We see the ocean but we are blind to its pain. Furthermore, we are blind to the pain we cause, and fatally perhaps, ultimately to the pain we self inflict.
In the June 20th, Rogers and Laffoley, Oceans report, our scientists share what they see happening to the Oceans, and plead to humanity's blindness as follows:
"Technical means to acheive the solutions to many of these problems already exist, but current societal values prevent humankind from addressing them efectively. Overcoming these barriers is core to the fundamental changes needed to achieve sustainable and equitable future for the generations to come and which preserves natural ecosystems of the Earth..."
Perplexing, is humanity's minor excuse making and rationalizing of short term "fouling-the-nest-behavior"; it is ultimately a naive way to save face in the long term: saving face, perhaps, in front of the next generation, despite the growing evidence that fouling the nest is a tragic flaw or error. Aristotle, in Poetics, first described Hamartia, and Peter Struck elucidates as follows:
"The character's flaw must result from something that is also a central part of their virtue, which goes somewhat awry, usually due to a lack of knowledge...A truly tragic hero must have a failing that is neither idiosyncratic or arbitrary, but is somehow more deeply imbedded -- a kind of human failing and weakness."
We see the trees(information) but are blind to forest (knowledge). We see the waves (information and weak signals), but not the storm (internalized knowledge about our actions).
So I completely agree with Rogers and Laffoley's main conclusion that: it is human attitudes towards water and oceans that needs to change, and that is why I focused on developing the Blue Ecology vision.
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