(Foreword: this is an essay I had to write for an internship application. I had to describe my interests in environmental science, including my coursework and extracurricular activities.)
“In all things of nature, there is something of the marvelous.” This was said by Aristotle in Parts of Animals, more than 2,000 years before my birth. His aged wisdom may be trapped behind the bars of a history book prison, to be interrogated by the mind of a historian and not one of an observer; but it can live on in my own ways. Nature is, aside from all others, beautiful—this makes its preservation, in my opinion, a worthy end in itself. However, a definitive practicality for this emerges from our own needs as a human species, as well. It is quite obvious to me, at the very least, that humans are offered a choice of interaction with their environment: we may act as blackmailing parasites, or as mutually benevolent partners. In either instance, I believe it follows that care for the environment serves not only my ontology, but my deontology as well.
Realistically, humans are as much of a product of their environment as any other animal. In the way I believe God has intended, we have developed into a species that is quite capable of thriving in a very specific way. It helps to mention, though, that we exist quite differently from other animals. In our case, it is easy to forget that the earth upon which we set out feet, our homes, our cars, and our factories is our biological cradle and fate in common. In a Biblical sense, it is the dust from which we rise, and to which we return. Having our fates so intrinsically combined, should I not make an intentional effort to see its health, its majesty, and its beauty preserved? The earth freely gave us life in the beginning of Genesis, and because of our faults, we now subsist on our exploitation of its life. It is not only my duty to preserve what the earth is and should be, but my right. The God-given gift of life is not one to be mindlessly squandered or stubbornly dismissed as entitlement. It is because of my interest in the conservation of life and beauty that my relationship with the environment has been watermarked by a sense of mutual respect and service, with all that I do.
Stamped across the syllabi of every science course I have taken at Spring Arbor is this commitment to Biblical stewardship. I remember specifically the arduous complication of methods in organic chemistry labs in favor of processes that were “greener” than simpler methods—altogether exemplary of this commitment. In a way, I have continued this course in my participation with a project on campus, designed to utilize biodiesel instead of normal fossil fuels. My work in biology courses served my commitment on a much more macroscopic scale. Ecology led me to see the de-magnified nature of nature, and the infinitely complex machines that exist to preserve the lives of individuals and groups. In zoology, botany, cell biology, and biological chemistry, the work I put forth guided me through the discovery of the various ways that smaller, but even more complex machines preserve life as a whole.
As I have explained to my classmates on several occasions, the detail and complexity with which I understand the world has exposed me to a very unique beauty; a beauty I had not previously known, nor appreciated. How could I leave this angel to be forced to descend to the hell of human greed, to the depravity of one-sided and silent disdain? To those uninterested in the aesthetic, are not our fates bound to that of the earth? There is no way for me to distance myself from its majesty, or from the giving submission of nature—so must I choose to submit to nature, in both gratitude and duty.
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