children are always buried. There is a ceremony associated with cremating the body, and the closest relatives light the funeral pyre. After cremation ashes and bone fragments are usually collected and placed in a river.

Buddhist: Cremation.

So it would seem that Orthodox Jews win the prize for most "green" disposal of the deceased. Very cool.

Week of 9.9.09 Pre-Class Post

So time has run away from me today and this post is going to be brief. I can promise a more intense and thoughtful one after class though.

Part 2 of "The World Without Us" was interesting but in a different way than part 1. I definitely felt a bit less of Weisman's anti-human hostility and I thought that Part 2 did a better job of just describing events as they would happen rather than blaming humans for causing some negative changes on earth.

Throughout the book I tried to keep thinking about what we as humans are doing on earth and how that can relate or compare to what other organisms do here. Are we really that different from everything else living here? One example of the way we change the Earth differently than other animals is through the creation of non-biodegradable materials. The chapter "The Petro Patch" talked a lot about rubber and other non-biodegradable materials and it left me wondering Is there anything else on earth that is not man-made and is non-biodegrable? So, I did a quick google search and was unable to find items that were not first-made-by-man materials and were non-biodegradable. Perhaps this is how our "waste" is different from the waste of other organisms here.

This led me to another question: What not-made-by-man materials last as long as non-biodegradable materials? In other words, if a piece of tire and a rock were created on the same day, which would last longer? It would be hard to estimate, I guess, because we're not really sure how long it would take for either of these two objects to degrade. My point is that maybe we're just adding different things to the earth than other animals. The earth may be equipped to deal with us (as evidenced by poppy seeds that can wait 1000 years to flower).

Weisman discusses in "Polymers are Forever" the idea that we find large number of tiny pieces of plastics on our beaches and in our oceans. Though these tiny particles do mean that otters and birds may not be dying from them it is likely that smaller organisms will consume them and have terminal consequences. While I don't think we should promote the idea of using the ocean as a plastic-storage unit I do wonder if these microscopic pieces of plastic have similar effects on small sea life that other undigestible microscopic materials do. Again, are we alone in creating material that the earth has trouble getting rid of?

Week of 9/2 Combined Post

Since I was confused this week and did not write a pre-seminar post I'm going to try to do both in this one. I'll start with my initial thoughts on the book we're reading, "The World Without Us" by Alan Weisman, and follow up with ideas and comments that struck me in our in class conversation. This might get messy since I'm sure my own pre-discussion thoughts have already been meshed with ideas from our talk today, but I'll try my best.

We started this week by reading Part One of "The World Without Us" and I was really struck by the idea that most of what we've changed about the world by living in it is mostly non-permanent. Apart from a few rogue pieces of man-made material Earth is well equipped to erase us. While a person looking at Earth after we're gone will definitely know something was here, he'd probably have to look diligently in order to find evidence of a race as "advanced" as we see ourselves. At the same time, though, we as a species have altered the Earth drastically and permanently. For instance, Weisman says that "The ecosystem (in Manhattan) will be a human artifact that will persist in our absence, a cosmopolitan botanical mixture that would never have occurred without us." (p38). Even though the Earth may erase all obvious signs of us (as Weisman clearly shows in the description of what happens to our suburban homes in chapter 1) the Earth will be forever changed from what it was before the human race existed.

This brings me to the in-class discussion portion of this. I've been really stuck on two ideas from class. The first is Joan's suggestion that we not think in terms of good/bad, or unnatural/natural, but rather stable versus unstable. I believe the suggestion had to do with whether or not conditions would change temporarily and then revert back to old conditions (which would mean that the temporary conditions were unstable), or if conditions would change and stay that way. If we follow this logic (at least in the way that I'm understanding it, which may be completely incorrect) then the most stable part of the way we've altered the Earth is actually the effects that we generally consider to be negative... for example the depletion of fossil fuels and the climate change we as humans have caused. I need to think more about this, but I wonder if we can make a claim that only unstable or stable changes are "healthy" for the Earth and how we would judge that.

The second idea is the question "Are we as humans natural??" On page 49 Weisman says "... we've become a volcano that hasn't stopped erupting since the 1700's." in response the carbon footprint we as a species have left on the Earth. I can't help but wonder if we can actually just be equated to this. Are we as humans are nothing but a freak natural occurrence (like a volcano erupting for too long) similar to those that our world has dealt with before? And, of course, if this is the case do we have a "moral" responsibility to evaluate the effects we have on the earth or should we, like a freakishly strong volcano, go about our business and let Earth deal with the outcomes of our actions?