The ocean can teach us so much about our lives on land and its fragility, highlighting our refusal to acknowledge the delicate nature of the society we have created. Steve Mentz and the Blue Humanities movement uses the presence of our oceans as a signifier of the chaos that belongs to nature, something so obviously vicious and beautiful you cannot turn away from its message. This untamable spirit has connected humans across worlds, creating empires on land that tumble but are quickly replaced by a bigger one. The human empire is at odds with nature as the climate crisis worsens every day, Mentz calls this the “central challenge of the current generation”. Water is our survival but it has the potential to destroy the human empire on Earth. We cannot possess water and we certainly cannot survive in it.
Before this course, I never attributed any sort of characteristic to water, it was just a thing that we needed, essential but invisible. Thinking about it in vast amounts and the various climate crises that have happened through bodies of water, it’s both creator & destroyer of life. As we continue to live on Earth at the pace we are going, these water crises will be more prevalent until we have completely lost the privilege of seeing water as invisible, its presence will demand our attention through its violence. Mentz sees water, the ocean, as a way to slow down and embrace the vulnerability of the human empire. Rather than a stagnant society shaped by people who lived hundreds of years ago, the fluidity of water can teach us about how we can move towards a freer world. Mentz renames progress, not as something that has a is already defined in a single direction, but flows outwards unable to take a single shape, confusing us enough to think outside of “historical narratives”. Thinking about the nature of water can reshape the things we take for granted as truth. Greed and hatred have been byproducts of what we deem as truth, as ‘the way the world is’. Reframing the world through the lens of water can offer us “possibilities for new ways of thinking and living”, a world where we are no longer captive to ancient establishments but we become both destroyers & creators, like water.
Hi Graciela. I found it interesting when you said that we often considered greed and hatred as byproducts of how the world is, but reframing our perspective through the lens of water can offer new possibilities. I can understand this thinking, and it’s a rather poignant revolutionary strategy. I agree on your emphasis that water is both a creator and a destroyer, which is similar to what I’ve said. My favorite part was when you called the ocean “something so obviously vicious and beautiful you cannot turn away from its message.” Many pieces of art utilize the ocean precisely for this reason.
I am glad to see how this reading matters to you and how it is prompting you to think differently, even about thinking about thinking: “Thinking about the nature of water can reshape the things we take for granted as truth.” Smart. Good work.