Blog #6

What are your reactions to your GTP reading?  What are your preliminary ideas for leading a class meeting focused on this topic?

After reading the materials for our group teaching projects I have realized that my topic, which is deep ecology, is very conceptual and hard to grasp without the proper concentration. I think that deep ecology is a hard concept to grasp in its entirety. I think a discussion of this topic after reading these articles that I have read would be a great way to explore and dig deeper into the topic. One thing that I do not understand it the animal rights article. One of the points the author makes is for the "total dissolution of commercial animal agriculture and the total elimination of commercial and sport hunting and trapping". From the reading I got this sense of almost a view that humans should be vegetarians because eating animals interferes with the standards set by deep ecology. But if humans and animals are all alike then us hunting and eating other animals or growing and eating animals would be the same as animals eating other animals for survival. The human race is so large that we would not be able to survive without creating our own source of food. But then this can be somewhat explained with the view that our population is too large and abusing the world. I also thought the idea of "life quality" over "increasing the standard of living" was kind of mind boggling. Where does the line get drawn to decipher between the two.