In a society where the exchange of information and goods are so easily transacted, it is not difficult to see how many people can be affected by the beliefs and choices of others.   Many people do not know where their food or other “necessity” products come from, however, through commercialism and the “keeping up with the Jones’” attitude, we know that we must consume them.  Whether it be a belief system or physical product, there are many people who will blindly believe what they are told, without much investigation into where it comes from, or its possible validity.  I, myself, fall victim to this mindset sometimes too.  In a society so out of touch with reality, how can it recognize the actual dire circumstances of the ecosystem it is a part of?

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When studying the Bible scholars tend to split it up into the Old Testament and the New Testament. Both canons were written at different times and reflect different types of Gods. In the New Testament God is seen mostly as a loving, kind God who sends his only son to save his people. To show how much he loves his creation, and is willing to sacrifice for it. Conversely, in the Old Testament, from which we read for Monday’s class, God is seen as an omnipotent being who has total control over the life and death of the population. This type of God can be paralleled with the God that the Pima story portrays. In the Pima adaptation the Doctor of the Earth sees that his creation is flawed and thus decides to start fresh by simply destroying all the life that he had created. The Doctor of the Earth does this several times because of the imperfections his creations portray. A similarity between Gods can be seen from the Christian story about Noah and his arc. In this story the God also sees that his creation had become flawed and corrupt. God is so disgusted that he only decides to save Noah, his family, and two of each animal. Although, both gods are omnipotent beings, they decide to save something from their original creation.

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I’m intrigued by the balance between God often being portrayed as omnipotent and omniscient, yet will also display human-like flaws, emotions, and shortcomings. This leads to an interest in the internal methods in which people reconcile these double standards with the non-faith side of their intellect. In the Pima creation story, The Creator tries to make something, like ants, but it turns out that they don’t accomplish the purpose he put them there for. The same thing happens when he tries to make people, his recipe went wrong and all they want to do is smoke.

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Big oil has a problem. The industry suffers from a bad reputation even as their product remains in high demand as fuel for modern life. Headline-dominating environmental disasters have included the grounding of the Exxon Valdez, rupture of Alaskan pipelines, and most recently, the Deepwater Horizon debacle that spilled nearly five million barrels of crude into the Gulf of Mexico. In light of this negative publicity, how do petroleum companies manage public opinion to keep the majority of Americans on their side?

The answer is millions in ad spending every year.

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I have read the creation story in the Bible numerous times throughout my life, but have never read it from a literary standpoint until this class. Doing this, and paying even closer attention to how the environment plays a role on the story and towards the characters, I found that the story had more meaning and symbolism than I had ever realized. The story also incorporates a direct relationship that the environment has with Adam and Eve. The role of power in this story changes throughout the two chapters. In this story, God created the world and everything in it and saw that it was perfect. He then gave humans the power over the environment, “Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on earth” (Genesis 1:26). To me, this means that God created the world and everything in it for humans. Later in the story, God also gives Adam the power of naming all living things, “So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field” (Genesis 2:20). To me this led me to believe that God wanted humans to hold the power on earth over the animals, until he created the Garden of Eden. Continue reading →

There are many people who have contributed great literary works, specifically in the area of environmental literature. From Charles Darwin’s “The Origin of Species” to contemporary writers such as Emily Dickinson, critics of ecology have contributed a sense of how the environment should be viewed. In particular, there is one quote that really shows the importance and definition of the word environment as a noun.

“Two roads diverged in the woods and I-I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” – Robert Frost

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