Friday, May 18, 2007

The Semester is Over...

Ok... This is a blog from ANNA DEGOLIER... Since I have never signed up for the blog and my blog invite has expired I have to use my friend's username to post it. Here it goes...

And so the semester is over and along with it the 3 credit course that should have definitely been a 4 credit one. One thing that I would recommend to anyone taking this course in the future is to make sure they don’t take more than two humanities if they are taking Nature and Culture 268. The class is certainly worth it. Besides discovering something new for yourself you get to be entertained by professor Tantillo’s jokes three times a week. I’ve learnt some of the most astonishing facts such as that Greeks and Romans weren’t really such glorious civilizations as most of the history books try to portray them; indigenous population of America has committed a number of crimes against nature including the famous “buffalo jump”; the development of industrialized cities like Chicago have scarred the face of the earth for many years to come by skinning the land off its vast forests, driving wild buffalos to almost complete extinction and polluting the atmosphere with dirt coming out of industrial chimneys. I’ve learnt that the so-called wilderness has been manipulated by humanity for thousands of years and that people usually don’t realize this to say nothing about giving credit to those people who have maintained the beauty of this wilderness by enforcing its thoughtful management. And can you believe that Niagara Falls can actually be shut down?! …and not just for a second but for a whole summer?!
But most importantly, no nation, or culture, or civilization has distinguished itself for living in perfect harmony with nature. All of us have made a nice share of mistakes and have contributed to the environmental degradation that has been accumulating over the many centuries of man’s interaction with nature. Our main mission though is not trying to figure out who has done the most damage and should be persecuted, but how to improve the practices that are still being used today and minimize their harmful effects on nature while keeping the consumer happy, and how to maintain respect for ourselves not only in our children’s and our own eyes, but in the eyes of hundreds of generations that are still hopefully to come.

No comments: