On Tuesday afternoon, after departing the natural haven that is the CAT, we stopped at the UWTSD Lampeter campus and joined two professors Nick and Luci for a brief discussion on harmony. We heard from Nick a philosophical perspective on the matter which touched upon historic philosophers and a theme of one-ness. His message was insightful and thought-provoking, but I’d like to focus on what we heard from Luci, an Anthropologist.
Luci first made the point that often we view anthropology as looking at past cultures and identifying how the past has influenced our present — but there needs to be a shift in that approach. Her approach to anthropology is very forward thinking: looking at cultures and societies as they are now, and making educated choices on where to go from here. Her message? Looking to the past has not helped us up to this point, so why should we continue?
Luci was captivating and exciting – she offered agency to us as pioneers of the future, to begin fighting for the changes that we want to see, not that we’re being handed. It was truly a plea for us to take the future into our hands. We have been encouraged in the last few days to think about the future tales that we’ve been told: the movies and books that suggest a dystopian, ruined world being governed by malicious dictators and fear mongering, with limited food supply and dirty water. This is the world we are being asked to expect, but as Luci said, we should not have to.

With a bachelors in environmental studies, I have found that my education has unfortunately left me with a sense of pessimism and near hopelessness, but in the last few days I can feel my inner self releasing some of this tension. Yes, it will literally be the fight for our lives, but I want to take part in that fight as wholly as I can. It truly is up to us to challenge this story we’ve been given and push through the tough waters that we will inevitably face. I don’t want to be given a world of gas masks and infertility – I will no longer accept that narrative. I will fight for a world of harmony with nature.
-Kelly