Sana Nader -- "Ecology in the eyes of Wendell Berry"

When I first heard the term Ecology, I thought of the environment itself, but not the surrounding individuals as a part of this environment. Thus I had to do some research about it to understand the main definition. According to the Oxford Dictionary  it means "assemblage of species living close enough together for potential interaction".  Once my Professor encouraged me and my classmates to listen critically to a speech by Wendell Berry which talks about Ecology. After I heard Wendell Berry’s speech about the “Mankind Ecological Imprint”, the term Ecology was more fascinating to me because it states the complete meaning of our world and how to deal with it. This speech reshaped my concepts of how to contact with the environment and at the same time how to protect it from my effects. For example, I am the type of person who spends a lot of time in the shower and because of this, a big amount of water is wasted. I believed that using a lot of water, from one person, did not cause damage to our Ecology. After what Berry stated in his speech, I was convinced that even one person can help destroy our Ecology. The purpose of Berry’s speech was to decrease the humankind’s footprint from ecology by providing people with seven vital steps to follow. 

Berry stated that people should not think beyond their scale and that they should work on a scale proper to their limited abilities, and should not tolerate and work more than their capabilities because this will affect and distract their concentration and ability to undertake work. They should start solving their problems by moving on and by learning where they are ecologically. For example, Albert Einstein, a Theoretical Physicist, once said: “The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one”. This quote explains how people should consider their problems as their concerns and learn to solve them immediately. I think if people have a hard time solving their problems because they do not know from where to start, they would cause big damage in their Ecology. 

Berry highlighted various points in which people should give up the notion that they are perfect to do their own work and to clean up their own messes, and make locally adopted economies based on local nature, local sunlight, local intelligence and local work. He also emphasized that people should understand that these measures are radical. They go to the root of people’s problems and any expert cannot perform them for people. This is an agenda, which Berry believes, may be assumed by ordinary citizens at any time on their own initiative.    

References: 

Mankind Ecological Imprint. By Wendell Berry. New York Post National. 11^th May, 2011.  

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Quotation:  http://refspace.com/quotes/problem-solving