Note: This essay was written in a Fall 2019 University of Minnesota course, “Living the Good Life at the End of the World: Sustainability in the Anthropocene”
I’m sitting cross-legged, yogi-like, deep in meditation next to a small pond in an endless forest under an endless sky, bathing under a stippled canvas of stars and the moon’s milk-sopped light. My mind wanders in and out of conscious thought; my body is chilled, but stilled, by the night’s crisp breeze. The hour is unknown, the date forgotten; all responsibilities, stressors, people, and many ingrained facets of daily life but wrinkles in a seemingly long ago time. The seconds pass… or perhaps a span of eons. A shiver ripples down my spine. The wind blows its soft breath, and I close my eyes.
In beginning to think about what I most value in my life, and how those values are both manifested and influenced by my interactions within this worldly age we call “the Anthropocene,” my thoughts drifted back to this memory; a night on my very first college backpacking trip along the Superior Hiking Trail in northern Minnesota. Now, the logical follow-up question I must ask myself is: Why is that? How are my core values tethered to this life experience, and numerous others very similar?
Perhaps most fundamentally as a human being, I value the interactions I’m afforded with other living things, amidst the broad totality of environments we are surrounded by. Humans are social animals, enmeshed in a world of biodiversity such that we will never fully comprehend, and so one of my deepest values is the virtue of time spent with other life. For me, this manifests itself most primally through moments spent in natural environments away from built human ones, but does not have to. I always tell people that despite being very outdoors-minded, I often feel the same rush, and sense of place, within cities and other human infrastructure as I do entirely away from them. I find this to be a fascinating and important revelation; for as much as I may wish I could remove myself from the ever-chugging, sooty engine of humanity that so often pains me, even on the camping respites I take, I am still inextricably a part of the wider, human-caused drivers of change across the planet.
I may actively minimize my environmental impact in every way I can, yet two of the activities that I most cherish — outdoor adventure and traveling the world — each carry their own burdens, from the fossil fuels used for transportation to the physical wastes generated to the lands degraded from visiting them in the first place. It’s no wonder I feel guilty each time I step foot on a plane; second guess when I ship a new hiking backpack; wonder if the value of outdoors experiences is really equal to their cost… Similarly, I try not to over-criticize my friends and family, yet inwardly cringe when my roommates come back laden with plastic shopping bags of plastic-wrapped food, my dad still buys disposable water bottles out of old habit, or certain relatives espouse the outdated virtue of having unnecessarily large families.
How can we remedy these dissonances? How can we all come to analyze the level to which what we value impacts not only ourselves, not only those around us, but all life on this planet?
This is not an issue of politics, nor institutions, nor economics, demographics, or religions. We treat these as ends that can be individually solved — problems to be righted by policies, treaties and ballot boxes — when really they are of themselves the means to what each of us value, determining the manner by which we’ll positively or negatively interact with issues related to environmental and human well-being. Each of us is grounded in our own personal universe of beliefs, and it is the complex makeup of this internal world which generally pre-determines our approaches to the external world.
Therefore, the most primary, concrete step any of us can take in response to the challenges and opportunities of the Anthropocene may be to first engage deeply with ourselves.
It is a privilege many in this weary world will never possess, taking in a perfect night in a beautiful forest and wondering simply about your place in this world. The basic virtue of this, however, is the same; intentional self-reflection leading to both a better grounding and understanding of the values that shape your existence. Whether such a universal practice brings about something positive to the drivers of environmental change humming beneath present human society… well, I wish I knew the answer. But, just as defining how the Anthropocene feels as well as what it is is a necessary first step to acting on it, defining who, what and why we are seems a necessary first step towards lasting socio-ecological change.
Jake Marble 