Reflective analysis and personal insights

¶ … improve my writing skills in English, and 2) understand more about how the world is connected and how our actions affect others. In terms of my writing, since English is not my first language, it was often difficult to use the right vocabulary and phrasing to make my points. I had to spend a great deal of time with the dictionary, rewriting, and reading my material aloud to others in order to make sure it made sense. I learned about organizing and outlining my writing, and also about how complex English can be in terms of word choice. For instance, even the concept of sustainability and ecology can have many phrases that mean something similar; and when trying to right about the concept of "one world," I had to rewrite a number of times.

Improvements in my writing, I think, came from being strict with myself about using an outline. Of course I knew that an outline was a list, a way to put relationships on paper. but, I was not skilled at using the outline to improve my writing as a more "active" document in which I added, deleted, edited and changed in order to have a map for my writing assignment. I think that it was very important that I kept working with outlines so that I could better organize my ideas and keep track of large amounts of information. I also used outlines to help me understand the relationships between the things I was writing about. For instance, when I wrote about Farmer's Markets, I had many ideas about their use, reasons people like them, and how important they are to the environment. By using an outline, I organized my thoughts so that the ideas and story not only made sense to me, but flowed and told a better story to the reader.

In terms of content, I think that there were four major issues that I became more aware of during the class, and because of my research and writing: globalism, sustainability, the one-world concept, and cultural differences based on my country and religion (Saudi Arabia and Islam), and other views.

Of course I was aware of the term globalism and globalization -- who is not? It is in the newspapers and popular press constantly. Perhaps that is why it meant more to me to learn about the way that a number of economic, political and cultural movements began to change the world, especially closer to the 21st century. I learned that globalism was not just a theory, but more of a concept. The idea, it seems, is that modern life is so complex and interconnected that events and actions all over the world are tied together -- and it does not matter what country, what religion, what political force, or even how rich or poor the country is, everything is tied together. Because of this, the ways countries communicated with each other in the past no longer work well. By having economic trade and treaties between nations, and with the ability to use modern technology to communicate better with anyone globally, conflict should be less because people have an interest in keeping trade and communication open. This, I think, is very important especially coming from the Arab world where, at times, the culture is more isolated and the view is that "we are right" and the rest of the world is wrong. I learned that there is really no right and wrong when dealing with other cultures and beliefs, only differences along a long line of grey.

Second, I became interested in the works and ideas of Michael Pollan. Pollan writes about using food sources wisely -- both animals and plants. Indeed, both animals and plants are resources that humans need, and I understand this. However, there is a big difference between using resources as we need them and wasting them. This is a huge shift in thought when one goes into an American grocery store -- or looks at the piles of food that are thrown out every day at the same time that children are hungry all over the world. Pollan says we are omnivores, but that we have a real dilemma. The dilemma is that humans are omnivorous -- we can eat mean, grain, vegetables -- a wide variety of what nature has to offer. Deciding what to eat, what bounty of nature to utilize, becomes a dilemma due to the differences in geography, physical culture, social pressures, and even the simply availability of products. The anxiety is compounded based not only on choice, but also on taste and preference. Because of technology, we humans are capable of doing tremendous damage to the planet based on the decisions of what to eat. In fact, this is so serious, that Pollan notes that we now have the added dilemma of potentially devastating the ecology of some areas simply to provide a certain "taste" for x cuisine.

This is even more complex when we think about ethics and our treatment of animals. I had never realized just how unethical factory farming could be -- and how out of balance it is to raise thousands and thousands of chickens or turkeys in a hot barn that is so unhealthy for them that they have to be pumped full of antibiotics just to live; or the egg farms that pack chickens so tight their feet grow into the wires. This caused me to think -- it is not that we should not eat meat, but perhaps we should think about how we go about feeding ourselves so we can be more in tune with the one-world environment. Instead of pillaging areas, why not find ways to grow and raise food more sustainably?

This brings up another major point for me -- the idea of sustainability in all things. Before this class and the research on Pollan and Farmer's Markets, I saw the world in a more regional light -- the Arab World, the Asian World, the Developed World, etc. Instead, I learned about a new concept called Gaia, in which we can see the entire planet as a living thing. The Earth's forests are the lungs, processing and cleaning the air. The wind and waves are the bloodstream, moving air throughout the system. For instance, the Amazon Rain Forests are so vast and packed with trees that it seems painful to cut them down for a few pieces of furniture or so someone can raise more cattle. When we think of the two ideas of globalism and sustainability, we see that we have a true responsibility towards everyone in the world to help keep the environment healthy. If we do not, there will be no environment.

The idea of sustainability comes across in many ways that were new to me. When we build, we should try to build in a way that uses fewer resources and is more compatible with the environment. For instance, building houses in dry deserts should use solar and wind power, build partially underground, and landscape with natural arid-type plants. We should ask about the labor practices of the companies that supply our food and coffee, and only buy from ethical companies. We should try not to waste food, or purchase from places that use cruel or harsh chemicals to raise products. and, whether we change behaviors or not, we should realize that the lemon we use in the middle of winter has to be grown and shipped from somewhere warm -- and there is an environmental cost to this. Above all, and what hits very close to home for me, is our use of fossil fuels in a way that yes, makes certain areas of the world wealthy, but also pollutes and causes harm to other areas.