According to Eric Paul Roorda’s introduction to The Ocean Reader, he emphasises the human tendency of focusing mainly on land rather than the ocean, and having skewed views of the ocean that align with our comfortable and familiar perspectives. 

First, Roorda references the term “terracentrism,” which defines the land-centered viewpoint that many humans have even surrounding the ocean. Many humans view the ocean as unchanging and without history simply because it is not the land, which we are more familiar with. This reveals a flaw in human perspectives because due to something being less unknown or discovered, we assume that there is no depth to it when in fact the ocean is ever-changing and has deep history, just more than we know. Humans long for knowledge and control, and when we reach the limitations of our current knowledge and seeming control, we tend to simply ignore or brush off the unknown, in this case the true history and importance of the ocean. We fill in the blanks of the unknown with what we know, which may be the cause of our terracentrism. 

Another aspect of this introduction that I found interesting was the capitalization of “Ocean,” which Roorda explains makes the Ocean less taken for granted. I found this detail interesting because the capitalization of words makes it into a pronoun, rather than just a noun, thus separating it from regular language. The concept of Ocean versus ocean makes the ocean feel more important and significant to learn about. For example, the word “land” is not capitalized and is a generic word for something that is not ocean, but a pronoun like “America” provides more significance to the word, making people perhaps care about it more. It reminds people more strongly of certain histories, cultures, and ideas affiliated with that pronoun rather than simply the word “land.” This definitely proves Roorda’s goal of discouraging people from taking the Ocean for granted, as it can appeal to more people’s attention.