After reading the article on mindfulness and sustainability, the correlation between the two has become clear. The article states that being mindful is essentially being aware and taking into consideration what is going on within ourselves and the outside world, while not shying away from information or feelings that we wish weren’t true or don’t like. A couple of ways that we can be mindful are by engaging in meditation or making it a lifestyle. I learned from the article that these practices of being in the moment improves well-being and empathy as well as promotes awareness of an individuals values that they hold, ultimately leading to sustainable behavior. Meditation is becoming more attractive and reaching areas that it hasn’t reached before. Hopefully, the world will soon transition to this lifestyle so that we will be able to utilize our natural resources more efficiently to meet our needs and aspirations and only when necessary to avoid depletion. This article has definitely made me want to practice mindful meditation so that I may develop a sustainable lifestyle, I think it is our goal as we attend this class to provide an example to the rest of the world on the importance of sustainable practices both privately and within large industries that produce a lot of waste and pollution. I think the meditation exercise that I favored most out of the few we did in class was the guided meditation. I have previously participated in a meditation similar to this but I would say that I prefer to be in an area with little to no distractions so I can truly experience being in the moment. I really like this exercise because it makes me feel very relaxed and at peace when I am focused on only my breathing and allows me to release negative or unwanted energy and thoughts. I think it is important to practice being mindful so that we can understand how much of an impact we can have on ourselves as well as the world around us with the slightest action, over time our habitual tendencies can create a chain reaction of disastrous events as we have seen.

A major takeaway I got from the Ted Talk by Mark Cohen was that as individuals we will not truly be well when the world is not. As he mentioned our well-being is multidimensional, so if one of our dimensions is in a crisis then our well-being is not at its best. When thinking of our well-being we must think about how it can affect us. If we are happy, most likely this will translate to a mindful state which gradually develops into sustainable behavior. I think that this is so important especially at the stage we are now in society, we all need to prioritize our well-being which includes that of our home.

From watching the 11th hour I realized the extent in which humans separate themselves from nature as well as our choice in placing economic greed over environmentally friendly practices. I learned that the greatest cause of mass destruction is corporate economic globalization. With the creation of corporations is that the perfection of those systems will cause us to face the death of our host, the earth. This structure of law has created a large barrier of nature vs. man in which if you are not considered to be person, you are property. So, while we have documented proof of how to create a more sustainable economy we lack the authority to drive those things into law because in reality we have a constitution in place that provides power to the corporate few that will trump the majority. I think that the filmmakers had a right to use fear tactics when discussing this issue because this is not only damaging to the population of other species but is contributing to the extinction of mankind. If we don’t do something to alter the way we function as a society and exchange our greed for mindfulness we will not see our world at the desired state.

Activity 2 addressed many of the wicked problems that are apparent in the film including climate change, deforestation, nonrenewable resource use, biodiversity loss, and population growth. In this activity we were to analyze these problems and determine which of them were truly wicked based upon the six wicked problem characteristics. In this activity I identified climate change and population growth to be truly wicked problems but I found the others to not check at least one of the boxes.