Welcome
Hi! My name is Ali Brill and this is my Civic Engagement Project (Spring 2022). I fell in love with philosophy when I returned to Towson University after a five year break from formal education! Philosophy allowed me to embrace my curiousity in a structured manner. Now, it helps me to live a fulfilling and integrous life. The Environmental Philosophy M.A. program here at University of Montana has helped me to bridge my personal interests with my academic interests. I'm so happy you're here to peruse the project I've worked so hard on! Welcome!
Introduction
- Through a mix of personal experience with grief, and academic instruction on environmental matters, I designed a burial alternative - Regenerative Burial (a mix between regenerative agriculture & decomposition-friendly burial techniques).
- I believe this burial practice (if actualized) would encourage us to re-imagine the human's place within the environment, and can change our self-views, and subsequently our actions in the world.
- I think Regenerative Burial would help foster relationships within the human community, between humans and other species, and humans and the land. Relationship building is priority for a mutually beneficial and flourishing environmentalism.
- Actualizing this burial practice would require public interest and involvement, so my project will focus on engaging the community in discussions around death, dying, and our end-of-life values, in the form of a Death Over Drinks event.
Background Context & Plan
- This project takes place in the Anthropocene, where the human/nature dichotomy doesn't exist, boundaries between beings/entities are crossed and merged, and humans have planetary power.
- The climate crisis urges environmentalism to come up with solutions that allow humans and the rest of the environment to work together in reciprocity. I believe Regenerative Burial could lend a hand in meeting this goal.
- I will add to the field of environmental philosophy by philosophically examining how re-imagining ourselves through the lens of death and decay (in burial practices) could help foster a more robust and mutually beneficial environmentalism.
- I will add to the death positive movement by sharing a take on human death and burial that allows for a material afterlife with the opportunity for an intimate and tangible griveing experience.
- These goals will be reached by 1) holding up my Regenerative Burial model with topics from three of my core courses. This will be found in the "Theoretical Applications" section. And 2) by hosting a Death Over Drinks event, where the community will engage in small-group discussions on experiences with death and the values we hold around end-of-life matters.
Theoretical Applications
Listed below are some of the topics covered in our core graduate courses at UMT, along with how they might relate to my ideas on burial and a decay-informed environmentalism.
- Decentering the human and expanding on notion of "fellow creatures"
- Noticing stories other than our own
- What might be other beings' stories/perspectives on human death? Maybe food, nutrition, life...
- Respecting the hunger of our fellow creatures and extending kinship
- Being a companion species through death and decay
- Death as a fitting location for revaluation and reconstruction
- History of human/nature dualism throughout environmental thought and action
- The traditional Western inclination to protect and preserve "nature" as a thing "over there" and separate
- How can humans better navigate the clash between human exceptionalism and misanthropy in environmentalism?
- What does our environmental philosophy and environmental action say about us, as a species? Where do we belong?
- Embracing human's earthly-belongingness through burial
- How might human defined as wholly Earth member impact our actions in the world?
- An embracing of our embodiedness, extended to the corpse
- Burial as an act of reciprocity (Robin Wall Kimmerer)
- Steven Vogel's focus on practices
- How we can form better practices (to construct the environment) through self-knowledge and humility (Vogel)
- Who are we in a webbed sense? And who do we create with?
- The importance of working relationships and how burial might foster/embrace them
- Relationships are at the heart of sustainable, long-term, mutually-beneficial environmentalism
- Gift-giving as a relationship starter (Robin Wall Kimmerer)
- The importance of tending land and relationships versus separating to "protect"
- Living intimately with other beings is as important (if not more so) than strict conservation
- Regenerative burial as a practice that helps foster and sustain working relationships with each other, more-than-humans, and the land
Actions Taken
- I applied philosophical thought from three of my core graduate courses to my thoughts on burial and personal experiences with grief.
- I formulated this material into digestible and accessible prompts for my Death Over Drinks event.
- I held the Death Over Drinks event on April 13th, 2022.
- At the event, we broke off into small groups and engaged in meaningful discussions surrounding death and end-of-life matters. I received only positive feedback!
- I presented on my Civic Engagement Project portfolio the following week, on April 22nd, 2022.
Accomplishments & Challenges
- Due to the personal-experience-heavy nature of this project, I left out many human perspectives (other than my own) on deathcare. This was a mistake I will seek to rectify in future work.
- I missed the chance to parallel U.S. cemetery history with developing environmental trends. This will be an important link to follow in future work.
- I would still like to actualize Regenerative Burial as a practice available to the community.
- I hope to host future death positive events on a regular basis!
- I have appreciated the ways in which my personal grieving has rounded out my philosophical thinking, and my philosophical toolbox has helped me to process my grief experience.
Questions?
Feel free to email me at amariebrill@gmail.com