Overpopulation and the difficulties with space that surface
as a result was well presented with the second group of presenters. Through
their demonstration with the colored bowls and the background information
enabled the scale of the problem was brought into focus. What was particularly interesting was the
variety of solutions that the group went through. As an environmentalist, it
was disturbing listening about prospects that called for increased rates of
mining, energy extraction, and technology. Not only did instances like living
on the moon did not seem sustainable, but it refreshed my mind of the notion
that man, through further technological advances, will be able to bail itself
out later on. By counting on technology that has yet to exist, as a society we
allow ourselves to escape the guilt of our consumerist tendencies and continue
to operate in the same way. What I was impressed with this group’s presentation
is that they didn’t lean as hard on these prospects as I normally seem to find,
and recognized that other factors, like whether we’ll have the resources to make
this future technology or even support ourselves. One example: While 70 or so
percent of the world’s surface is covered in water, we can’t be positive that
desalinization will become significantly less costly to perform, thus such
conservation techniques as hydroponics should be examined. They also explored
preventative measures to overpopulation as way of answering our space problem.
These included like educating undereducated societies on the consequences of
overpopulation, tax incentives for families who choose to limit the size of the
family to a certain number. They also brought in the complexity that different world
perspectives create in answering the problem (like some see growth as still a
good thing for a country).
Monday, April 30, 2012
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
I felt that the story of Timothy Treadwell
in Grizzly Man contains some rather interesting parallels with the dualism
within the third wave of feminism. Something that immediately jumped out at me
was the underlying perspective that seemed to unearth in Timothy as the documentary
went on. The perspective that I’m talking about seems like it’s almost unconscious
understanding that Timothy seemed to possess is that the force which dominated
his life was doing the same thing to animals. It seemed almost as if they (Timothy
and the bears/animals) in his mind were captives to the same colony, it’s just
he was shackled by his inability to conform to the culture/customs of the
dominate group (human civilization), while the bears weren’t able to conform to
the dominate class because they are a separate species.
In Timothy’s mind there appears to
be this dualism remaining; on the one side is civilization, on the other is him
and the animals. In his “victory” clip toward the end, he talks about how he
protected the bears (that are so important to him) and “beat” those trying to
hurt them. A confluence in struggles, at least in Timothy’s perspective seemed
to have formed sometime along his journey. While I’d like to believe that
Timothy’s relationship with the bears does contain a non-instrumental element
to, I think that he falls short of the third wave, especially in the
holistic/pluralistic perspective that DesJardins talks about in the chapter.
Timothy seems to have this universal look on things, filled with ultimatums and
rejections of the complexity of situations and people, something not characteristic of the third feminism.
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