BETHANIE GOURLEY

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     If we, the human species, want to unify across the planet, then we individually will have to forgive the differences that set us apart. While, cultures and defined countries are already in place. Culture is a central factor to the human identity, and the goal I mention is not to merge everyone into one identity. However, the mission of unity is for people to understand and act within connected space by acknowledging the consequences of aggregate action, which are not inherently bad. Since we are truly globalized in the material world. I support the idea that the ultimate goal for humans is to unify within the spiritual realm as well. This refers to the way we see and treat the lives of other people, because all humans suffer. People, plants, and animals are all given life, but we have to sustain that life. We have to eat, obtain water, and survive through physical and social relations. As mentioned by the ecofeminist writer Rosemary Radford Ruether, one needs to see the interconnections between both the impoverishment of the earth and between human groups. To extend reverence to the land, we must start with gearing respect towards human life as well, since it is what’s most familiar to us. 

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     Ruether elaborates on the ties between eco-justice and social justice in the conclusion of Christianity and Ecology Seeking the Well-Being of Earth and Humans. Her argument is grounded in covenantal and sacramental theologies. She calls for an ethic that encompasses the covenant of God within the world and all things. This ethic needs to uphold single species groups and the biotic community, where both the life of the individual and community are sustained. With an anthropocentric focus, I testify that the homo sapien species do not sustain the cycles within the earth, by themselves. The accumulation of biotic communities all contribute to respiration and cycling of elements in the atmosphere. Within biology, the word community negates the interaction of different species living amongst one another. Therefore, due to the covenant of God in all things, communities across the globe deserve justice. This includes different individuals within a species. Again, in relation to humans, the right to be sustained is indifferent to identity, race, and socioeconomic status. There is no individual that deserves one thing over another, for all of them are sustained by the same earth. Ruether also discusses sacramental spirituality. The body itself is regenerated with the divine presence, which is the ground being of the spirit. For one to disrespect another means they are disrespecting the holy. To question sentience or the connection to a holy, is to question the stability of the earth that is ever cycling to sustain itself. Some examples are through ocean currents, storms, and the respiration of plants and animals. The sacramental body created the land and even the source of humans. The earth also provides all life with the necessities to sustain themselves. Covenantal and sacramental connections are fundamental to the gift of life.

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     Since life is sourced from the sacramental body, I want to explore the beauty of the earth and life. I do believe in evolution, and I think all of the earth's species came from primal life that adapted in relation to the biomes of the oceans, lands, and atmosphere. I think the Christian creation story explains the species and organisms of the world, but I believe the story is a narration of life that’s been evolving and adapting over billions of years. In Sunday school, the Christian creation stories metaphorically describe how God created the world in seven days. All of the elements found on earth came from space, and they suit a purpose on Earth. Initially, in the story of Genesis, the first compound explicitly mentioned is water, being H20. God then created light. Then, God separated the water underneath the expanse, called the “sky”. The sky comprises multiple compounds: such as oxygen (O2), carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrogen (N2), and ozone (O3), and water vapor. Each of these compounds play important roles. The ozone in the atmosphere protects life from the ultraviolet rays of the sun, being the light that God granted on Earth. Then, God created land which separated from the sea, and the land produced vegetation. Vegetation takes in carbon dioxide and water, also available in the atmosphere, and produces oxygen through photosynthesis.  Plants also may fix nitrogen from the atmosphere into their roots as a source of nutrients for growth. All of these functions sustain primary productivity and help extend life. The creation of air, water, and vegetation all connect to one another. Then, God created the creatures of the sky and of the sea, all according to their kinds. The main component and source of animal respiration is oxygen. Animal respiration produces and cycles carbon dioxide as well. No single life is important alone, but plants and animals help each other breathe. 

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     The first chapter of the Bible, and all that I’ve just evaluated, explains how vegetation and animal life sustain each other, even though it may not be explicitly expressed in Genesis. One could argue that plants could live without the creatures that cycle carbon dioxide. However, in my opinion, creatures also make the lives of plants easier. Animals and insects contribute to pollination, seed dispersal, and manipulate landscapes so different forms of life can thrive and spread to places that best suit them. I do believe that living creatures could not survive without plants, for they make carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen more available in the troposphere, where we live. Other gases, like ozone, are beneficial in the stratosphere. Each of the elements mentioned is fundamental to the processes which sustain life. Let alone, the cycling of oxygen and carbon dioxide is what gives us breath. The specialty of breath can also be compared to the spirit. Within the story of “The Valley of Dry Bones” from the book of Ezekiel, it has been written that during a vision, the Sovereign Lord said to the prophet Ezekiel, “I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life.” The breath of the spirit changes the perception of God from a punisher into a comforter in this story. In a greater context, the spirit is sustained by the miraculous function of breathing. 

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     Breath is a central focus of many world religions, and a central part of meditation. I think the focus on breathing, meditating, and walking is not only beneficial for clearing one’s head, but also in assisting a change of perspective. Henry David Throeau even wrote a book titled Walking. The simplicity of walking is such a valuable act, because it’s what allows creatures, not just humans, to roam the earth and notice their place. In Wendell Berry’s The World-Ending Fire, he even touches on the subject of walking in the first chapter. He says, “a lifetime will not be enough to experience it all”, for it points out the limitations of the physical being. While walking, humans practice extending themselves to the whole. They may recognize their function. They may notice the other species and abiotic sectors that coexist in the same plain. “One has made a relationship with the landscape, and the form and the symbol and the enactment of the relationship is the path.” We have a tendency toward habit, Berry says, because that’s where we are comfortable. I agree, but I also argue that our individual senses can never be completely full, so even if we get comfortable looking at the same path, the mind is more likely to extend to things other than the self. Even if on a walk my mind shifts its focus to “normal” things, like trees and rocks, it seems like I cannot contemplate the grandness of their formations. In my opinion, there is no end to the pleasure of seeing. While being limited to an individual scope, I find that walking widens the eye required to see that humans are sustained in the same way trees and rocks are. Additionally, since humans have the capacity of morals, and the ability to decipher between good and bad, then humans should also have the ability to recognize the beauty in one another. We have the capability to view separate lives as complementary.

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     Now, at the beginning, I mentioned that humans must overcome the differences between each other to truly unify. I believe that acknowledging similarities across groups, like the breath of life, has the potential to bring communities together. Humans cannot help guide change for the outside world until we obtain the right view that aligns humans as being one with the world. This idea was introduced to me and put into words by Thích Nhất Hạnh, a Vietnamese monk. He claims that this will be the century of spirituality. Hate, anger, and fear are sourced through the wrong view. In one of his interviews, Hạnh says the real instrument of Mother Earth is to preserve compassion. Humans are one with the earth, because we are sustained with the same breath that fills the life of others. The same miracle of life that is within us, is the same miracle of life in others. When one commits wrong actions towards another, they are disrespecting the whole and themself. We are made of the elements that are shared across the earth, as represented in trees, bunnies, and super old rocks. Individual connections to the whole should not engage pointlessness, but invite purposeful compassion. 

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     I have worries about the cumulative impacts from the human species on the world, but I’m also reassured by the everlasting love that we comprise of. The people within the world today are also the prosperity of the generations from the industrial revolution, the golden age of pesticides, expanding global capitalism, and demand-based societies. I believe we can think bigger than our individual selves and our demands from current markets. We have the ability to choose what items we purchase, how we power our homes, and how we source electricity and energy in general. I really enjoy another quote from Wendell Berry on individual revolution. He states, “we can honestly confront our ignorance and our need; we can take guidance from knowledge we most authentically possess, from experience… and from the inward promptings of affection.” I’ve learned before one can prompt change, they must actually see the truth of the reality. This will require our species to remove the myth of human progress, anthropocentrism, and the separation of our species from nature. Individuals cannot only count on other individuals to innact desired changes. They must start in their homes and it must involve “compassion and humility and caution.”

    In the paper “The Beauty That Requires Health”, Marcia Muelder Eaton connects contextual aesthetics and conservation. She’s interested in how aesthetics affect one’s care and concern for the well-being of the natural world. The connection between ethics and nature aesthetics is significant because sometimes what looks aesthetically best is not what is ecologically best for an environment. From a moral position, we should base our aesthetics off of what is ecologically best for an area or object, and also grow our idea of what those aesthetic standards look like. I believe it is our responsibility as a community to make informed choices regarding how we manage the environment. For example, in some suburban areas, it is a social standard to keep a neat, mowed lawn. However, the damages created from mowing a lawn add up. Modern mowers are wasting gasoline just to cut grass. What if our social standards were also beneficial to the environment? An overgrown lawn with colorful weeds growing throughout it can also be considered a standard of beauty. A yard may look “messy” to someone who is unaware of the biological health being displayed, but someone who understands the natural processes across different types of backyards would acknowledge the beauty in life going on there. Once we gain more knowledge about an area, we can appreciate the beauty in its health.

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     Eaton’s contextual aesthetic framework for the appreciation of natural objects is cognitive. The cognitive contexts may be historically, economically, politically, emotionally and culturally driven. Eaton diverges from Allen Carlson’s scientific cognitivist model to guide what we should attend to and what we can disregard. She believes the scientific community can guide where we should attend to in nature, because ecologists know signs of land health, and through their contextual knowledge they can decipher what we should look at.

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    Eaton claims aesthetic value is a matter of that which “sustains” attention. However, her use of sustain goes on to actually describe stimulated attention. Through an analogy to art, Eaton suggests attentively observing landscapes and environments so our attention is directed and our experience can be evaluated in a holistic way. Once we adjust to the colors, shapes, and composition of a painting, we can allow our senses to understand what’s being observed instead of leaving our experience at the first aesthetic sensation. When applied to environmental aesthetics, relevant knowledge redirects attention to an object, causing one to focus on it, and then Eaton says this attention motivates a desire to know more about the object. Since, aesthetic sensations can be short-lived in the natural world, additional knowledge about what’s being observed can help bridge the gap to help stimulate attention. In the art case, we protect works that deserve repeated attention, and we normally want to learn more about them. The same argument can be made for the conservation of landscapes. We can direct attention towards aesthetic properties in a landscape when we have information about ecosystems, which ecologists can provide. Once we come to understand a system, we can perceive elements of the system and their relationships (Eaton, 342). Eaton connects aesthetic to ethics through the prioritization of education about environments.

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    However, emotional reactions are rational ways to evaluate the things we encounter in the natural world. Noël Carroll explores the validity of being emotionally aroused by nature in the paper “On Being Moved by Nature”. These responses involve attention to scale. If I were exhilarated by the grandeur of a waterfall, then I’m responding to the criteria of scale appropriateness, because the waterfall is expansive (Carroll, 175). Therefore, my reaction of exhilaration is an appropriate response to something being grand. Eaton also recognizes the role of pleasure, emotion, and imagination as cognitive experiences of a nature. Some people are overwhelmed by nature’s complexity, amazed or struck in awe, take delight in its patterns, or find love, endearment, and belonging. Who’s to say one response is more valid than another? Ned Hettinger would elaborate that objective emotions are those that are appropriate to their objects and whose underlying beliefs are reasonable for others to share (Hettinger, 428). I find fear or appreciation are valid responses, depending on the situation. Someone can be terrified of a snake slithering around or they could be excited because they’re intrigued by its beauty. Just because something can create a “negative” reaction, like fear, doesn’t mean it only possesses negative value. Eaton would say the emotional responses created should be evaluated as a whole before one were to classify their connection to aesthetic value.

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    Eaton acknowledges that personal reactions in nature cause people to become interested in it, but the appreciator should then learn more about what they’re viewing or experiencing. We should acquire knowledge about the object as a whole to then know how to represent its positive aesthetics. Then, conservation efforts should account for particular aesthetic experiences, and show aesthetically valuable and ecologically sound properties. Eaton’s nexus between aesthetics and ethics further depends on temporal and spatial scales. The categories we attribute to landscapes or natural objects help us take into account their intrinsic properties and both their natural and cultural history. Eaton recognizes certain values are specific to particular locations. For example, the intrinsic properties valued in a wetland are not the same type of intrinsic values expected on a mountaintop even though they are both landscapes.

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    The contextual aesthetics and conservation model also strives to account for extrinsic features that are usually inconspicuous or invisible, but still they are factors in environments. Such as, wetlands provide a drainage system that removes toxins from runoff before it reaches other bodies of water. This drainage is not directly perceivable. Hence, knowledge about this process contributes to the aesthetic appreciation of wetlands.  Extrinsic features may seem aesthetically irrelevant if we were to classify experiencing nature only through the aesthetic properties: colors, shapes, composition. When one directly perceives a natural environment, through sight or sound or touch, they are having an aesthetic experience. Since unperceivable qualities are difficult to observe, planning and thinking in terms of spatial and temporal scales are relevant. Non perceivables affect the beauty of an object or environment even if they’re not originally apparent.

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    Conservation also takes human influences into account. Human effects on the environment include the presence of human made structures, which make up parts of civilization at one time or another, and bear the things we use for survival. In “An Overview of Environmental Ethics” Clare Palmer expands on human-centered environmental ethics. Anthropogenic approaches do not strictly propose reckless exploitation of the environment. Humans also use natural resources in a careful manner. The people that make decisions about the aesthetic appearance of natural environments are likely to be affected by cultural expectations if not through education. Growing up my father always made sure we had perfectly cut grass, and made sure the yard and the plants throughout it were watered. His explanation for his style of upkeep was rooted in the traditional expectations of how a front yard looks in the United States. I recognize that this is not the only way you can care for the area around a house. The attributes that make a yard beautiful vary. They don’t have to look artificial and only be based around what humans want the aesthetics to be. The aesthetic value of a yard can also coincide with the ecological health as well. Philosophers, like Eaton, relate aesthetics to the moral judgments we make about environmental conservation. Communities will benefit from the desire to take care of the environment in a well informed manner: for the ecological benefit and for the new forms of beauty they may observe.

During the fall of 2014, Innovate 2 Educate was introduced to Noble Impact. We were allowed to share our ideas on how to solve problems that occur in the school system. My group's problem was the traditonal classroom setup was not efficent for current classrooms. We are Stay Comfy and consist of Sophie Bryant, Emerson Smith, and myself. 

We used the Lean Canvas and Business Model to develop Stay Comfy. We presented the traditonal classroom setup problem to our Noble Impact classes. Our solution was to create a moveable classroom that influences collaboration and creativity. Our idea moved on to pitch at the first Innovate 2 Educate event in the past Ark Challenge building. We competed against other selected Noble Impact groups at Innovate 2 Educate. The goal was to find a group with the best idea that could be implemented in real school systems. The judges of the event were Deedra Wilson from Fox 16, Cory Biggs from the Arkansas Department of Education, and Jonathan Dunkley from the Univeristy of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service. 

Our group, Stay Comfy, came out to be the winner of the whole event. We continued to process our idea and presented it at the National EAST Conference in Hot Springs, Arkansas. 

Stay Comfy : https://twitter.com/staycomfyar

Innovate 2 Educate : https://twitter.com/i2eArkansas

Fox 16 Innovate 2 Educate Article : http://innovation.arkansasbusiness.com/articles/102044/innovate-2-educate

My first Noble Impact project consisted of working with a local business in Little Rock and breaking down their brand. My group consisted of Sophie Bryant, Sophie Allwine, Emerson Smith, Jasmine Jones, and myself. We worked with the brand, Orbea, the national bicycle manufacturer. We used the Proctor and Gamble bussiness model to help develop Orbea's brand.  Our job was to figure out the Who, Why, and How of their company and who their customers were. We researched their business and interviewed Tony Karklins, the CEO of the Orbea on Main in Little Rock. We also created a survey and networked it through Little Rock to find the problems in their business. 

We presented the problems of our business to our peers and their businesses. The problem within Orbea was the lack of advertising. The business had good branding, but the people in the community did not know what Orbea was. We had a pleasure of working with Orbea and are thankful for the opportunity of working with a national brand. 

Logistics and equiptment doesn't fuel my passion for film. I am inspired by the format available to share stories and expereinces.

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The second Innovate 2 Educate project I worked on was based around creating our own school. We created the architecture of the building, the classroom set up, and the organization of the school. My group created the school Bequest and consisted of Sophie Bryant, Sophie Allwine, Emerson Smith, and myself. 

We used the Lean Canvas and Bussiness Model to develop our school and we valued legacy. We wanted to help build each students legacy through our school's organization. Our school's architecture was based around circles to incorporate collaboration. The school followed Google's 80/20 rule. The students would spend 80% of their time at school working on academics, then the last 20% of the time the students would be working to build their legacy. This includes working on personal projects. 

We competed at the second Innovate 2 Educate event at the Clinton School of Public Service. It was a great experience. Students were finally able to give their opinion on the school system. 

Innovate 2 Educate : https://twitter.com/i2eArkansas