Brazil: Human Rights and Sustainability
My time in Brazil has been difficult to process. While the three weeks I spent there were impactful, it was not in a way that I was expecting. Before leaving I had a vision in my head of returning home as a changed person, intensely influenced and motivated to act in ways I hadn’t before, with my perspective of the world significantly skewed. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t feel that this opportunity was for naught. I only feel a sense of underwhelm in a program that I felt would have been just as poignant as going to somewhere like Detroit or Milwaukee. Going abroad made it glaringly clear to me that we face issues just as important and pressing as those on other continents, sometimes more so. We see the effects of globalization in developing corners of the world and we panic because we don’t want their culture marred by unnecessary conveniences. Yet, we haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of healing our own psychology in relation to our overconsumption. How can we expect those who look to us as an example of progress to not want what we have?