1. Reflect on how you thought about your relationship and obligation to animals and the environment before you took this course and how you think about it now that the course is over. Have any of your assumptions or understandings changed? Why? What assignments/activities/readings were influential in this process?
This class has dramatically changed me. While before the class, I was an advocate for animal rights and I continue to be now, I adopted a whole food plant based diet for the past 3 months now. I had already been interested in the vegan diet and I attended a plant based symposium just before the course began to focus on Moral Extensionism and animals. So I was really interested in the topics of debate and the p[philosophy. Growing up I had planned on being a Zoologist or working with animals in some capacity. I have always been a huge animal lover. I have spent about 10 years working on my health and fitness. I grew up with a mother who home schooled me about plants and nature while bike riding through the Yosemite National Park. She wanted to be a Park Ranger and majored in Outdoor Education. I am made of my passions for nature, health and animals. All 3 of these loves all led to one destination, a whole food plant based diet. And this class opened my eyes to a vast array of information and how the factory farming industry actually looks like. While a few videos I watched on my own regarding factory farming caused me to cry deeply, my heart can't fathom how people are willing to treat animals in such ways. It truly breaks my heart. I want to love all people, and I want to love all creatures. Love and kindness is incredibly underrated. 2. Make connections between what you studied in this course with what you’ve learned in other courses at SLCC or before. Make specific references to your work in this class and in the other courses. How did what you learn in other courses enhance what you learned here, and vice versa? In this class, we learned about Participatory Justice. Participatory Justice, as promoted by Iris Marion Young, a Political Theorist, is the protection of the democratic process. The idea that people should be able to participate in the things that can affect their lives, develop themselves and express their needs and thoughts. People from different cultural backgrounds, experiences and perspectives should all be able to bring their differences to the surface and decision making process. In the end, should decisions be made which disregard people's rights and dignity, the decision cannot be held as morally responsible. I also took U.S. Government & Politics this semester and Participatory Justice is definitely an approach which crosses between both courses. I think learning about these simultaneously helped me to create a link between how politics can help to shape Environmental Ethics. Ethics is not simply just philosophical debate, but is the debate between the people and their government, desperately searching for change.
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AuthorAnne is 25 years old and originally from the Bay Area, California, but grew up in the small charming town of Horseheads, just south of the Finger Lakes Wine Country in Upstate New York. Archives
April 2019
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