The discussion on technology has been very beneficial to me and will be in the future. Our class does a great job playing devil’s advocate to bring up all sides of a discussion. The majority of the students in the class possesses an appreciation for nature and understands that we need to take care of the Earth to ensure its longevity. However, there are people in the world that could care less and use our power as humans to dominate the world. This class has helped myself find a greater appreciation for nature with readings such as The Botany of Desire, and other readings like The Question Concerning Technology understand other people’s perspective and why they desire to control nature.
Knowing the motives of other’s in the world will help me in professional career. Being in a professional dealing with environmental issues everyday, I can better understand and try to change opinions of those who do not understand the need to care for nature.
It especially bothered me in the article we read in class by Borrell when he stated how we aren’t trying to solve previous problems like clear cutting in the forests and are only concerned about global warning. Personally, I think that is completely incorrect. As a landscape architect or architect, we have the power to build new places. For one example, we strive to use wood materials that are NOT clear cut from forests AND do not promote further global warming with building products or energy use. Many professionals out there are taking the time to solve problems that are current and problems of the future. I hope that this knowledge will soon spread and will catch on and become a typical practice method.
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I also felt that readings like Borrell, "...Technology", and The Botonay of Desire have intensified my appreciation of nature,and have give given me more insight into how to persuade others to be more environmentally conscious. These benefits are far more than I expected to receive when I decided to take this course, and I am glad for the opportunity to listen to others' thoughts every class and to form and mold my own opinions.
ReplyDeleteI too was disturbed by Borrell's article; I felt as though no matter what we did, we were destroying nature in some way or another. I'd like to think of our interactions with nature in a more positive light and hope that, now that we can appreciate the natural world to a deeper degree, we can do everything in our power to conserve and protect it.
I feel that in order for humans to survive, we are always going to have to hurt nature in some way. We need to cut trees in order to use them for building materials. We need to fish the oceans because we need food. Other living beings do very similar things. The caterpillars that cover trees with white webs during the summer sometimes kill the trees in the process. They find food through eating tree leaves and benefit themselves but hurt the trees in the process. The problem here lies in that a balance needs to be maintained. If the caterpillars kill all the trees that they use for food, they won't have any food left to survive on. If we fish out all the fish in the ocean we will be out of important supply of food. It's a loose-loose situation. I think that the aggressive subject in the situation described above as in the human cutting down forests and the caterpillar eating the trees, needs to be kept in control. The caterpillar population is kept in check by birds that feed on the caterpillars preventing them from eating all the trees. The thing that becomes peculiar in this case is that humans don't seem to have anything controlling their actions. But then, what are diseases?
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