How we look at emotion takes many different forms, whether its anger, guilt, fear, apathy, or grief. These are everyday feelings that most of us feel on a regular basis. You can feel this way towards politics, environmental issue, global issues, or whatever it is you may have an opinion on. But when really talking about these types of emotions, it is leaning towards the environmental/agriculture side of things. For all of this semester we have been discussing the Anthropocene and everything that deals with it up to this point. So being that emotion was apart of that process. There is always the questions; “Could I have done more?” “What could I have changed?” These are questions that people today are pondering every minute with how our world has changed and how with evidence we can see that we’ve done so much that it is almost impossible to reverse it. Realizing that, this is where you grab the emotion of the people and show that even with little change you can make a difference it may not be a big change but it is a stepping-stone in the process of making our world a better place.
There are plenty of reasons why some people done speak up and stand up and show their emotions for their beliefs and its because they feel that they would be alone on their stand and the common whole would think differently of him. The example I use is, in elementary school there are always those kids who stand out and want to be different and believe different things. Although they rarely act on what they believe or what they want because of the ridicule or judgment they would get from the rest of the kids in their class. This is the way I see our world today, however there are the brave ones that do take action and try to reverse things that those from the past have done to enhance the Anthropocene so that it slowly develops into a better world for those that come after us.
Emotion as it relates to my topic, marijuana is a very emotional topic. There are those that are for it and those that are totally against it. This dates backs years and years ago. Just an example; George Washington and Thomas Jefferson both grew hemp and they were American presidents. However when talking of marijuana today you will hear two sides, Marijuana is a healer and has many benefits that most drugs that are prescribed don’t have or do it better then that drug. Then there is that that say it is a gateway drug that leads to worse things. Dating back to the early 1900’s propaganda and slander, the production and use of marijuana was immediately compromised with their ads stating that it was making people insane and that this drug was going to ruin us even though they were completely uneducated on the matter. Most of this would believe that this is the “war on drugs” that past presidents have talked about, but in all reality it is much more complex. Back during the era of slander and debauchery the timber industry was booming making millions of sheets of paper everyday. However it was discovered that hemp could make much more paper and take half the yield of the crop compared to cutting down such massive trees and damaging the forests and causing mass amounts of carbon to be released. When the timber industry caught wind they parted with legislatures to have it be illegal because of the money they were in jeopardy of losing.
When you ask someone from back in that time frame you would hear all the same thoughts because those people didn’t know any different. Over the years there has been information and knowledge bestowed upon the people to let them know that this plant is a good thing and can be used for everyday materials, being clothes, medicine, etc. And can even help our environment in a big way, which is what I want to show to my community because most people aren’t aware of what’s going on. The production of paper is a huge resource for us and we use massive amounts of trees where their once was a forest is now a tree graveyard. Trees capture carbon and keep it from filling our atmosphere, which is a huge balance in our environment that is set to be thrown off with the massive amounts of deforestation. This is where hemp plays in and letting everyone know how much damage we are doing and what we could do be legalizing marijuana for the use of everyday material we could make a huge difference.
Question to think about: Does your personal opinion on a subject really matter when that subject is affecting everyone as a whole. (looking at this in terms of the legalization of marijuana).
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