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Learning How to Die in the Anthropocene


Whilst in the army, Scranton started out by taking inventory on his then current situation. He realized that he was constantly staring death in the face via mortars and I.E.D laced highways, and that even though he had good armor, a great medic and a decent chance of going back home alive, the "possibility of death lies locked up in each moment." It is through an 18th century manual, Yamamoto Tsunetomo's manual "Hagakure" that Scranton eventually finds peace. The manual states that "Meditation on inevitable death should be performed daily." (Scranton 5) As a result Scranton would spend the following days meditating and envisioning his death though various methods including but not limited to: I.E.D, snipers, dogs, and dysentery. While it may seem like a rather peculiar way to live one's life, there is a meaning to all this madness. Scranton states that "We can continue acting as if tomorrow will be just like yesterday", growing less and less prepared for each new disaster as it comes, and more and more desperately invested in a life we can't sustain; or we can learn to see each day as the death of what came before, freeing ourselves to deal with whatever problems the present offers without attachment or fear." (Scranton 6).
             Scranton further supports his main claim by utilizing scientific facts and raw data. The past 12,000 years have seen the earth through the Holocene era. However, due to increased human activity, a new era has begun. Enter the Anthropocene-the age of humans. "Coined by the ecologist Eugene Stoermer in the 1980s and brought to public attention in 2000 by the Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric scientist Paul Crutzen, this term represents the idea that we have entered a new epoch in Earth's geological history, one characterized by the arrival of the human species as a geological force." (Scranton 2) Scranton states that if our current level of activity keeps up, the earth will face temperatures that are on average seven degrees higher than today within a century.


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