class blog

Matthew Barry

Professor Santos

English 102-042

1/26/17

Class Blog

            In our first week of class I learned that we have to respect nature and give gratitude to nature. Most people look at living things in nature not as a “who” but an “it”, and that portrays the living thing as an object. Robin Wall Kimmerer says “When we tell them that the tree is not a who, but an it, we make that maple an object: we put a barrier between us, absolving ourselves of moral responsibility and opening the door to exploitation. Saying it makes a living land into “natural resources.” If a maple is an it, we can take up the chainsaw. If a maple is a her, we think twice.” The result of most people thinking of living objects as an “it” instead of a who is destroying the lives of animals and other livings things. For example, every day humans are cutting down thousands of trees or even more. Cutting down trees has a huge effect on animals and their habitat. Many people need to change their way of thinking about nature. 

Also, the hunting of certain animals can be a huge problem. In the Yellowstone National Park, they allowed people to kill wolves because they were predators. In the 1900’s they killed all the wolves in the national park. The effect that the decrease of wolves had on the national park was crazy. All of the animals that the wolves hunted reproduced like crazy, and there were huge populations of those animals. This resulted in a food depletion for these animals. The people who killed these wolves thought of the animal as an “it”, and not a “who”. And they did not know the role the wolves had in the national park. All animals and living things are dependent on each other.