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Welcome to World Ocean Raido…
I’M Peter Neill, Founder of the World Ocean Observatory
What does it mean to be a contrarian? Usually, it connotes pursuit of the opposite of what is established – as an investor, selling as others buy; as a strategist, going against the grain; as a bureaucrat, looking for the alternative way. Contrarians are inventors, sometimes revolutionaries, sometimes convention-breakers, sometimes adamant actors standing against an established infamy. Good contrarians are not polarizers; they are brokers of new ideas, of a Plan B, of another way that might just provide a shift in perspective that opens us from complacency to exploration, from regressive stasis to progressive innovation, from the past to the future. History might be interpreted as a timeline of contrarian leaps and jumps, of action to reaction, from stasis to motion. Anything -- from a shot heard round the world to the splitting on an atom – represents contrarian initiative and may be the turning point around which change occurs.
Reviewing my 83 years and growing, I have concluded I am a contrarian naturally born. My parents were anything but – a staid father, lawyer and pillar of the church, a charming mother, smart, engaged, funny, but disengaged from most everything different from her comfortable life. I was certainly not the product of revolutionaries or artists, but from the beginning I discern a pattern of opposition, not so much to the rules, but more to the ideas of what things are and forevermore should be. I was the wise guy, the contra-opinion, the pursuer of another path, all the while not knowing where I was going, or why. I was sometimes rejected; oft-times isolated, too many times rejected as too vocal or too adamant against the status quo. Who wants to recruit an exceptionalist into an established bureaucracy? Who wants to engage with a colleague who won’t accept the approved answer, always responding “But, what if,” what if we did it another way?
The irony of this is contained in a career history wherein I have never had a job when I was not the boss. As a writer, I was in complete command of the filling in of white page after white page. As a manager, I was always the director, the one responsible first for creating the plan, thereinafter making the plan come true, on time, on budget, on account for when things did not go as envisioned. As an advocate, I was the founder, the one with to define the mission, build the administrative model, create the programs, raise the funds, and address the challenges that seemed then, and still, insurmountable. Every time I have found myself to be the contrarian who invents a way to success against the established expectations, the predictable methods, the traditional participants, and the didactic definitions of success. I always seemed to have another way.
The World Ocean Observatory is an example of this contrarian vector. It was improbable from the beginning – presented by an independent commission of the future of the ocean, enabled by the economy and efficiency of the Internet, focused on responsible science and policy delivered by new forms of communication and education, and connected through the open access and global extent of social media with an audience of strangers, worldwide, united by interest and understanding of the ocean as a locus and focus for change in a changing time.
Today, the World Ocean Observatory is in the midst of succession, my shift from director to advisor, from chair to ad hoc trustee, a very good thing to do before I transmogrify from creative contrarian to bitter, recalcitrant adherent to the old way, subversive resistance to the new. I like to think this is a contrarian act, taken just in time, so I can introduce and pass on the responsibility for content and continuity to Trisha Badger, the new W2O Director, and Dr. Tundi Agardy, eminent marine scientist, as new Board Chair. Welcome both.
What I hope, and trust will be, is that contrarian is baked into the culture of the World Ocean Observatory, into our always open access content, our always free engagement, our dedication to education at the classroom level as the most powerful platform for teaching and learning, our commitment to relentless communication across every medium, every boundary, every prohibition to the free exchange of responsible information, and our ongoing contrarian application of energy and imagination for the promotion and understanding of the ocean, the saltwater/freshwater continuum, healthy and sustained, as the single most viable natural system for survival, the ultimate continuity for the benefit of all mankind. Onward!
We will discuss these issues, and more, on future editions of World Ocean Radio.
World Ocean Radio is distributed by the public radio exchange and the pacifica network for use by college and community radio stations worldwide. Find us whereever you get your podcasts, and at world ocean observatory dot org.
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