Farewell, Reading Place

While it would be difficult to answer all of the questions asked in our game show in less than 700 words, I can state my basic ideas about humans’ relationship with nature.
I believe that humans have many, many, flaws, but one of the most important and tragic ones is that we do not treat nature with respect. The video that we watched in class about the one man destroying the world really struck me. I am totally guilty of mistreating the Earth, but I still think that we as humans can make many small, conscious efforts to improve our relationship with nature. Though I think it would be very hard, I think that humans should try to act as equals with nature and not dominate it without disregard. This would call for a large societal shift, with lots of educating and reflection.
Connecting to this, I believe that humans’ relationship with nature is much different from those of other creatures on Earth. Like all plants and animals, we rely on nature to survive, but in different ways. We are using the Earth’s resources carelessly and with disregard to any other species that needs the same resources to live. Humans also think of themselves as disconnected from nature; we feel that we should have complete control over it.
Looking at the questions presented in this project made me reflect on my own relationship with nature. I am proud that I am a vegetarian and don’t eat other creatures that live in nature, but there are many areas I could improve how I treat nature. First and foremost, I could distance myself from technology and appreciate my surroundings more. I am also interested in only using products that are not tested on animals and that are organic. I hope that as I grow older, I can make important and conscious decisions to improve how I treat the Earth.
While I don’t completely agree with any of the people/concepts mentioned in the product, I can relate to Christopher McCandless’ view on our relationship with nature. As I mentioned in my previous blog post, I admire his dedication and appreciation of nature, but believe that many of his thoughts are too radical. If we take the time to appreciate nature, we will treat the earth better.
In the small group portion of this project, I helped organize who was going to research what. I like to make sure that everything is accounted for, so I also organized a whole group message on Facebook to discuss how the project was progressing. For my small group with Ann and Sela, I annotated both Into The Wild and a piece about Everett Ruess.
When we first decided to do a large group project for the final, I was very hesitant. It felt very hectic trying to plan what we were going to do. At sometimes, I wanted to just go into smaller groups and work more efficiently. I was pleasantly surprised at how well the group effort worked. I loved our game show concept and I feel that each group contributed a lot of insight and depth to the project. I think that it would have been very difficult to do a whole group spoken word of some type, so I am proud that we came up with an idea that could easily include everyone. If I could change anything about this project, I would make sure that everyone was more organized and on top of their work. I don't like to scramble at the last minute! I think that the concept of this final project was very open ended, which worked to our advantage. If I could, I would get rid of some of the annotations, because I think that it took time away from focusing on the project script and content.