The Martlet

As an individual raised on environmental values (once-per-week showers), it angers me that, despite knowing otherwise, I feel I am putting my love of the earth on the backburner through pursuing an English degree.

I tried political sciences, but the lack of poetics burned my soul. It bothers me that my move from what I want in a few years to what I love now makes me feel marginal in terms of being active in my values. I’m constantly volunteering, yet there’s this guilt that creeps over my joy in whispering a Midsummer Nights’ Dream to myself in my studying: am I really doing the right thing?

Seeing ecologist and environmental writer Don Gayton speak on Oct. 22 rekindled this inner debate. I left as inspired as I was in my first university philosophy class — fiery and needing to call friends to air and share my passions.

Naturally, Gayton focused on our state of environmental misery, marking indifference to issues as a

huge problem. His discussion of indifference had a wholistic, empowering effect on folks such as myself. What creates indifference? A lack of relevance.

Backtracking a few steps, what is it that defeats indifference, that moves humans to tears, rage, even love?

Try Shakespeare, or Led Zeppelin, or perhaps dancing on a Friday night.

His point was that the arts and sciences need to give one another a great hug and stop playing

egoistic games of “who gets to be more valued.”

The arts are just as crucial to environmental activism as are the sciences.

Now, I’m not denying the fact that science makes the observations, the technological remedies and more in terms of connecting humans to the natural world.

In fact, through an interpretation suggestive of my arts leanings, I remember one philosopher putting it this way: through formulas, the sciences allow us to appreciate the dazzling intricacies of the natural world.

However, it is obvious that convention has allocated programs such as Environmental Studies, Biology and Political Science as the primary ways to go if you want to contribute to world issues. Otherwise, you can hang out with the more “selfish” material, like T.S. Eliot, for a while until you hit the law books. Or, maybe you can have a less influential role as an environmental writer, or so on.

There are very few resources for arts students to feel valued in terms of environmental activism. This is ridiculous, as many of the arts are unbelievably grassroots. They approach the most basic values that lead us to act as human beings, just the way we are.

It’s rare that an artist gets to be considered on the “front lines” in terms of the environmental movement. I’m not saying that I believe that this should be the truth, but I’m responding to the stigmas that I face every day.

On the other side of the spectrum, my friend in Environmental Studies just confessed that she felt her personal development was sliding in the face of “trying to save the world” through her degree.

She found the facts learned in her classes very unstimulating, yet was aware that her degree would give her a position of power as an activist. The compromising nature of the whole situation unsettled her.

Our problem is a fragmented conscience, blackened from centuries of war, colonialism, hatred.

Healing the fragments involves mending an overly prosaic consciousness; on changing an ontology that has been, historically, only capable of a superiority-inferiority complex.

Poetry is created through spontaneity and a wholism of self that results from expression beyond restraining convention. Music allows an experience of harmony. Film creates vision.

What this world needs is a lot of art therapy before it is truly capable of moving forward.

Giving the sciences priority in activism has a lot of negative implications. As the arts are seen as dealing with the “human condition,” seeing them as secondary in the environmental movement perpetuates the idea of human beings as distinct from the natural world.

Implicitly, this positions nature as an “Other” and disallows people from truly understanding that our context, nature, is a part of who we are.

Activism is defined by communication. Communication is only effective when people are engaged. Facts and charts, despite being valuable, entail little human connection.

We need a movement that recognizes the saving value in the arts for environmental activism.

Gayton also emphasized that community is necessary for the arts to be elevated.

The university needs to come together in this movement to elevates the arts as activism.