The Last Exploration by Miguel Radilla

The Idea of a Local Economy is an article that exposes the inconvenient truths and realities about our consumerism at large which results in repercussions to the world we pertain to. It starts out going straight to point where Wendell Berry mentions, “We have assumed increasingly over the last five hundred years that nature is merely a supply of raw materials, and that we may safely possess those materials.”  We assume that nature is this never ending well of renewable resources and with this false notion, it’s okay to continue going to this well, thinking it will give us resources forever.  This type of consumerism is prevalent in the develop world because most of us who pertain to the develop world have indirectly forfeited a skill that is thought to be not important, which is the skill of being able use nature- “Our methodologies of land use have strayed from old sympathetic attempts to imitate natural processes, and have come more and more to resemble the methodology of mining, even as mining itself has become more technologically powerful and more brutal.” The develop world has traded this skill of being able to use nature properly because we rely on big corporations to provide us with products that are feasible to acquire at our convenience as well at an ideal price. These powerful entities (Corporations) provide us with everything we need at an ideal price is the result of predatory pricing because they can afford losses in intent to drive out small /local businesses in the marketplace supplanting competitions anywhere they go. For example Berry states “Wal-Mart is a corporation “freely” competing against local, privately owned businesses has virtually all the freedom, and its small competitors virtually none.”  My stance on this article is that I wholeheartedly agree on what it stance for. It pushes for us to support our local economy instead of being stuck in this inescapable magnetic field that are big corporations that only seek to fill their own pockets. The question is that are we willing as a society to change our paradigm? Do we just continue to live in a world where the beautiful lie is better than the inconvenient truth? It starts with us in having a say and a voice to our local economy on fighting big corporate businesses on having legislation to prohibits big entities taking control of our local economies. We can continue living in this façade we call the beautiful lie, but once the resources are squandered, this façade will break exposing the harsh truth and it’ll be too late.
 Brian makes great point on saying that it’s easy to live in a bliss ignorant world where “people know these problems exist but they choose to ignore these problems. If these problems are not directly hurting them in their lives, they do not think they have to do anything about it because it’s benefiting them now.”

I enjoyed the part of class where we listened to Dub FX.  I wish there had been a project where we chose an artist or genre of music that we love and explaining to our peers why this genre or artist is special to us. This project could include favorite meaningful lyrics, and explaining your interpretation of the lyrics. Also explaining the culture and paradigm behind the genre and artist. Also breaking certain stereotypes and prejudice thoughts behind certain types of music. I feel music is really important, and for example, if you guys have any songs or artist in particular that have special meaning to you, I would be happy to listen to them. Listening to people’s favorite songs or music can really give you an insight to what this person is going through because I believe the music we listen to fits well to what a person is likely going through.

This class was my by far my favorite class of the whole semester. Established great relationships and everybody was super cool. I know I didn’t establish some relationships with some of you, but I still learned things about each of you that I had not known. Good luck to everyone!