During my internship at Rum Village most of the things I have been doing have been involve preserving our natural resources, since Rum Village is South Bends nature park. The Natural Step defines the third system condition as basically reducing or eliminating our physical degradation of nature. What better place than a beautiful 160 acre park to see what it is we are trying so desperately to preserve. Much of what takes place at Rum Village is the education of children from kindergarten up to about fifth grade, so it is a great resource for teaching what nature is about and why we need to preserve the woods and wetlands we still have left here.
Many years ago our area was home to the Kankakee Grand Marsh, one of the most diverse wetlands in the country, since most of it has been drained off for the fertile land so it could be used for farming. There is now a movement to try and slowly restore some of this ecosystem back to what it used to be.
The article titled The Common Life seemed to fit this system condition perfectly and also seems to be a good fit with what the nature center at Rum Village is doing. It talks about what we have learned as being passed down through generations to get to us. I think this is a key idea in teaching sustainability to our younger generations. What we are learning today can be passed down to our children and so on until hopefully we can change how we abuse our resources and maybe prevent a climate disaster. Another thing I though was interesting was where they speak of a marriage and how if you are always competing against one another instead of working together it is bound to fail. This same analogy can be used for our generation right now, if we all start working together instead of against each other we have a chance to succeed.
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