Butterfly Effect

The land and us are one. While some apocalyptic movies we watch on the big screens are not always too far astray from the truth. I want to show people in Western cultures that consumption and ownership is not the path to happiness. Nature and community is the only way to achieve happiness. I believe that every problem has a solution because nature is balanced. For every sickness or disease, there is a pattern of finding new medicines naturally. The world can sustain itself because nature maintains balance. Us humans have ruined that balance and tipped the scales completely, which is why we have a harder time finding cures for the diseases of today. Everything is related, and I want to make people understand that by showing them in a way where they understand-- through storytelling. Education is not going to be enough for people to understand the direness, but storytelling compels people of all ages, demographics, cultures, etc. People are moved by stories because it touches their hearts, and my goal is to tell as many stories and touch as many hearts that I can. 

"We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children." -- Native American Proverb

I have recently just returned from the Discover Abroad semester program with Dr. Mikell Gleason in Hawaii, New Zealand, Australia, and Fiji. We learned the repetitive lesson that people are a part of the land wherever we visited. The original people of the land all take on the responsibility and role of being the guardians and stewards of the land because they know the land the best. Everywhere we went the story was the same; the White man came over and wanted the land for themselves and tried to take the original's resources. They bribed them with money they cannot eat or drink in return for bringing "civilization" to the land. Once civilization came, the original people were oppressed and belittled, and the natural resources and natural traditions were depleted. The idea of "owning" land is purely just wrong. One cannot own land, just like the land does not belong to a specific group. The land belongs to the Earth, and humans are just the ones who must take care of it. WE ARE STEWARDS OF OUR LAND. IF WE WORK AGAINST THE LAND INSTEAD OF WITH IT, one day it will end up being our own poison we breathe in. 

I believe that the world provides us with everything humans need to sustain our lives, and it always has from the beginning of time. However, with the introduction of the industrial revolution, we have become obsessed with the idea of progress and further improvements, and we have become stuck within progress traps. Now, we do not fix the initial and rooted problems in the sources, we only strive to improve the improvements we have introduced. For example, we do not need further improvements into technology, robotics, and AI, but we desperately need to work on depleting plastics and micro-plastics from our environment and daily lifestyles. My interest in sustainability stems from my yearn to protect not only the future of our world but also the future of our people. I believe that the people are a part of the land. We need to work together with Mother Nature rather than divide ourselves from her. Mother Nature has been providing for us since the beginning of time, and now it is our turn to return the favor. I also believe that if we do not act soon, our own actions will be our own downfall. We already all have a credit card worth of plastics in our bodies due to micro-plastics, and plastics have not been around long enough for us to know the long-term benefits. Also, the more carbon emissions we feed into the atmosphere, the more detrimental natural causes will be. My home country of Turkey suffered not one, not two, but three record-breaking earthquakes killing 50,000 people. These natural disasters will only worsen the more we ignore the problem of over-consumption. Everything is connected. If we ruin the balance on one side, we bear the consequences on the other side.