Final post

Something that really made me think more than anything else in this class was Descartes. What made it...bother me (I'm not sure that's the right word, but nothing else seems to fit) is that without it, we wouldn't be as advanced as we are today. But with it, it creates so many challenges to us because it is so ingrained in our cultural and scientific consciousness that we think that there isn't any other way to view the world. The natural world isn't so cut and dry, no matter how many little categories we create. Creating different, separate categories isn't practical or useful in any way. By using Cartesian maps, even it helps us see the tress in the forest, it gets harder to see the forest.

But without it, we'd be completely overwhelmed and lost. I must admit that I was/still kind of am stuck in the Cartesian way of thinking. When we are younger, we think in terms of absolutes, black and white, no shades of gray, and as we get older we gain more experience that real life isn't always one way or the other (even though it would be much simpler that way). But we never lose our Cartesian way of thinking unless we are presented with it and shown that things don't have to be seen this way, like what happened in this class with Anne Fausto-Sterling.

It was disconcerting at first, and I'm still grappling with this because it's a major change in my way of thinking. I don't like gray areas or uncertainty, and both of those things make me extremely anxious and sometimes give me panic attacks. So this change in thinking is going very slowly for me, so I don't get overwhelmed and start freaking out unnecessarily. But I think this change will be for the better. Like everything else in life it's about finding that balance and re-adjusting every so often.

Have an excellent summer everyone!