Author Topic: When does the Ocean stop being the Ocean?  (Read 2695 times)

PlantBased

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When does the Ocean stop being the Ocean?
« on: January 20, 2019, 09:37:14 AM »
To properly follow along with this story it will be helpful to engage a little imagination.   

We’re standing in the ocean, the waves are lapping up to our chest; you can feel the sand sifting through your toes when the current pulls the water back out to sea.  We’re rhythmically being rocked back and forth by the waves of the ocean.   The water is cold, but feels comfortable with the warm sun on our shoulders.

A few of us are on a fun get-away, you included.  We’re at the Outer Banks, it’s the NE corner of North Carolina, right on the ocean.  The beach goes for miles, it’s all soft sand and the sound of crashing waves.  It’s a lazy warm Summer day, even hot for someone not accustomed to the humidity of the Carolinas.  It’s mid Afternoon, only a handful of clouds dot the sky. There is a slight breeze, and you can smell the salt from the sea, it permeates the entire island. You can see and hear the sea gulls caw, kids are running around, playing with kites, frisbees or on a skim board.  Some are out walking the zig zag path right at the continually moving edge of the sea, or lying about, soaking up the sun.

From this point of the Atlantic Ocean you could start sailing for Europe and only arrive 4-6 weeks later.  The ocean is vast!  You cup your hand, and dip it into the ocean, and extract a handful of water.  I ask you, “Is that the Ocean, there in your hand?”  We walk up onto the beach, you, still holding the Ocean in your hand.  And again, “is it still the Ocean?”  We walk back to our temporary residence, it’s a beach home, and it’s only a block away.  It follows a little path right between two sand dunes, and a small little bridge.  Still holding the water in you hand, wondering, “is this still the Ocean?”  If not, when did it stop, and what would it take to again be?
« Last Edit: January 28, 2019, 12:44:47 PM by PlantBased »

Paul der Krake

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Re: When does the Ocean stop being the Ocean?
« Reply #1 on: January 20, 2019, 09:58:01 AM »
If I make you pee in my hands and carry it elsewhere, am I abducting you?

sol

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Re: When does the Ocean stop being the Ocean?
« Reply #2 on: January 20, 2019, 10:01:32 AM »
The ocean is a place, not a thing.  You cannot relocate it.

calimom

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Re: When does the Ocean stop being the Ocean?
« Reply #3 on: January 20, 2019, 10:20:20 AM »
Someone may have gotten into the edibles this morning.

Travis

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Re: When does the Ocean stop being the Ocean?
« Reply #4 on: January 20, 2019, 10:29:05 AM »
The ocean is composed of water.  You scooped up a handful of water.  It was already water before you touched it when it was co-mingled with the other trillion gallons of water molecules that we gave a distinct name to based on its geographic location. Removing it from that named body does not alter its characteristics.  It's just water.  If anything, at the time you removed it, it was a component of the ocean. It is not the ocean.  For all you know that handful of ocean water started out as fresh water from a nearby river.



Telecaster

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Re: When does the Ocean stop being the Ocean?
« Reply #5 on: January 23, 2019, 12:06:43 PM »
Correct answer:  Who gives a shit?   

partgypsy

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Re: When does the Ocean stop being the Ocean?
« Reply #6 on: January 23, 2019, 12:30:11 PM »
I go into the forest and cut down a tree. I carry it out of the forest. Is the tree the forest? Did you move the forest? Was that one tree ever the forest?

Glenstache

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Re: When does the Ocean stop being the Ocean?
« Reply #7 on: January 23, 2019, 01:26:36 PM »
If I make you pee in my hands and carry it elsewhere, am I abducting you?

Well played!

I prefer the variant: If I pee in the ocean, am I the ocean?

Sailor Sam

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Re: When does the Ocean stop being the Ocean?
« Reply #8 on: January 23, 2019, 01:45:50 PM »

GuitarStv

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Re: When does the Ocean stop being the Ocean?
« Reply #9 on: January 23, 2019, 01:50:42 PM »
We're all like . . . interconnected dude.



I feel like you would be really into reading Alan Watts.

Telecaster

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Re: When does the Ocean stop being the Ocean?
« Reply #10 on: January 23, 2019, 02:52:43 PM »
If I make you pee in my hands and carry it elsewhere, am I abducting you?

Well played!

I prefer the variant: If I pee in the ocean, am I the ocean?

Here's the real question:  If I pee on your hands, am I the ocean? 

Glenstache

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Re: When does the Ocean stop being the Ocean?
« Reply #11 on: January 23, 2019, 03:13:52 PM »
If I make you pee in my hands and carry it elsewhere, am I abducting you?

Well played!

I prefer the variant: If I pee in the ocean, am I the ocean?

Here's the real question:  If I pee on your hands, am I the ocean?
Am I standing in the Ocean?

BookLoverL

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Re: When does the Ocean stop being the Ocean?
« Reply #12 on: January 24, 2019, 02:17:06 PM »
I think at some point, the ocean is the ocean. And at some point, it's just a puddle of water. But where does it change? Maybe if you try walking out of the ocean, and see where it feels like it changes.

former player

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Re: When does the Ocean stop being the Ocean?
« Reply #13 on: January 28, 2019, 06:39:57 AM »
I'm afraid the lawyers got there before you -

http://www.un.org/Depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/unclos_e.pdf

One of the reasons that I liked being a lawyer is that it is, essentially, philosophy with a single answer to any single question.

soccerluvof4

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Re: When does the Ocean stop being the Ocean?
« Reply #14 on: January 28, 2019, 02:28:40 PM »
I think i need to eat some shrooms or take some acid to figure this out?!?! haha.  To have water in your hand FROM the ocean. Thats is far as it goes.

frugalnacho

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Re: When does the Ocean stop being the Ocean?
« Reply #15 on: January 28, 2019, 09:43:27 PM »
The sea was angry that day, my friends

deborah

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Re: When does the Ocean stop being the Ocean?
« Reply #16 on: January 29, 2019, 12:10:49 AM »
The water is from the Great Southern Ocean. It started out thousands of years ago as rain falling on Antarctica, where it became part of a glacier, gradually travelling to the edge of the continent. It traveled up from Antarctica, up the coast of Africa, and then across to the Caribbean, where it changed to the current traveling up the coast of North America. It wanted to get to the Arctic regions, completing a long migration.

And then you stopped its travels and took it to your home.

sol

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Re: When does the Ocean stop being the Ocean?
« Reply #17 on: January 29, 2019, 07:54:34 PM »
The water is from the Great Southern Ocean. It started out thousands of years ago as rain falling on Antarctica, where it became part of a glacier, gradually travelling to the edge of the continent. It traveled up from Antarctica, up the coast of Africa, and then across to the Caribbean, where it changed to the current traveling up the coast of North America. It wanted to get to the Arctic regions, completing a long migration.

And then you stopped its travels and took it to your home.

Even before it fell as rain on Antarctica, it had evaporated into the sky from some other body of water.  Before that, billions of years ago, it fell to earth frozen in comets.  Before the comets formed, the oxygen in those water molecules was fused in the hearts of stars that were first born and then died long before our sun was ever a coalescing dark cloud of dust. 

Like virtually every other atom on our planet, including the ones in your body, our ocean is cosmic stardust formed billions of years ago.  And some day billions of years from now, as our sun consumes that last of its nuclear fuel and sheds its outer shell to form a planetary nebula, the water in the ocean (and in you) will be ejected into interstellar space where it will form new comets, which may someday rain on new planets, making new oceans, which may give birth to new life, and then new beings made of these same atoms may ask these same questions.

Or, you know, a dead Palestinian carpenter will show up and rain locusts on us, and the true believers will be re-united with their dead loved ones for a blissful eternity in a palace made of fluffy clouds.  That's another popular theory.  It has slightly less evidence behind it than the cooler story, though.
« Last Edit: January 30, 2019, 12:18:01 PM by sol »

GuitarStv

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Re: When does the Ocean stop being the Ocean?
« Reply #18 on: January 30, 2019, 08:18:39 AM »
Every drop of water in the ocean was peed out of someone or some animal at some point in history.

Prairie Stash

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Re: When does the Ocean stop being the Ocean?
« Reply #19 on: January 30, 2019, 10:51:54 AM »
Every drop of water in the ocean was peed out of someone or some animal at some point in history.
Move over glacier water, I'm selling non-pee water. With every jar comes a cerificate saying it was never pee. I'm looking for reps for distribution, you can even work from home!

Glenstache

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Re: When does the Ocean stop being the Ocean?
« Reply #20 on: January 30, 2019, 10:58:59 AM »
Or, you know, a dead Palestinian carpenter will show up and rain locusts on us, and the true believers will be re-united with their dead loved ones for a blissful eternity in a palace made of fluffy clouds.  That's another popular theory.  It has slightly less evidence behind it than the cooler story, though.

If that carpenter turns the ocean water into wine, is it still the ocean? Or is that holy water. God, I'm so confused.

Nickel

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Re: When does the Ocean stop being the Ocean?
« Reply #21 on: January 31, 2019, 01:53:13 PM »
That was poetic.  Eternal life is real, and the form we take will change.  Someday you'll have to collect and publish "The Postings of SOL on MMM Forums." 

MDfive21

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Re: When does the Ocean stop being the Ocean?
« Reply #22 on: February 01, 2019, 12:54:46 PM »
the molecules that you are made of are not really yours, you're just borrowing them for a while.

so i'll answer, no.  when you take the water out of the ocean, it is not the ocean any more, it's just some water.

i'll also answer yes.  it is still the ocean because you perceive it to be a small, portable bit of ocean.