Tag Archives: readingresponse

The Ocean Reader

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When completing this week’s reading, I really liked the descriptions used in The Ocean Reader Theory. Not only did it outline the separation between Humans and the Ocean, but how the Ocean is seen as deep, dark, and scary to most people. The separation between the ocean and the land, for humans, is solely because the ocean is harder to “conquer” or develop than land is. It explains this aspect in the text when it says “It has always been difficult for humans to think of the ocean as a place. Those who have considered the watery majority of the planet on its own terms have often seen it as a changeless space, one without a history. Because the ocean can’t be plowed , paved, or shaped in ways the eye is able to discern, it has seemed to be a constant, while the land changed drastically over centuries.” (page 1) I liked how this paper outlined the separation between the ocean and the land, because of how humans view it as not having a history. Although the fish and marine population have history in the ocean, and the ocean is just as changeable as the land even if us humans cannot see it. I thought this was a very interesting description of how the ocean and the land are different and the same all at once. Now that I am thinking about it I have never really thought much about the history of the oceans, we are taught about Geology, earthquakes, land change, etc in school but I have never learned much about the history of the oceans. There are more opportunities and options now to learn about the Ocean, but it is just not as important to humans as land history is. Just because we are not living in the Ocean doesn’t mean its protection and history isn’t just as important as the lands. This makes me think about how not only do we claim to have explored the Ocean (only about 5 percent), but also how humans disregarded the importance of other things if it does not affect them. We see this with social justice issues, gender, race, and etc all the time. If you do not fall into a category it isn’t important.” I thought it was interesting how this idea applies to the ocean, land, humans, and more. Moving to other parts of The Ocean Reader, I thought the term “Terracentratism ” was quite interesting, a term that is referring to people’s tendency of considering the world’s activity only taking place on land, excluding the Ocean. This is the whole theme of this paper, which I find to be super interesting to read about. Overall, I focused on this paper out of the readings because of how I feel it strongly applies to today, and how we are terrestrial focused and how the Oceans history is commonly bypassed.

week ten: the ocean…

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so we had two readings that touched upon the same issue- focusing on the ocean instead of focusing on the land itself. The article the Ocean Reader brought up a very fair point about how the ocean as a whole was (and still is) something we used in many different ways

“It serves as an introduction to the multifaceted Ocean, which is an enormous and very complicated system. Humans interact with that system in many ways. They relentlessly hunt
sea creatures, taking 90 million tons of fish from it annually. They use it as a highway, with 100,000 ships at sea right now. They study it, find inspiration in it, play on it, and fight over it.” (3)

Now personally, when someone puts it like that, it really kind of shows the impact the ocean has. We were afraid of it for a very long time (our overconsumption and our use of the ocean today is pretty modern) before recently. Even now, we take it for granted, because all we see out of it is something to exploit, to use and to discard. We take the life from it and then pretend like it didn’t have life in it. It’s as the other article says at the very beginning- “Without conscious choice, writers have embedded a terrestrial bias… Dry land is presumed the norm.” (7 Vast Oceans)

We need the ocean more than it needs us, really- and we need to treat it way better. Without the ocean, would things be as advanced as they would? A better appreciation of the ocean would definitely change things, but I think that can only really happen when we shift our focus towards it. Granted, we need to care more about the planet in general, but that also includes the ocean.

The Ocean as a Place

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Before modern scientific exploration, the Ocean was seen as an expanse devoid of life. This was a belief that prevailed until the 19th century. This was mainly due to the Ocean being vastly unknown, there was a lot of space left up to humans to create and imagine many things. Because of this perspective, there were also many superstitions and fears when it came to the ocean’s depths. Eventually, scientists experienced modern technology and were able to explore the Ocean and the diversity of life within. When reading Eric Paul Roorda’s text, many things stood out. Still, on exploring the theme of the Ocean being seen as devoid of life, Roorda mentions how the Ocean was seen as inexhaustible which is one of the reasons for our climate crisis. However, this was not why it stood out, it stands out mainly because of the contrast in views. “The fish and marine mammal populations of the Ocean have also seemed unchangeable, inexhaustible, and impervious to the onslaught of the harvesters. But such is not the case.” (p.1) The Ocean has been overexploited for many years since people began to fish and attempt to conquer the Ocean, which led me to the question: If the Ocean was viewed as devoid of life, why was it also seen as unchangeable and inexhaustible? For me at least, they are two very different states. Something inexhaustible to me is everchanging and abundant, so, if people had seen it almost as lifeless, why did they believe it was an everlasting resource for them?

Humanity is Nature’s Greatest Parasite

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In this weeks reading of “The Emergence of the Environmental Humanities” by David Nye, I found the breakdown of humanities treatment of nature to be extremely interesting. I had never considered how much information about societal constructs could be told from analyzing humanities poor treatment of nature. From the very beginning, we are coerced into realizing that environmental humanities is a relatively new thing, which I had never considered. Its creation shows a lot about how people are realizing their mistakes with their treatment of nature. Society has unintentionally made the poor treatment of nature the standard for nations to thrive since the Industrial Revolution. While there are now people trying to fight back against this unsustainable way of survival, many nations and industries will not dare to accept a change because it could mess with profits or disrupt the flow of a lot of populations.

What interested me the most is idea of ecoracism. Ecoracism is the concept that wealthy nations will “outsource their pollution” (p18) to poor countries in order to maintain a clean and healthy country. While one nation will benefit, the other country will see the build up of an unsustainable ecosystem. For a superpower to create an unhealthy environment for a less fortunate country shows that we are blatantly allowing modern day imperialism. This is a huge problem in itself because it paints the average person as either ignorant, an enabler, or too lazy to do something about the issue. The lack of unity against the issue matters because solving the environment crisis is not an attainable goal without unity. Even if people choose to ignore the issue, eventually everybody is going to feel the effects. Nature does not know any borders. Natural resources are being depleted from the planet that is shared by all of humanity. Eventually, superpower nations will not be able to throw their pollution in other countries.

It is incredibly alarming that people have access to this information and do nothing about the impending issues that will be impossible to ignore. Humanity is derived by nature, and I personally believe humanity could thrive with the natural resources we have access to if greed and comfortability were not an issue. While there are some true efforts to fix the environment, if people are not unified it will not be able to be fixed.

Week 9: Humanities

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so this time it was a reading and not quite from the penguin book or the other one which is an interesting change of pace. It talks about how environmental humanities have been in the works for awhile, which I believe: we’ve been aware of climate change since the 60s at the earliest (if I recall correctly). But reading it really reaffirmed a theme that we touch upon in class which is that of humanity’s role within nature.

”human beings are not merely observers they are an active part of nature”. (Page 8) We have shaped nature all throughout history physically and figuratively (through stuff like folklore and mythology). Even today we’re still trying to understand nature more and more (especially since we have a profound effect on it)In a way, it makes sense why environmental humanities became more and more relevant (with understanding comes widespread knowledge, and more awareness). At the same time, though, I hope we aren’t too late with it. Maybe being so divorced from nature has made us care less? Not to say that the developed world is horrible and we should revert back to a simpler life, but the more we move forward, the less we seem concerned with our planet

I had to type this on my iPhone. .

The Concept of Sacred Wilderness

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In “The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature” by William Cronon, WIlliam Cronon argues that argues that preserving wilderness doesn’t necessarily mean that people are respecting it. People are natural beings, and although humanity has evolved to the point of manipulating nature, preserving wilderness takes away from the history of indigenous people that lived harmoniously with nature. Cronon believes that the concept of wilderness “had to become sacred” (9) in order to be idolized. Cronon also repeatedly mentions satan and God when discussing wilderness. The idea that the wilderness is sacred is a very interesting thought to me. At what point do humans exceed nature and are too advanced to partake in it? There is no clear line, and I think that Cronon does an excellent job at pointing out the flaws in the logic by proposing that indigenous history should be studied and celebrated through nature.
Although I do agree with Cronin overall, I disagree that the wilderness is “profoundly a human creation” (2). The wilderness existed long before humanity and although humans came around and altered it, I believe that the wilderness has been shaped based off of what it has been able to provide. What it can provide has shaped how humanity has altered it, which I think proves that nature is ultimately more powerful. Nature could exist without humanity but humanity would stand no chance against nature. It is important to consider indigenous influence on nature and allow humanity to be considered a part of it, but to propose that humanity has power over nature can and has been disproven easily.
Despite my disagreement, Cronon does an excellent job at proposing why nature being sacred does not mean that humanity cannot be a part of it. Humanity was able to survive based on the resources that the wilderness has provided, and evolving into intelligent creatures should not be enough reason to cut the tie between nature and humanity. Despite what may be a controversial take, if I have interpreted it correctly, Cronon’s idea should be discussed in order to have a better idea as to how people should treat their relationship with nature.

Week Eight Reading Response

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I appreciate how this reading defines wilderness and the environment. It helped to enrich my understanding of these concepts when considering them in conversation with mermaid mythology. The idea of wilderness had always seemed to be a naturally occurring thing. Something that simply existed and humans affected. To realize that wilderness is but a human construct and a rather narrow and exclusionary point of view is fascinating.

            Whilst reading, it was interesting to notice the how the ideas of wilderness and mermaids shift over time. By this I mean that as the wilderness becomes less and less a place of evil and more a place to consume recreationally, so too do the attitudes about Mermaids shift. She becomes less of an evil monster and is commercialized in the 19th century. This also gives me a better understanding of why she is often used as a representation of nature and wilderness. On page 17 Cronon describes wilderness as a “siren song of escape.” I find this particularly interesting because we are learning that wilderness in many ways is a social construct that is a product of myth. The idea that nature and civilization operate on separate spheres is likewise a myth. We see this even in the story of Melusine. The beginning of the story describes that nature is in many ways a man’s domain, it is for a man to find adventure and prove their bravery by conquering it. Constantly humans infringe upon nature but so many stories show the mermaid as being the invader. Many years later we see these same sentiments still being echoed in the figurehead of The Virginian. I appreciated that the text also does away with the Christian idea of wilderness as untouched and “virgin” first because it denies the presence of natives that were forcibly removed from their homes; Second because to say that wilderness is virginal and that it is the environment in which the individual man can enforce their freedom and masculinity is deeply troublesome. When gender is considered as these elements of power, it is not difficult to understand how we end up with so much history of misogyny. It further reinforces the texts claim that to think of the wilderness through such a narrow scope also influences who we view as human and worthier of protection. If the point is to save the environment by keeping it pristine and untouched then what of the people that live in constant relation to the land and see themselves also affected by the same environmental issues affecting the natural world. Does that mean that these humans are not worth protecting? Again, we are put into the conversation of defining who is human who is not and what and who is worth saving.

The Trouble with Wilderness

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A point that stood out to me interesting and almost a reality check was, “It is a place of freedom in which we can recover the true selves we have lost to the corrupting influences of our artificial lives. Most of all, it is the ultimate landscape for authenticity. Combining the sacred grandeur of the sublime with the primitive simplicity of the frontier, is the place where we can see the world as it really is, and so know ourselves as we really are — or ought to be.” (16). This stood out to be as is makes me question how invested people are with their lives that we forget who we are. We live in this almost fake world where main priorities are how many likes you get on a post, how many people saw what you were doing, and where essentially capturing your entire life by phone defines who you are as an individual, when in reality it does not. As defined the wilderness is “a place of freedom” and that is something we lack in our day to day lives, it is something we aren’t able to reach because we are being consumed by so many other factors like relationships, family conflict, managing personal schedules and so many other things that pile on top of each other that we forget who we are. The ending of the sentence “ought to be” makes me wonder if it was intended to leave the reader question who they really are? Have they lost themselves? It’s a real reality check as to question if you are still the same person you thought you were.

I enjoyed the idea that nature is the only place “in which we can recover the true selves we have lost” as I believe it is true. Almost majority of the places in which you believe you are free to yourself is not entirely true as there can be interruptions, distractions, and ultimately feeling that there is a time clock on how much you can be to yourself before the constant worrying of getting back to day-to-day life comes into place. Compared to being in nature you purposely set that time apart for yourselves, to have a peace of mind, and reset yourself internally so you are not being consumed with the life you are constantly living and that is slowly taking over you each and every day.

Week 7: The Little Mermaid and the Hardships of Maturity

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In this week’s assigned reading, The Little Mermaid, written by Hans Christian Andersen, the story of a young mermaid’s desire to discover a new world is told. Andersen presents his main character, the little mermaid, whose name is never mentioned, as the youngest of six sisters. All under the care of their grandmother, the king’s mother. The grandmother carries in her tail twelve oyster shells that represent not only her mature age and knowledge but also her rank. It is revealed by her that mermaids are given the chance of a lifetime to witness human life above the waters once they turn the age of fifteen. When I read this I thought about my Mexican culture that holds special events for fifteen-year-olds called Quinceañeras; the celebration of a girl’s 15th birthday, marking her passage from girlhood to womanhood. At that moment I realized The Little Mermaid is not only a story of innocent romance but of a mermaid coming of age.

From the moment the story begins, the six mermaid sisters are presented, all of them having plots of garden to plant whatever they please. All of them plant flowers that take the forms of sea creatures, however, the youngest plants her red flowers in the shape of the sun, which points to her child-like fascination with what is above the waters (that also foreshadows her ending as a daughter of the air). After all of her five siblings get to experience the human world it has come to be the little mermaid’s turn and her grandmother dresses her granddaughter’s tail with eight oyster shells, “Well now you are grown up…so let me dress you like your sisters…and the old dame ordered eight large oyster shells to be fastened to the princess’s tail, to denote her high rank.” (Bacchilega & Brown 113) To this, the little mermaid lets her grandmother know that the decoration hurt her, and her grandmother responds with “Pride must suffer pain,” (Bacchilega & Brown 113) this reminds me of “beauty is pain”, a well-known saying that is told to women the moment they enter adolescence. According to the history of corsets, a young woman would start wearing corsets at the age of fifteen, a neat parallel to what is happening in the story.

After being told by the sea witch that she would turn into sea foam if the prince didn’t end up loving her and marrying her at the hands of a priest to acquire a soul and be able to have a soul that’ll live for eternity she took the impulsive risk, confiding that she would be successful. It is no secret that some young women fall under the belief that they’ll get to marry their first love, some do, and some don’t. The moment the prince lets the little mermaid know about his marriage to another princess even though heartbroken this is where she starts to see life differently, she starts maturing, and it shows when she chooses to not murder the prince to transform back into a mermaid. This, fortunately, transforms her into a daughter of the air, with the opportunity to experience human life and get to heaven.

The nature elements in this story play their part in representing the innocence and curiosity of the little mermaid, from saving the prince around the end of winter and acquiring her maturity by spring, it all points to a wholesome new beginning for our main character.

The Little Mermaid

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This week, we finally read an all-time classic, “The Little Mermaid” by Hans Christian Anderson. Some of the main themes I wanted to focus on in this blog post are the ideas of pain being normalized in feminism and also the idea of belonging to a group or place.

The little mermaid is told by an older, wiser mermaid that “pain must suffer pride” because she was wearing uncomfortable clothing. The little mermaid, being youngest of her sisters, grew up watching her siblings enter womanhood feeling equally uncomfortable. This is something that I feel a lot of young women see growing up, which in a way could be conditioning them to accept a life of pain because it’s “normal”. But why is it normal? The little mermaid feels immense pain in her legs every time she takes a step. It is almost as if she is being punished for being curious, in the same way Raymondin was. I’ve noticed that in a lot of the stories we have read in class, people who are curious tend to be punished.

Another interesting thing from the reading is the idea that Mermaids do not have souls while humans do, and they are aware of this. Mermaids are only given souls if “a priest lay his right hand” (pg 144) on them in order to officiate a marriage. This idea taps into the subconscious beliefs that Christianity has planted in both men and women that marriage is a necessity to have a completed life. But there is really nothing natural about marriage, it is a man-made concept. I love this idea because if souls exist, they have absolutely nothing to do with man-made concepts, they’d be natural and work in natural ways. Meanwhile, people are reading these popular stories, and while they may not necessarily believe they need matrimony in order to have a soul, they could potentially unintentionally develop the need to find a partner for marriage in order to truly feel complete.

This reading caught me off guard. I did not expect to enjoy this chapter as much as I did, and I feel that the reason for this is because the ideas of feminism and the symbolism are extremely telling of how society was at the time. It’s interesting to see how much yet how little has changed since then.