[intro music, ocean sounds]
Welcome to World Ocean Radio…
I’m Peter Neill, Director of the World Ocean Observatory.
As a collector of words, this one – eudaemonism – caught my fancy: defined as a system of ethics that bases moral value on the likelihood that good actors will produce happiness. What an optimistic belief, and one that, as an assumption, might be a powerful guide for health, harmony, and community. When you consider the antonyms, you find --- misery suffering, discontent, failure, poverty, adversity, defeat, dissatisfaction, affliction, hardship, despair -- many of the elements of the fraught social condition we, and others, are experiencing with and without our many advantages and aspirations. Our greatest freedom is to choose, in a democracy, an ultimate action by good actors, by free election, investment, religious preference, and social behavior, that add up to happiness, an eudaemonistic outcome. We don’t all have to agree, but we do have to act within a system of ethics and moral decisions that advance our lives through unity, understanding, and collective behavior.
Nature -- in my view the ocean as a natural system evident from the mountain-top to the abyssal plain -- might be deemed such an outcome, such a place, where, without apparent reason, systems circulate, live and die, and coalesce successfully as a vital demonstration of life sustained, supported, and renewed – not a place of affliction, disruption, and despair. Is there an underlying system of ethics? Some might argue yes; others might say no, such an argument is naïve, denies the divine, and is ignorant of the true conditions that have always confronted, even undermined civilization. Nature, I submit, as manifest in the ocean that surrounds us, is a consummate global collective that is inclusive and does not prefer one species over another, rather provides a context for the admixture of resources, social expression, and personal fulfillment that advances the present and the future of every thing and everyone. It is the essential commons.
Today, and into the coming year, there are conferences, meetings, research projects, social experiments, political elections, and cultural interactions that are expressions of aspirational intent, the best efforts of scientists, policymakers, regulators, government and economic administrators, and citizens like you and me who are intent on improvement, making things better, educating, solving problems, building things, negotiating peace, and building security and safety beyond ourselves. That energy is positive and constructive and dedicated to the realization of a better and safer society, health, harmony, unity, indeed, happiness. They are good actors, and I am in awe of their knowledge, energy, creativity, and best intention.
But there are bad actors in our world, as well, who glorify self and wealth to the collective disadvantage. They are agents of fraught condition. In the ocean, they are predators and parasites that feed on the health and survival of others. If we view the ocean with such perspective, it is a dark and disappointing place. If we view the world with the same point of view, the same darkness and disappointment prevail.
Can I vision the ocean as an ethos? As a way? Is it possible to find happiness there? I have written often of the uplifting, harmonic, indeed oceanic feelings experienced by water, be it ocean, lake, stream, waterfall, simply a fountain or the rain even if felt in the middle of a foreign city, far from any bank or shore. Water speaks to our core, even when without it we can feel our body weaken. The metaphors cascade. The possibilities multiply. The confidence quickens. The optimism drives against the negatives of risk, convention, fear of change. The choices, the ethical decisions, become obvious. And if I am alone, do I not sense that there are nonetheless others who feel the same, from some comparable stimuli, in some other situation, with some other choices -- all of us good actors, in the context of shared assumption that the world will better through our commitments, through our unspoken, and spoken agreements in a flow that we share -- the water that is our source and sustenance, our eudaemon.
We will discuss these issues, and more, in 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 WHEREVER YOU LISTEN TO PODCASTS, AND AT WORLD OCEAN OBSERVATORY DOT ORG, WHERE THE FULL CATALOG OF MORE THAN 700 RADIO EPISODES IS SEARCHABLE BY THEME.
[outro music, ocean sounds]
