In our Introduction of The Ocean Reader: Theory, Culture, Politics, Roorada gives us an overall view on the message this book is intended to grant us, a cultural retrospective in regards to how we as a society view the Ocean and in what ways as a community we begin our rethinking of the Ocean in itself rather in comparison to ourselves. Within the introduction, a topic we are exposed to is “Ocean” being “capitalized”… “as if it were a country or a continent.” Roorada explains to the audience that the purpose of this is “to challenge the conventional wisdom that the seas can be taken for granted. They cannot.” This ideology challenges how many different human societies, particularly the US, see the ocean as a resource, “a thing” to be exploited for personal use and profit. And yet – Roordan challenges us to see that even believing the Ocean can be taken for granted is the problem in the first place. Writing the name as “Ocean” is not a way of a human individual giving the Ocean an identity, as we have no individual rights to name the natural world. It is a way of showing recognition to what has always been present. 

The Ocean was here long before any humans set foot on this earth. Its waters gave life to all forms of organisms, covered the earth in its richness to provide for its creatures. The Ocean does not act on behalf of us. We are its servants, privileged to use it as a pathway into other worlds unknown to us. The Ocean gave us the ability to be interconnected with other human communities, the only course to cultures and expansion. The ocean gave humans food and material, a way to sustain ourselves long before societies stood. Yet how can we say the Ocean bends at our will? How can we look out on this majority, a geographical location that covers more of the Globe than any other “thing” on this planet and expect to obtain power over it? 

             Roordan reorganizes our thinking in regards to human ownership, what we conceive to be within our own domain of influence and what is actually out of our control. Ocean is the world and environment. We live within Ocean. The Ocean is a part of ourselves, we would not be human without it. Our connection with it is that of children, reliant on its resources, unable to survive without its nourishment. We, as a community must take it upon ourselves to reshape our viewpoint on Ocean, understand we have no control over the natural world and are subject to its dominion it places upon us.