ESPM 3011W final exam

Please answer each of the following 3 (three) questions in a minimum of 250 words each (for a minimum of 750 total words).
1. Write a personal mission statement or set of guiding principals that you can use to help you make decisions about important choices in your life. What strategies will you employ to live these principals?

2. How have the assigned texts or moodle readings influenced you? Document two selections that you thought were surprising, stimulating, and provided you with food for thought. Tell how each selection has changed your thinking in some way, helped your ethic to develop, or taught you something you might not have otherwise learned.

3. Describe an environmental dilemma in your life (a disagreement or ongoing argument, or an active dialogue happening with family and friends). Tell both sides of the dilemma, and why it has been hard to solve. Are you still stuck? Describe how you might be able to use what you’ve learned in Ethics class to help advance the dialogue or possibly solve the dilemma.


1. All of life on earth is intimately and inextricably linked to – and dependent on – the myriad of other living things around it. Humans are no different from any other animal in this regard, with the exception that we have the seemingly unprecedented ability to delude ourselves into believing otherwise. I will constantly seek ways to reduce the prevalence of that and other harmful cultural beliefs, while also working to mitigate the damaging effects of actions taken under the guidance of these beliefs.
  I will not let my acceptance of the truth of the nature of our current situation become or be mistaken for acquiescence to its continuance. I will not let my despair at the magnitude of the challenges we face lead to depression and inaction. I will not let the strength of my convictions lead to a paralyzing rigidity and closed-mindedness.
  The most important thing to allow me to live by these principles is to surround myself with people who will support me in that effort. The world is full of messages telling me that it's not the culture at large that is misperceiving the nature of the world and our place in it (of course!) but rather I am. It is not necessary that everyone playing such a support role share all of my beliefs. What is crucial is that they are open to the possibility that views other than their own may also be valid and worthy of respect. The other strategy I plan to use is to apply the knowledge that habits shape beliefs – in other words, it really works to fake it until you make it.

2. The two readings that have stuck with me the most are the Oyinesa reading and the Ecclesiastes reading from the Bible from the very beginning of the class. Both interest me because they view into disregarded or forgotten perspectives. The selection from Oyinesa is the most detailed and comprehensive account of a Native American world-view that I have ever seen that was actually written by someone who lived within a functioning Native society. It is important to hear these voices which are not distorted by the distance of time or the remove of being an outsider to the culture in question. In a time when the dominant culture is so far removed from a time when living in harmony with the natural world seemed normal, these voices are particularly precious.
  The chapter of Ecclesiastes contains both one of my favorite familiar passages from the Bible, and one of my favorite new discoveries. The first – the portion regarding the time for sowing and reaping, to every season, and so on – has long struck me as a beautiful acceptance of the cycles and resistance to control of the natural world. The second – the portion regarding man's status as a beast and the vanity of thinking differently – was perhaps the most startlingly (and encouragingly) unexpected things I've ever seen in the Bible. This sentiment stands in stark contrast to familiar verses about man's dominion over other living things. Yet, it made it into the accepted canon of Christian scripture. The gap between the actual subtle and contradictory views of nature in the Bible and the commonly accepted interpretation of a clearly dominant role for humans seems to me to be a key barrier to a healthier and more realistic relationship between humans and the natural world.
  The Story of Stuff, the similar RSA Animate videos, and the TED Talks stuck with me as a format, as much as for the actual content. I am in awe of how much meaning they are able to convey, at such a high level, in such a short amount of time.

3. I struggle with deciding whether to eat meat, and if I am going to eat meat, whether I should avoid certain meat and eat other kinds. I have friends nearly everywhere on the carnivore spectrum. My former college roommate has been a strict vegan for the past ten years. My sister is a vegetarian. I have friends and especially family who seem to care nothing about meat beyond whether it tastes good and perhaps how many calories (or how much fat, carbohydrates, cholesterol, sodium, etc.) it contains. For them of course, there is no dilemma beyond how to prepare food for their younger relatives' strange food choices. At times in the past I have been vegetarian briefly, and eaten very limited amounts of meat at other times. More recently I fell into a more typical American (especially where I was) diet with meat at nearly every meal, perhaps excepting breakfast. My goal is to try as much as possible to limit how much meat I eat and, at least when I'm making the purchases, purchase meat as much in line with my ethics as possible. The problem is so intractable because people don't agree on even the basics like, “Who and what deserves consideration when deciding what, if any, meat is ethical to eat?”
  I think that the Q methodology we studied in class could be incredibly useful to make progress on any number of issues where groups view the question in ways so different that compromise seems impossible. Our exercise trying to pass laws and implement programs was not nearly as in depth or rigorous as would be necessary in a real, meaningful conflict. However, the idea is extremely powerful. Even on a subject and in a class as divided as ours, there were important ideas that had universal support. It seems that Q is a tool that, used properly, could have profound impacts in a multitude of areas.