Systemic analysis often generates surprising connections. Who would imagine that the War on Terrorism, climate change, and opium farming in Afghanistan (and hence food security there as well as heroin markets here) are closely related? This exercise extends students' capacity for systems thinking about socioecological systems into the realms of emotional and somatic experience.

I have used different versions of this exercise in three of my upper-level undergraduate courses: Political Ecology of the World Food System; Global Environmental Politics; and Anthropocene Politics. The first two are large lecture courses; the third is an Honors Seminar. In all cases, I place the exercise at roughly midway through the course. By this time, students have begun to grasp and apply key elements of systems theory: the difference between mechanical and living systems, complexity, feedback loops, nonlinearity, adaptive cycles, self-generativity, and leverage points. Most importantly, they have begun to understand the interpenetrating character of social and ecological systems. This exercise furthers all of these understandings and more, depending upon course content.

During the week when I use this exercise, I ask students to read Christian Parenti's essay, "Flower of War: An Environmental History of Opium Poppy in Afghanistan."

Depending upon which course I'm teaching, I might deploy a specific angle to introduce the exercise with a video or images highlighting how core concepts of the course shed light on Parenti's article. Among these are:

For my food politics course:
Commodity chains
The agricultural treadmill (complicated by militarism)
Hunger and food insecurity
Climate change and drought-tolerant agriculture
Arable land and drug production (perhaps comparing marijuana, cocaine, and heroine)

Global Environmental Politics:
War and environmental insecurity
Climate change and militarism

Anthropocene Politics:
Any of the above, depending upon the themes of seminar discussions, plus:
* A focus on how all of this is communicated through the Internet. The framing question for this course is: "What does human beingness mean in the Anthropocene?"

* Shifting the focus from supply to demand and diving into political ecology of addiction, from the opioids addiction in the US to the relationship between addiction and the unfolding global mega-crisis.

I have found many useful resources on systems theory that incorporate social and political dimensions, including:

The classic text on systems theory is the highly accessible Meadows, Donella H., and Wright, Diana. Thinking in Systems : a Primer. London ; Sterling, VA, Earthscan, 2009.

You'll find a nice summary of Meadows' book on this slideshare: https://www.slideshare.net/sandhyajohnson/thinking-in-systems-donella-meadows-chapters-1-to-3

The best online resource for systems thinking I've found is the Complexity Academy's YouTube channel, which is true to it's lead quote by Albert Einstein, "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it." You'll find hundreds of short videos on the application of complexity thinking to dozens of topics. I generally select relevant videos from their Complexity Theory course:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71n4GSM1jhw&list=PLsJWgOB5mIMDRt8-DBLLVfh-XeKs2YAcg

I ask students to read Parenti, Christian. "Flower of War: An Environmental History of Opium Poppy in Afghanistan." The SAIS Review of International Affairs, vol. 35, no. 1, 2015, pp. 183–200.

Commodity chains: See world map in http://www.businessinsider.com/opium-and-heroin-production-in-afghanistan-has-increased-2016-10

I highly recommend Peter Whybrow's highly accessible neuroscientific analysis of addiction, which he links to consumerism.
http://www.postcarbon.org/publications/dangerously-addictive/

I recommend showing compelling images that bring Parenti's argument to life before you begin the contemplative exercise. You'll find many Creative Commons images of afghan poppy farmers and military forces guarding poppy fields.

If you wish to learn more about my "Person/Planet Politics" approach to teaching, you might enjoy this article:
https://www.polisci.washington.edu/research/publications/personplanet-politics-contemplative-pedagogies-new-earth