The playlist that I decided to create was one that mostly contained songs of a sad, angry and eventually hopeful nature. The dark and sad songs that I included were based off of my initial gut reaction to finding out about the anthropocene and how we had gotten to this point. The angry portion of the songs reflect on my thoughts after finding out that people have been trying to push for so long to slow down and stop the thumbprint that the human race has put onto the environment and how we paved the way for the anthropocene, knowing that we could have slowed it down substantially but instead we decided to ignore it and continue on with our comfortable lifestyles not caring who or what they hurt in the long run. As my playlist comes to an end it still has a bit of a sad tone to it but an idea of hope and comradery. The idea that we will be able to make a change as long as we stand together and hold firm to our beliefs that we can not keep going in the direction that we are heading because it will not only result in our demise, but our planets as well.
For the group effort part of this assignment I decided that I would talk to my friends Austin Ebert and Joahna Roney on our seven hour car ride to Denver over break. We were driving along i70 whenever we passed a big rig truck hauling a load of cattle to the market. After Joahna stated how bad they smelled I decided that this was a perfect opportunity to jump into this assignment. After she stated that about the smell I asked if they knew just how many resources it took to produce a pound of beef. After giving them the details they were shocked and asked how I knew what seemed to be a random bit of information, thats when I told them it was from my class and learning about the anthropocene which of course they had never heard of. I began to tell them that it was earths most recent geological time period that was based on our environment being effected and starting to be shaped by humans influences. After reading them this description Austin chimed in with a comment of “you mean like global warming and that kind of stuff all the democrats are always talking about?” Austin comes from a small farming town in Kansas that depends on the development of farming and cattle to make a living. I told him it was part of it but there was more to it than that. It is how we treat and use the earth, with the amount of water that we use, the trash that we don’t recycle, the garbage and waste that we turn a blind eye to whenever it is being put into the ocean and yes the amount of emissions and we put into the environment and the harm we cause with our simple day to day routines. At this point Joahna had gotten very quiet and I hoped she was thinking about what I was saying, Austin on the other hand wasn’t so sure about the whole thing. He asked me how we were supposed to change all this if what I had told them about it being to late was true to which I responded with the example of Mary Pipher and her coalition. I told him that she had also felt “shell shock” and “despair” when she learned of the terrible path that we had sent our world down. She realized that she couldn’t change the past but she could work to better the future so her and her friend formed the coalition to stop the Keystone XL pipeline from being built. She and her friends worked hard to ensure that the big corporations pushing for this pipeline that obviously only cared about its dollar amount would not succeed in punishing our environment further for something we wanted, and how at the end through many years and many failures they eventually won. After telling them this Austin responded with that they only managed to fix one problem but then that’s when Johana decided to give her mind. She responded with “yeah but they came together and worked towards something they believed in and managed to get it done, that’s something to look at more so than the exact thing that they did.” I was curious where she was going with this so I asked her to go into a bit more detail and she responded with how if we can get people to come together and fight for the environment they will all have their own issues to fight, if each one fights for their issue they will be able to accomplish all sorts of things. Like back at home (she lives in California) all sorts of people have been fighting for water restrictions and laws since we have no water. We would not have a lot of the laws we do now if people hadn’t been so passionate about the subject. After this I couldn’t help but smile that she now felt so passionate about the subject. To get Austin to listen I decided I’d have to choose a source I knew he would have to respect, so I told him about Roy Scranton. How the Iraq veteran recognized that something about the environment needed to change, that what has happened has happened and we need to learn to adjust for the future. That if we get off of our comfortable high horse in our ivory towers we would be able to see the problems ahead an learn to adapt. This was something he was more open to listening to. He was open to the idea that what has happened has happened but we should always prepare for the future. It also helped that I had his girlfriend in the car to yell at him till he was willing to pay attention to what I was telling them.

Playlist:

Song 1: Bad Moon Rising- Mourning Ritual
This song has a real dark sound to it and the lyrics give us an idea that we are doomed for whatever is going to happen with the bad moon that they see rising. It gives me the feeling that we are just heading towards something we can’t come back from much how I first thought when learning about the Anthropocene.

Song 2: Unsteady- X Ambassadors
This song is all about how when we are faced with emotions we feel unsteady and want to run or hide, but if we can all hold on to each other and steady ourselves together we can get through any overwhelming sadness or fear we are facing. When hearing about the Anthropocene for the first time I was overcome with a sad depressed feeling, that we had basically doomed ourselves.

Song 3: Bad Things- Jace Everett
This song talks about always wanting to do bad things with someone else and we don’t really know why or what we are doing, we are just doing bad things for the hell of it. This is how I felt when I realized just how much I myself had contributed to the evolution into the Anthropocene. We all just go out and do whatever we want without ever really thinking what long term effect would be on the environment, we just continued to do the bad things.

Song 4: Miserable at best- Mayday Parade
This song is all about missing something that someone messed up and lost. After they realized they had messed up and lost that one thing they knew they would never get it back and would be miserable from that point on. Much how I realized I would feel once we lost the beauty of the world around of us for good.

Song 5: I’m in a hurry- Alabama
I feel like this song really captures how we go about life. We are always in such a hurry to get on with our lives and for the next thing to happen and honestly we don’t know why we do it. We are given norms we are supposed to assimilate to and we are supposed to get there no matter what the cost to us or what’s around us.

Song 6: Supermoon- Blue Hamilton
This optimistic song talks about how you need to be yourself and do what you believe is the right thing no matter what other people think. The song talks about how we can’t change what we have done but we can learn from it and do something to counteract it. It makes me think about how We can’t erase what we’ve done but we can raise awareness to change the future.

Song 7: Tightrope- Ron Pope
This slow sad song talks about how a guy misses his former lover and what he could have done to get her back and how he’s managing life without her. It makes me think about how we are going to miss the world that we used to have after we completely corrupt it. One part says “should have learned from my mistakes, but I never do”, we have even admitted past mistakes that have lead us to the Anthropocene but we still don’t learn from them.
Song 8: Hard Time- Seinabo Sey
This angry song talks about how someone had the choice to fix their problems they were having but they decided against it. It says it hard to be forgiven and even harder to forget and how all our problems will come back to bite us. If we eventually do have this environmental apocalypse then that’s basically what earth is gonna do, come back to bite us.
Song 9: Migraine- twenty one pilots
Thinking about how to deal with and counteract the Anthropocene I feel like I’m having a battle between changing and wanting to keep my current comfortable lifestyle like I’m sure many people are trying to do. Like the song says “Am I the only one I know, waging my wars behind my face and above my throat… But I know I’ve made it this far kid”. If we start having this mental war about trying to change though we are already that much closer to changing.

Song 10: We are the world 25 For Haiti – Various artist
Listening to this song the other day I realized just how much it related to what we have been talking about in class. It goes in to telling everyone that we should come together and take care of those in need. We will establish a bond and spark a revolution to help fix our problems and by that fix the Anthropocene. We talk about in class if everyone comes together and fights for a common goal we can reach it.