After reading this weeks poem, “We Are Mermaids,” the concept of usefulness and the land requirement of being useful in society and the unnecessary need of being useful in the ocean.
This theme was strong to me due to the last two stanzas of the poem, “You don’t have to be useful. You are not required to come up with something to say. You can spend your life benthic…”.
I had to read this section over a few times and am still trying to conceptualize what this means exactly, as there truly isn’t a purpose for everything in the Ocean. On land, people are held to high standards of contribution and are always expected to contribute financially, physically, mentally, etc. and when one is not contributing whether in a personal or group setting they are looked down upon and shamed. These are established regulations, stereotypes, and necessities that we as a society have placed upon ourselves and forced ourselves to adhere to. The Ocean is self-governed. I say this because it is important to understand, that the Ocean is self-governing and embraces all entities that contribute or do not contribute, there is no force or requirement to be something or say something, but to just be. The Ocean is one of the most if not the most powerful things on our Earth and governs almost all aspects of our life, yet it does so with light command and does not command its entities to behave in any specific way. On land, we are governed with constraints and are commanded to behave in specific ways, with laws, teachings, and regulations, that describe the way all societies must act to uphold their citizen standing. I’m not saying that this is wrong but it is interesting how two communities that are so invested in one another ( The Ocean and land) can be so opposing and different in their approach to governing and usefulness.
Hi Mikena,
I love how we both explored similar topics in both our posts, I appreciate that you mentioned how success in the Ocean is not measured as success on land, the Ocean embraces and appreciates all entities. On land things like status and titles matter, in the Ocean that’s not relevant and doesn’t take or add to your value. I love the analysis you did here and how it relates to your personal life and feelings as I feel the same way.
Hey Mikena, this poem also made me think about usefuleness. I really liked how you pointed out how the ocean is self-governed. It makes me wonder if the pressures that society puts on people to be active and be good citizens would exist in a society based on the ocean or water. I think if we, as a society, learned from the ocean we would not have all these expectations to be the perfect member of society.
Hi Mike, I also wrote part of my blog post about concept of usefulness as it made me think about how we tend to have to put purpose in someone’s actions and our own as well. It’s interesting how you pointed out how different governing is in the Ocean than how it is on land.