I’ve written that a reason for my upcoming trip is a restlessness, that I’m in need of some inspiration. However, I don’t want to give you the wrong impression. I’m not tired of geography. I have not lost faith in the discipline that I have chosen for my university education. It’s more that I’ve lost faith in the world’s ability to recognize the urgent need for people with the synthetized knowledge that geographers, among others, have. We’re on the brink of a potential crisis, unlike anything that mankind has ever experienced before, and the people who decide seem to think that there are so many other more important things to discuss, like money and the power relations between nations. That the fact that we are slowly, one step at a time, destroying our own habitat, the Earth, is of no importance. That makes me sad.
Geography is an academic discipline that dwells in the regions inbetween science and society. It is the discipline of spatiality, that borrows knowledge from all the other sciences and liberal arts and places them in an intertwined, place specific context. Geography wouldn’t be much of anything without the other sciences, but the other sciences tend to be far too abstract to be directly applicable in real life. This makes a geographer an excellent person for handling many of the environmental problems that we are facing. Advanced research in biology, chemistry, physics and geology is certainly needed, but in order to make the most of the research results, they have to be adjusted to a societal context – and that’s exactly what geography does. But still, it seems as if this connection between science and society is far too weak and the awareness of the need to connect is limited.
I guess it’s something that started around last summer, even though I can’t really pinpoint it. This feeling that maybe there was no point. I watch the news and read the papers and I just want to curl up into a ball and cry. The combined feeling that there is something terribly wrong with the world without enough effort put into changing it, and the more personal fear that even though I’m getting myself an education that is by no means superfluous, I might not get a job as a geographer because the demand is so low and why would I be the one to get a job among all the other competent and smart people being educated today. The fact that I took a course in climatology in the fall didn’t really help either. Some parts of the change are already out of our control.
So, there I was, not believing in the world that I lived in. The lack of hope was slowly seeping into other parts of my life, quite uncalled for, until I felt that I’d simply had enough. You see, I’m not really a cynical person. Many have tried to infect me with their cynisism, especially guys that for some reason have found my enthusiasm provoking, but it has never really stuck. I need to feel that I can do something, that I can achieve change – and mostly I have felt that I could. That’s why this hopelessness that has come over me is so dangerous. For me, it’s even life threatening.
I needed to get perspective. Not only read about all the ways in which we are destroying our planet, as we mostly do in the different sub-disciplines of geography, but also experience some of the constructive efforts that are being made to slow down and maybe even reverse this development. That’s why I’m going to Canada and western USA. I’m going to volunteer at three different farms. At these farms, they are using our natural resources in alternative ways that are not as destructive as the common practices used in most large-scale agriculture today.
It’s not a holiday. It’s an inspiration trip, a search for constructive input that I can take with me into my further studies, so that I won’t be overcome with the hopelessness again. And, hopefully, the journey will also help me regain some of my faith in the world aswell.
Katja Malmborg 