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Based on our relationship with the sea, Isabella Lövin speaks in her latest book Oceankänslan. Om behovet av en ny berättelse (2022) about the impending environmental disaster we live with and the destruction of our ecosystem. She has been working on issues related to the sea for twenty years as a Swedish journalist and author, as a Member of the European Parliament and, in recent years, as a Green Party minister. Her experiences from her political work in trying to change fisheries policy led to a need to put into words the illusions that she has encountered in people and that have pushed on the catastrophic development; the illusion that we are acting rationally and that we have the best interests of humanity at heart, while we are rapidly sawing off the branch we are sitting on and handing ourselves over to blind market forces at the expense of ecosystems and spiritual values.
Water is the prerequisite for all life; the sea is the rule on our planet - it makes up 70 per cent of the earth's surface - the earth is the exception. We look out over the infinity and we are filled with a sense of life. The feeling of the ocean, which Lövin is convinced is present in most of us - a fleeting but strong sense of belonging to nature and all of creation that can be experienced in front of the sea, in encounters with animals and people, or under an endless starry sky - is the starting point for the need for a new story. It is the story she wants to tell about us as planetary citizens, stewards of a lonely blue planet in an infinite and cold space. A story of our responsibility and of our blessing to be here.
A new ethical framework for our relationship with nature needs to replace the human-centered narrative of human superiority, domination, exploitation and growth for growth's sake. We know this because deep down we are good, Lövin writes. The door is open. Why this prison?
But do we really know and are we good at heart? Goodness is a problematic word. Goodness is arbitrary, a