FINALLY. In a class about the environment in the art school I was just waiting and waiting and waiting for Andy Goldsworthy to show up. Goldsworthy has been one of my favorite contemporary artists ever since I learned about him in tenth grade. I became so enamored of the man because both he and I are photographers, but I could not believe how that was where the similarities ended so quickly and I was instantly fascinated and jealous of his outlook. In the high school class in which I learned of Goldsworthy, we were assigned to create our own piece in his style. Not only was I unable to come up with something anywhere as creative, but also the patience required to produce a quality work and image was astoundingly impossible to achieve. I ended up filling some huge cracks in the sidewalk with the most interesting wild flowers I could find in the middle of November (meaning very few), snapping some photos and calling it a day. I gained so much respect for Andy Goldsworthy with this assignment because of his incredible ability to see nature as something more. When I take photographs, the setup is so unbearable and I simply cannot wait to get to the actual image capturing part. Goldsworthy has an impressive skill for the arrangement of commonly seen items foreseeing the impact of their altogether appearance. I am sure that most of his really extensive projects look like nothing when he first starts them, but Goldsworthy has the intuition to know that in the end it will be gorgeous. I find him to be such a brilliant artist for that reason and also because he is equally talented at photographing his constructions. There is a very stark difference between the two phases of his pieces that makes it so interesting. He excels at the hand-made, organic aspect but also at the photography, which is a far more concrete skill with rules involved. Also, the contrast between the ephemeral nature of his creations and the everlasting way of a photograph is what makes Goldsworthy’s work so remarkable.
In the last part of Sand County Almanac, I noticed that Leopold’s central point was focused primarily around the idea of what happens to an environment when something is added or subtracted from it. He expresses how each and every living or non-living thing that makes up a particular environment lives and thrives off of each other; they need each other to survive. So, if one thing is removed in hopes of bettering something else, then it is surely possible that something else will suffer as a result. For example, take away the predator of deer in a particular area, and soon the vegetation will be chomped down to the point that the now over-populated deer can no longer survive in that area. Not only would the deer start disappearing, but any other organism that was living off of those plants can no longer thrive in the same area, as well. Leopold seems to bring this problem up quite a bit, not only in this section of the book, but throughout the book. For instance, he talks about these cranes living around a marsh and how one day a farmer moves nearby. From that day forward, the marsh changes and dries and is re-wetted, all the while the cranes leave at some point. This example, I believe, is intended to portray how we must begin to consider the consequences of our actions when dealing with the environment. Even the slightest of change to “better” one thing can cause a chain reaction of events that may turn the change for better into the change for worse.
While reminiscing over the videos we viewed last Tuesday, I thought about the efforts I make to try and care for animals more. I recently saw a woman walking with a dog and thought of the video from class. Although the animal was not a cow, goat, or a sheep, I had a slight been of emotional reaction to the condition I saw this animal in. He was wet, his fur looked like it had been glue together in pieces, he was very dirty as well. The dog looked like he had been abandoned and I was moved by that moment. Instantaneously I thought about when the animals from the video we viewed had no idea what they were about to experience. In an effort to improve my eating habits, I quit eating pork and beef about four months, and I’ve been really happy with my consistency. That idea led me to think of all of the animals that are killed at the humane society. I also finished watching the video about the way our food has evolved over the past years. I found that video to be very inspiring and intriguing due to the fact that He chose a very sensitive topic to discuss and he nailed it with humor. I thought about carrying that over in my project for this class. It was intriguing because I want to know who is in charge of all of these things that are destroying the way we live. I know the people have a huge impact on our pyramid of food, but if these foods are destroying our health, why are they still being sold to us. It seems like society, the government and the majority of the people have no concern with longevity and it upsets me to a certain extent.
The reading for this week, "Looking for Nature at the Mall" was interesting and addressed a lot of points that I had never before considered. I remember as a kid I was always most excited to visit these nature stores whenever my family went to the mall. There was something about the exotic quality of adventure that enthralled me. I don't think I ever considered the definition of "nature" conveyed through these stores to be the same as the definition I had of outdoor nature. It was a little sad to take a step back and look at how disconnected from nature our society has gotten. I can't say that I'm more in touch with nature than the average person, because I'm definitely not, but this article did open my eyes to the problem our culture faces as we steal the last thing that has a chance to remain unchanging- nature- and turn it into a consumer commodity. Although the Wrubels may have had good intentions when they founded The Nature Company in 1973, their seeking capital expansion inevitably warped their initial goals and became a marketing ploy soon after. The contradictory idea of trying to bring people closer to nature by selling them products indoors that convey only a narrow scope of the definition of nature cause me to worry that our society’s ever-expanding consumer culture will eventually eradicate true nature altogether.
During this mornings lecture I was very intrigued by the work that we got to view relating to recycling on a larger scale. I did a piece of work last year for one of my TMP classes where I spoke about recycling. I tried to gather as much plastic as possible from my apartment building (I went to all 10 floors and took recycling from all of my neighbors). I tried to make it look like there was a massive amount of recycling in my apartment structure. But this artwork took it a step further. He showed work about certain things that should be recycled. I wish I had actually gone to the Ann Arbor Recycling Center instead of going around and collecting all of the recyclables I could to make it look massive. The one that was the most shocking to me was the cell phone battery charger. Almost every one I know has a junk drawer in there home that is filled with chargers that don’t really go to anything any more. He only photographed the chargers that were being recycled, so that is nowhere near as many as there are in peoples junk drawers, or a just simply being thrown into the garbage when they are no longer useful. I also really enjoyed his newer work, especially the paper bags used every hour. There were so many paper bags it was shocking. It really helped show how much we waste every day, and show that we need to start paying more attention. He was also only showing brown bags, even though we also use other bags all the time.
Although I see the point in showing us videos that strongly impact our views on our world and how we treated, looking back on the videos we watched last week horrifies me. Blood of the Beasts has permanently changed my view of the meat industry and what I am eating. Since we watched the video last week, I have actually not been able to take one bite of meat without having vivid flashbacks to cows and horses being slaughtered in front of my eyes. Although I am not a vegetarian, and do not really plan on being one, watching these videos really opened my eyes to how I should pay more attention to what I am eating. To eat the meat that was killed in that way is just contributing to that industry and promoting the continuation of killing animals that way. From now on I plan to make sure that whatever meat I am eating has been killed humanely. Although it feels like I cant make a difference in the treatment of animals by myself, I also know that each person who stops eating meat that was killed inhumanely contributes to the stopping of that poor treatment. This weeks discussion class had a very strong impact on me and will stick with me for a long time.
I personally could not watch the videos of animal slaughters that were shown in class because of their vulgar, horrifically graphic nature. However, I could hear the sounds coming from the film, which unfortunately triggered my own gory visual interpretation on what I was listening to. After listening to the responses given by the group in our discussion following the film, I realized that my visions were pretty accurate and was even more disturbed then I had previously been. I think that the film was unnecessary and should not have been shown in class. Aside from the fact that the movie was outdated, its images were disturbing and excessive. In addition, showing the film seemed to be a tactic to scare people into becoming vegetarians. Though, I know that was not the point, rather, it was to give us a better understand of what happens to animals before they become food and encourage us to be conscious of what we eat, I do not think that message was clear form the film.
I was totally appalled by the video that we watched in discussion class this past week. being an animal lover and a vegan I find re-learning all this information to be very disturbing an redundant.I made the decision to be that way on my own; myself and my two other sisters both follow that way and I believe it should be a thing that people discover on their own therefore itll be a more "real" experiance and relization. Though, to find the positive part of this I do appreciate how the school is advocating for animal protection. Because it does seem to be a little bit out of place at the same time; I think this is the type of information that people know is it out there and it is more personal of a decision to change the ways of one’s eating habbits and should be made by the idividual with no pressure. It is okay to go into the facts but to show images and bloody details I find is just quite disturbing. I think it might be interesting to keep a more positive direction in the discussions and talk about things we can do to make the world a better place (maybe not that extreme but something along those lines) Like it might be interesting if we did a class community service project. Or anything hands on; it could be a meaningful experiences rather then just sitting in the class room learning everything that is bad about the world it would be great if we could go out and help the community!- brynn kurlan
I also cannot restrain myself from commenting on the videos we watched in class last week. Watching the animal walk into the slaughterhouse completely unaware of the things to come, and then falling to the ground in a heap a second after the fatal blow was just too much for me to handle and I had to immediately look away. I found that I could not look back at the screen until after the carcass had been stripped and hacked so badly that it no longer resembled a horse or cow. I have never eaten much red meat before this class for my own reasons, but after seeing these videos and reading the facts we have covered in class, I know I will be continuing these habits for more reasons. I found the article “Nature at the Mall” to be quite interesting. Society today is so disconnected from nature that it has become a novelty that must be purchased in order to ‘enjoy’ inside the confines of one’s home. Most of the items described in the article are also quite ironic. A shirt that says ‘I love ____’ is purchased by people who may rarely venture outdoors. Purchasing plastic renditions of nature instead of enjoying the real thing. Nature should be something that is experienced, not purchased. And as for the “wow” factor that was discussed in the article, it upsets me that people can’t think to go find a real place in nature where this ‘wow’ factor is 10 times greater and is completely real, rather than something that was fabricated and built with machinery.
Today’s lecture was interesting to me because of the connection we have between happiness and “stuff.” A statement that Joe had said that was stuck in my mind was the study that shows Costa Ricans as the happiest people on earth. What was weird was when we look at their GDP compare to the US, we blow away the competition however it turns out that it was not objects that made them happy but more social interactions with neighbors and family members. Another interesting point that I received from the lecture was how seeking things brings pleasure to us as humans. Whether it is finding that perfect dress, hairstyle, shoes, and others. This brings up to another point we discuss which was the accumulation of objects to make us happy. Nowadays we live in bigger houses with less people in it. Even so, we still accumulate objects that we do not fit in our own houses. When it does not fit our house, we store it in a “Self Storage” area. Which poses the question of how much “stuff” do we need to be happy? Looking at the photographs of millions of cell phone chargers, cell phones, and cars, I wonder if humans turn to materials for happiness as time progresses. As it turns out there was a study done by someone in Chicago who had discovered that nowadays most people are not as happy as they would hope to be. We then started talking about a bush baby whose head skull was tiny compare to those of a baboon’s. As it turns out, the size of an animal’s head has a direct connection with their social behavior. A bush baby can live by itself its entire lifetime whereas the baboons live in packs that consist of hundreds of baboons. As humans we need interaction to survive, I was really surprised that we have come up to the point where materials now play a large role to make us happy.
All I’m going to say about the say about the cow videos is that one should remind oneself that we as animals follow the rules of nature. We will at times have to take life in order to maintain ours. The deaths appeared to have been done clean enough that the animal did not suffer. Ignore the leg twitching because muscles always spasm after death. I agree that the floors could have used a good washing but overall I’m not that shocked by the act. Now moving on… I liked the Shuli Haliak's photos in Cargo, but then I like industrial things like ports and ships and seascapes are quite pleasant. Now I realize that we are supposed to comment "wow" on the depiction of the transportation it takes to deliver items like bananas from Ecuador to New York City and be appalled. All that transport for one lonely tree's bananas. But... Having been to both Alaska and Hawaii I can't say that I am surprised that the world's goods move now through shipping containers. Both Alaska and Hawaii survive in large part on those containers that make their way from coastal ports like Seattle and LA to ports in Honolulu and Whittier. It's far too expensive to fly everything from clothing to food to durable goods in, hence the big dedicated ships and containers. In Alaska the oil and minerals flow out and the cruise ships and container ships come in. In Hawaii there are more cruise ships, plus the US Naval vessels in the waters there plus those industrious Matson container ships plying the waters between the islands. Then there are the fishing boats. Alaska also has their maritime highway system and Hawaii has been talking about super ferries between the islands, but those primarily move people. If we lived in those places we might be far more accepting of those containers and count them as a blessing. Certainly they provide a lifeline to our 49th and 50th states. And in the end isn’t that rather important?
In the last portion of the Sand County Almanac I was relieved to see Aldo address some of the issues threatening the environment not only in his day but that have continued into the future. Although I appreciated his anecdotes and travels in the first two segments of the book I was glad to see the book travel into more serious ideas, which I feel I can apply more to my life and my work. It was interesting to see him write about the negative aspects of hunting and the idea of sportsman in contrast to the earlier parts of the book where he seems to relish the quiet and peace hunting can provide. To describe the effects mechanization has had on hunting is interesting when thinking of stores like Gander Mountain which we nowadays associate with connecting to the wilderness and “being outdoorsy.” It is places like these that provide a lot of the equipment, which Aldo seems to think take the sport out of hunting and transform it into something lazy and disconnected from the outdoors. This was a new approach to looking at the sportsman that I had not yet considered and challenges my view on the possible right and wrong ways to connect with the wilderness. Also I appreciated the section titled Wilderness For Science due to my involvement in Envirothon in high school. His reasoning for using the wilderness as a learning tool deeply resonated with me and coincided with my views on the topic. In fact, one of my World Changing statements dealt with biomimicry and what can be learned from the wilderness and it is interesting to see some overlaps between the readings.
Returning to Aldo for the last time, I was shocked that he put in a piece about humans. The specific passage I was concerned with was when he likened certain cycles undergone by species other than ourselves to possible cycles of the human population. Just as one rabbit doesn’t know his part in a cycle, we cannot see the part we may play in possible human population cycles. Aldo says we cannot study the population cycle of a species by looking at one individual, as observing a single rabbit won’t explain tendencies of the species as a whole. Under the same logic, I cannot look at myself and say whether I play a role in a grand cycle of my own race. It makes me contemplate how an outsider of our species observes us. It doesn’t have to be some type of alien, but just an organism that lives long enough to observe the intricacies of our race that may lead to a larger pattern. A giant sequoia could probably find something that historians missed, as we have no objectiveness when observing our own species as we hold ourselves in such high regard. After this passage, he closes with a return to how people of his day have been viewing nature: as some leisure activity. His point is that if we truly took our time with nature to another level, we could get so much more out of it. This bit speaks to me and reminds me to look at things deeper and with more thought. This can of course be applied to more things than simply the environment around me, but it is nature that I often overlook. I agree with Aldo that I could learn more about myself and my environment by using a deeper mentality when connecting with nature. The reading “Looking for Nature at the Mall” provides a unique outlook at the change of mindset in the standard American. It is obvious that in such a consumerist society, the average dose of nature one receives would come from a store rather than a stroll through the forest. It isn’t bad that people show their views by buying certain items to express them, but when these views are not backed up by a genuine care or admiration for, there is something wrong with us. Rather than fill our lives with nature by being in nature, we fill our lives with goods and surround ourselves with them. In the picture attached to the post, we see how global consumerism has become, as we need a certain item where ever we are whenever we want it. It is a trend I can’t imagine reversing. We can, though, make changes in our own lives that can affect the people around us.
For this week’s response, I have more than a few topics I would like to discuss. For one, after looking through this week’s posted link, I was fairly confused. I understand that this is this woman’s way of expressing herself but for some reason I have a hard time looking at any of her creations as art and if anything they seem creepy to me. Growing up, I had often been to friends house’s whose parents were hunters and chose taxidermy to put each of their kills on display as a trophy. Rooms that had these displayed have never sat well with me and I have never been able to spend more than a few minutes in a room with them. Because of taxidermy’s connection in my mind to hunting, I cannot grasp why someone would choose this as a way to pay homage to nature in his or her pieces. In addition, the way she combined the animals intrigued me in some ways but mostly just bothered me. Again, I cannot commit the pictures to memory without finding something odd about them. I now truly understand that everyone has the right to express themselves through their own art form and that we are entitled to our own opinions of various art forms.
I also feel the need to address last week’s discussion and the videos shown. Although I’m not sure if I was mentally prepared for the harsh realities of the videos, I do not think that anyone ever will be and that is why people choose to avoid the truth. No one wants to see what actually happens to the animals that become our food and because of that we keep the idea of where our meat comes from in the back of our mind. I would not say that people are completely ignorant of the meat industry, they just choose to avoid the scenes we watched in the video. I always knew that the meat I ate had to come from somewhere and I did know it wasn’t the most humane process but until I faced the extremes of the industry there is no way I would be fazed. Since the video I have attempted to avoid a lot of meat options and unfortunately now whenever meat is even an option, I have the videos images fresh in my mind.
The Blood of the Beasts was a very graphic movie, and yet drove home to me how far removed I am from my food. Parts of it were very horrifying, the blood spilling out of the cow and horse, washing the pavement. Yet I found myself more caught up in the workers’ stories. I know I couldn’t do what they do for a living and it made me wonder how they felt, what their lives were like away from the slaughterhouse. I am acquainted with a family who slaughters pigs and cows for a living and I know that it is merely a job for them, and there is a removal of emotions from the animals and themselves. They are not people who enjoy hurting animals, but people who understand how animals end up on our plate, something that I have distanced myself from. I enjoy eating meat; I like a good burger on the grill in the summer time, or bacon and eggs in the morning, I therefore wasn’t put off from eating meat after seeing the video last week. Yes, I found it graphic and confess I had to look away when they bled the animals, but I wasn’t convicted that I ought not to eat meat. The movies made me wonder if I could ever do that, that is kill my own meat and eat it, one hundred years ago I might have had to and the movie made me ask myself if I could? I am always amazed when I think about how people used to live in our country, before the freezer section, before the processed food aisle, even before grocery stores were invented. I don’t want to ever be ignorant and think myself too civilized to get my hands dirty to survive, and while I was shocked at the slaughter process, I wasn’t condemning of the fact they exist or of those who work in them.
This week, while I was writing my second observation paper, I began to think about what possible value could be gained by carrying out this assignment. Initially, I did not see any benefit o writing another observation paper, and honestly could not see how I was going to be able to come up with enough material to write a second paper. As I went through the outline for the assignment, I quickly realized that I could be able to use the position of observing the interactions between passing people and the plant to create an original new piece. As far as the discussions are concerned, I was very surprised by the reactions to the documentary on the slaughterhouse from the fifties. Although, I’m sure that the sanitary situation has been greatly improved since then, I would imagine that the killing of the animals has remained relatively unchanged. Since, I would think, that pretty much all members of the class consume meat, I would think that most people would be well aware of the ways in which animals are killed, however this was not the case. I saw multiple people stand up and leave the classroom because they could not handle the images that they were viewing. Perhaps the fact that I have hunted before and know the process of skinning and gutting an animal made me desensitized to this video, but I was under the impression that all people were aware of the ways that the meat which we eat gets from the animal to our dinner plate.
FINALLY. In a class about the environment in the art school I was just waiting and waiting and waiting for Andy Goldsworthy to show up. Goldsworthy has been one of my favorite contemporary artists ever since I learned about him in tenth grade. I became so enamored of the man because both he and I are photographers, but I could not believe how that was where the similarities ended so quickly and I was instantly fascinated and jealous of his outlook.
ReplyDeleteIn the high school class in which I learned of Goldsworthy, we were assigned to create our own piece in his style. Not only was I unable to come up with something anywhere as creative, but also the patience required to produce a quality work and image was astoundingly impossible to achieve. I ended up filling some huge cracks in the sidewalk with the most interesting wild flowers I could find in the middle of November (meaning very few), snapping some photos and calling it a day. I gained so much respect for Andy Goldsworthy with this assignment because of his incredible ability to see nature as something more. When I take photographs, the setup is so unbearable and I simply cannot wait to get to the actual image capturing part. Goldsworthy has an impressive skill for the arrangement of commonly seen items foreseeing the impact of their altogether appearance. I am sure that most of his really extensive projects look like nothing when he first starts them, but Goldsworthy has the intuition to know that in the end it will be gorgeous. I find him to be such a brilliant artist for that reason and also because he is equally talented at photographing his constructions.
There is a very stark difference between the two phases of his pieces that makes it so interesting. He excels at the hand-made, organic aspect but also at the photography, which is a far more concrete skill with rules involved. Also, the contrast between the ephemeral nature of his creations and the everlasting way of a photograph is what makes Goldsworthy’s work so remarkable.
In the last part of Sand County Almanac, I noticed that Leopold’s central point was focused primarily around the idea of what happens to an environment when something is added or subtracted from it. He expresses how each and every living or non-living thing that makes up a particular environment lives and thrives off of each other; they need each other to survive. So, if one thing is removed in hopes of bettering something else, then it is surely possible that something else will suffer as a result. For example, take away the predator of deer in a particular area, and soon the vegetation will be chomped down to the point that the now over-populated deer can no longer survive in that area. Not only would the deer start disappearing, but any other organism that was living off of those plants can no longer thrive in the same area, as well.
ReplyDeleteLeopold seems to bring this problem up quite a bit, not only in this section of the book, but throughout the book. For instance, he talks about these cranes living around a marsh and how one day a farmer moves nearby. From that day forward, the marsh changes and dries and is re-wetted, all the while the cranes leave at some point. This example, I believe, is intended to portray how we must begin to consider the consequences of our actions when dealing with the environment. Even the slightest of change to “better” one thing can cause a chain reaction of events that may turn the change for better into the change for worse.
While reminiscing over the videos we viewed last Tuesday, I thought about the efforts I make to try and care for animals more. I recently saw a woman walking with a dog and thought of the video from class. Although the animal was not a cow, goat, or a sheep, I had a slight been of emotional reaction to the condition I saw this animal in. He was wet, his fur looked like it had been glue together in pieces, he was very dirty as well. The dog looked like he had been abandoned and I was moved by that moment. Instantaneously I thought about when the animals from the video we viewed had no idea what they were about to experience. In an effort to improve my eating habits, I quit eating pork and beef about four months, and I’ve been really happy with my consistency. That idea led me to think of all of the animals that are killed at the humane society. I also finished watching the video about the way our food has evolved over the past years. I found that video to be very inspiring and intriguing due to the fact that He chose a very sensitive topic to discuss and he nailed it with humor. I thought about carrying that over in my project for this class. It was intriguing because I want to know who is in charge of all of these things that are destroying the way we live. I know the people have a huge impact on our pyramid of food, but if these foods are destroying our health, why are they still being sold to us. It seems like society, the government and the majority of the people have no concern with longevity and it upsets me to a certain extent.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThe reading for this week, "Looking for Nature at the Mall" was interesting and addressed a lot of points that I had never before considered. I remember as a kid I was always most excited to visit these nature stores whenever my family went to the mall. There was something about the exotic quality of adventure that enthralled me. I don't think I ever considered the definition of "nature" conveyed through these stores to be the same as the definition I had of outdoor nature. It was a little sad to take a step back and look at how disconnected from nature our society has gotten. I can't say that I'm more in touch with nature than the average person, because I'm definitely not, but this article did open my eyes to the problem our culture faces as we steal the last thing that has a chance to remain unchanging- nature- and turn it into a consumer commodity. Although the Wrubels may have had good intentions when they founded The Nature Company in 1973, their seeking capital expansion inevitably warped their initial goals and became a marketing ploy soon after. The contradictory idea of trying to bring people closer to nature by selling them products indoors that convey only a narrow scope of the definition of nature cause me to worry that our society’s ever-expanding consumer culture will eventually eradicate true nature altogether.
ReplyDeleteDuring this mornings lecture I was very intrigued by the work that we got to view relating to recycling on a larger scale. I did a piece of work last year for one of my TMP classes where I spoke about recycling. I tried to gather as much plastic as possible from my apartment building (I went to all 10 floors and took recycling from all of my neighbors). I tried to make it look like there was a massive amount of recycling in my apartment structure. But this artwork took it a step further. He showed work about certain things that should be recycled. I wish I had actually gone to the Ann Arbor Recycling Center instead of going around and collecting all of the recyclables I could to make it look massive.
ReplyDeleteThe one that was the most shocking to me was the cell phone battery charger. Almost every one I know has a junk drawer in there home that is filled with chargers that don’t really go to anything any more. He only photographed the chargers that were being recycled, so that is nowhere near as many as there are in peoples junk drawers, or a just simply being thrown into the garbage when they are no longer useful.
I also really enjoyed his newer work, especially the paper bags used every hour. There were so many paper bags it was shocking. It really helped show how much we waste every day, and show that we need to start paying more attention. He was also only showing brown bags, even though we also use other bags all the time.
Although I see the point in showing us videos that strongly impact our views on our world and how we treated, looking back on the videos we watched last week horrifies me. Blood of the Beasts has permanently changed my view of the meat industry and what I am eating. Since we watched the video last week, I have actually not been able to take one bite of meat without having vivid flashbacks to cows and horses being slaughtered in front of my eyes. Although I am not a vegetarian, and do not really plan on being one, watching these videos really opened my eyes to how I should pay more attention to what I am eating. To eat the meat that was killed in that way is just contributing to that industry and promoting the continuation of killing animals that way. From now on I plan to make sure that whatever meat I am eating has been killed humanely. Although it feels like I cant make a difference in the treatment of animals by myself, I also know that each person who stops eating meat that was killed inhumanely contributes to the stopping of that poor treatment. This weeks discussion class had a very strong impact on me and will stick with me for a long time.
ReplyDeleteI personally could not watch the videos of animal slaughters that were shown in class because of their vulgar, horrifically graphic nature. However, I could hear the sounds coming from the film, which unfortunately triggered my own gory visual interpretation on what I was listening to. After listening to the responses given by the group in our discussion following the film, I realized that my visions were pretty accurate and was even more disturbed then I had previously been. I think that the film was unnecessary and should not have been shown in class. Aside from the fact that the movie was outdated, its images were disturbing and excessive. In addition, showing the film seemed to be a tactic to scare people into becoming vegetarians. Though, I know that was not the point, rather, it was to give us a better understand of what happens to animals before they become food and encourage us to be conscious of what we eat, I do not think that message was clear form the film.
ReplyDeleteI was totally appalled by the video that we watched in discussion class this past week. being an animal lover and a vegan I find re-learning all this information to be very disturbing an redundant.I made the decision to be that way on my own; myself and my two other sisters both follow that way and I believe it should be a thing that people discover on their own therefore itll be a more "real" experiance and relization. Though, to find the positive part of this I do appreciate how the school is advocating for animal protection. Because it does seem to be a little bit out of place at the same time; I think this is the type of information that people know is it out there and it is more personal of a decision to change the ways of one’s eating habbits and should be made by the idividual with no pressure. It is okay to go into the facts but to show images and bloody details I find is just quite disturbing. I think it might be interesting to keep a more positive direction in the discussions and talk about things we can do to make the world a better place (maybe not that extreme but something along those lines)
ReplyDeleteLike it might be interesting if we did a class community service project. Or anything hands on; it could be a meaningful experiences rather then just sitting in the class room learning everything that is bad about the world it would be great if we could go out and help the community!- brynn kurlan
I also cannot restrain myself from commenting on the videos we watched in class last week. Watching the animal walk into the slaughterhouse completely unaware of the things to come, and then falling to the ground in a heap a second after the fatal blow was just too much for me to handle and I had to immediately look away. I found that I could not look back at the screen until after the carcass had been stripped and hacked so badly that it no longer resembled a horse or cow. I have never eaten much red meat before this class for my own reasons, but after seeing these videos and reading the facts we have covered in class, I know I will be continuing these habits for more reasons.
ReplyDeleteI found the article “Nature at the Mall” to be quite interesting. Society today is so disconnected from nature that it has become a novelty that must be purchased in order to ‘enjoy’ inside the confines of one’s home. Most of the items described in the article are also quite ironic. A shirt that says ‘I love ____’ is purchased by people who may rarely venture outdoors. Purchasing plastic renditions of nature instead of enjoying the real thing. Nature should be something that is experienced, not purchased. And as for the “wow” factor that was discussed in the article, it upsets me that people can’t think to go find a real place in nature where this ‘wow’ factor is 10 times greater and is completely real, rather than something that was fabricated and built with machinery.
Today’s lecture was interesting to me because of the connection we have between happiness and “stuff.” A statement that Joe had said that was stuck in my mind was the study that shows Costa Ricans as the happiest people on earth. What was weird was when we look at their GDP compare to the US, we blow away the competition however it turns out that it was not objects that made them happy but more social interactions with neighbors and family members.
ReplyDeleteAnother interesting point that I received from the lecture was how seeking things brings pleasure to us as humans. Whether it is finding that perfect dress, hairstyle, shoes, and others. This brings up to another point we discuss which was the accumulation of objects to make us happy. Nowadays we live in bigger houses with less people in it. Even so, we still accumulate objects that we do not fit in our own houses. When it does not fit our house, we store it in a “Self Storage” area. Which poses the question of how much “stuff” do we need to be happy? Looking at the photographs of millions of cell phone chargers, cell phones, and cars, I wonder if humans turn to materials for happiness as time progresses.
As it turns out there was a study done by someone in Chicago who had discovered that nowadays most people are not as happy as they would hope to be. We then started talking about a bush baby whose head skull was tiny compare to those of a baboon’s. As it turns out, the size of an animal’s head has a direct connection with their social behavior. A bush baby can live by itself its entire lifetime whereas the baboons live in packs that consist of hundreds of baboons. As humans we need interaction to survive, I was really surprised that we have come up to the point where materials now play a large role to make us happy.
All I’m going to say about the say about the cow videos is that one should remind oneself that we as animals follow the rules of nature. We will at times have to take life in order to maintain ours. The deaths appeared to have been done clean enough that the animal did not suffer. Ignore the leg twitching because muscles always spasm after death. I agree that the floors could have used a good washing but overall I’m not that shocked by the act. Now moving on… I liked the Shuli Haliak's photos in Cargo, but then I like industrial things like ports and ships and seascapes are quite pleasant. Now I realize that we are supposed to comment "wow" on the depiction of the transportation it takes to deliver items like bananas from Ecuador to New York City and be appalled. All that transport for one lonely tree's bananas. But...
ReplyDeleteHaving been to both Alaska and Hawaii I can't say that I am surprised that the world's goods move now through shipping containers. Both Alaska and Hawaii survive in large part on those containers that make their way from coastal ports like Seattle and LA to ports in Honolulu and Whittier. It's far too expensive to fly everything from clothing to food to durable goods in, hence the big dedicated ships and containers. In Alaska the oil and minerals flow out and the cruise ships and container ships come in. In Hawaii there are more cruise ships, plus the US Naval vessels in the waters there plus those industrious Matson container ships plying the waters between the islands. Then there are the fishing boats. Alaska also has their maritime highway system and Hawaii has been talking about super ferries between the islands, but those primarily move people.
If we lived in those places we might be far more accepting of those containers and count them as a blessing. Certainly they provide a lifeline to our 49th and 50th states. And in the end isn’t that rather important?
In the last portion of the Sand County Almanac I was relieved to see Aldo address some of the issues threatening the environment not only in his day but that have continued into the future. Although I appreciated his anecdotes and travels in the first two segments of the book I was glad to see the book travel into more serious ideas, which I feel I can apply more to my life and my work.
ReplyDeleteIt was interesting to see him write about the negative aspects of hunting and the idea of sportsman in contrast to the earlier parts of the book where he seems to relish the quiet and peace hunting can provide. To describe the effects mechanization has had on hunting is interesting when thinking of stores like Gander Mountain which we nowadays associate with connecting to the wilderness and “being outdoorsy.” It is places like these that provide a lot of the equipment, which Aldo seems to think take the sport out of hunting and transform it into something lazy and disconnected from the outdoors. This was a new approach to looking at the sportsman that I had not yet considered and challenges my view on the possible right and wrong ways to connect with the wilderness.
Also I appreciated the section titled Wilderness For Science due to my involvement in Envirothon in high school. His reasoning for using the wilderness as a learning tool deeply resonated with me and coincided with my views on the topic. In fact, one of my World Changing statements dealt with biomimicry and what can be learned from the wilderness and it is interesting to see some overlaps between the readings.
Returning to Aldo for the last time, I was shocked that he put in a piece about humans. The specific passage I was concerned with was when he likened certain cycles undergone by species other than ourselves to possible cycles of the human population. Just as one rabbit doesn’t know his part in a cycle, we cannot see the part we may play in possible human population cycles. Aldo says we cannot study the population cycle of a species by looking at one individual, as observing a single rabbit won’t explain tendencies of the species as a whole. Under the same logic, I cannot look at myself and say whether I play a role in a grand cycle of my own race. It makes me contemplate how an outsider of our species observes us. It doesn’t have to be some type of alien, but just an organism that lives long enough to observe the intricacies of our race that may lead to a larger pattern. A giant sequoia could probably find something that historians missed, as we have no objectiveness when observing our own species as we hold ourselves in such high regard. After this passage, he closes with a return to how people of his day have been viewing nature: as some leisure activity. His point is that if we truly took our time with nature to another level, we could get so much more out of it. This bit speaks to me and reminds me to look at things deeper and with more thought. This can of course be applied to more things than simply the environment around me, but it is nature that I often overlook. I agree with Aldo that I could learn more about myself and my environment by using a deeper mentality when connecting with nature.
ReplyDeleteThe reading “Looking for Nature at the Mall” provides a unique outlook at the change of mindset in the standard American. It is obvious that in such a consumerist society, the average dose of nature one receives would come from a store rather than a stroll through the forest. It isn’t bad that people show their views by buying certain items to express them, but when these views are not backed up by a genuine care or admiration for, there is something wrong with us. Rather than fill our lives with nature by being in nature, we fill our lives with goods and surround ourselves with them. In the picture attached to the post, we see how global consumerism has become, as we need a certain item where ever we are whenever we want it. It is a trend I can’t imagine reversing. We can, though, make changes in our own lives that can affect the people around us.
For this week’s response, I have more than a few topics I would like to discuss. For one, after looking through this week’s posted link, I was fairly confused. I understand that this is this woman’s way of expressing herself but for some reason I have a hard time looking at any of her creations as art and if anything they seem creepy to me. Growing up, I had often been to friends house’s whose parents were hunters and chose taxidermy to put each of their kills on display as a trophy. Rooms that had these displayed have never sat well with me and I have never been able to spend more than a few minutes in a room with them. Because of taxidermy’s connection in my mind to hunting, I cannot grasp why someone would choose this as a way to pay homage to nature in his or her pieces. In addition, the way she combined the animals intrigued me in some ways but mostly just bothered me. Again, I cannot commit the pictures to memory without finding something odd about them. I now truly understand that everyone has the right to express themselves through their own art form and that we are entitled to our own opinions of various art forms.
ReplyDeleteI also feel the need to address last week’s discussion and the videos shown. Although I’m not sure if I was mentally prepared for the harsh realities of the videos, I do not think that anyone ever will be and that is why people choose to avoid the truth. No one wants to see what actually happens to the animals that become our food and because of that we keep the idea of where our meat comes from in the back of our mind. I would not say that people are completely ignorant of the meat industry, they just choose to avoid the scenes we watched in the video. I always knew that the meat I ate had to come from somewhere and I did know it wasn’t the most humane process but until I faced the extremes of the industry there is no way I would be fazed. Since the video I have attempted to avoid a lot of meat options and unfortunately now whenever meat is even an option, I have the videos images fresh in my mind.
The Blood of the Beasts was a very graphic movie, and yet drove home to me how far removed I am from my food. Parts of it were very horrifying, the blood spilling out of the cow and horse, washing the pavement. Yet I found myself more caught up in the workers’ stories. I know I couldn’t do what they do for a living and it made me wonder how they felt, what their lives were like away from the slaughterhouse. I am acquainted with a family who slaughters pigs and cows for a living and I know that it is merely a job for them, and there is a removal of emotions from the animals and themselves. They are not people who enjoy hurting animals, but people who understand how animals end up on our plate, something that I have distanced myself from. I enjoy eating meat; I like a good burger on the grill in the summer time, or bacon and eggs in the morning, I therefore wasn’t put off from eating meat after seeing the video last week. Yes, I found it graphic and confess I had to look away when they bled the animals, but I wasn’t convicted that I ought not to eat meat. The movies made me wonder if I could ever do that, that is kill my own meat and eat it, one hundred years ago I might have had to and the movie made me ask myself if I could? I am always amazed when I think about how people used to live in our country, before the freezer section, before the processed food aisle, even before grocery stores were invented. I don’t want to ever be ignorant and think myself too civilized to get my hands dirty to survive, and while I was shocked at the slaughter process, I wasn’t condemning of the fact they exist or of those who work in them.
ReplyDeleteThis week, while I was writing my second observation paper, I began to think about what possible value could be gained by carrying out this assignment. Initially, I did not see any benefit o writing another observation paper, and honestly could not see how I was going to be able to come up with enough material to write a second paper. As I went through the outline for the assignment, I quickly realized that I could be able to use the position of observing the interactions between passing people and the plant to create an original new piece. As far as the discussions are concerned, I was very surprised by the reactions to the documentary on the slaughterhouse from the fifties. Although, I’m sure that the sanitary situation has been greatly improved since then, I would imagine that the killing of the animals has remained relatively unchanged. Since, I would think, that pretty much all members of the class consume meat, I would think that most people would be well aware of the ways in which animals are killed, however this was not the case. I saw multiple people stand up and leave the classroom because they could not handle the images that they were viewing. Perhaps the fact that I have hunted before and know the process of skinning and gutting an animal made me desensitized to this video, but I was under the impression that all people were aware of the ways that the meat which we eat gets from the animal to our dinner plate.
ReplyDelete