When Professor Litfin read Wendell Berry\u2019s poem, \u201cThe Law that Marries All Things,\u201d the verse that resonated most with me was \u201cthe great chorus of parts.\u201d In relation to the Gaia theory and our global perspective of consumption, planet Earth is the ultimate adaptive organism while humans, as a smaller living system, are like parasites on a host. The Earth regenerates our nutritional sources on end, while we return the favor by exploiting its natural abundance for profit, dumping pollutants into its streams and hunting its wildlife for sport. What a disrespectful way to treat our host! If Earth is \u201cthe great chorus of parts,\u201d incorporating the human living system as well as the living systems that support the flourishment of humanity, we should deprioritize individualism and take preemptive measures to ensure the sustainability of our colossal host. Individualism teaches us to serve ourselves and to think of our actions in a vacuum, as if they are independent from all other systems on the planet. In actuality, our actions are so intertwined with the greater global living system, and we\u2019re already facing the gargantuan consequences of individualism such as our depleting ozone layer, the acidification of our oceans and the industrial reliance on nonrenewable resources. To mitigate the impacts of our selfishness, we could take a lesson or two from Gaia herself. By sticking to cyclical processes of consumption, so that even our waste is reusable, humans might be able to make the transition from using landfills to compost bins, or from mounds of toxic e-waste to non-stagnant electronic reuse. If we adopt this way of thinking into our day-to-day lives, or into our daily societal interactions, perhaps humanity can refer to the Earth as an example of sustainable living and our collective efforts will mitigate some of the damage we\u2019ve already inflicted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When Professor Litfin read Wendell Berry\u2019s poem, \u201cThe Law that Marries All Things,\u201d the verse that resonated most with me was \u201cthe great chorus of parts.\u201d In relation to the Gaia theory and our global perspective of consumption, planet Earth is the ultimate adaptive organism while humans, as a smaller living system, are like parasites on a host. The Earth… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":69,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/69"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1493"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1493\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1494,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1493\/revisions\/1494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}