The Human, The Orchid And The Octopus by Jacques Cousteau

From The Week of July 11, 2010

On a list of human beings who lived their lives to the fullest, Jacques Cousteau's name must be prominent. For the 87 years he lived and breathed on Earth, he covered off seemingly every imaginable pursuit connected to the ocean. Water, it's clear, was his enduring love. And in this book, which is half memoir and half philosophical statement, he not only explains why, he describes, in vivid detail, how we are perverting the thing he loves most.

I expected more pompousness from a man as accomplished as Mr. Cousteau. I expected a sense of entitlement to ripple through his account, a sense that he had the answers to all the questions. But while a certain streak of false modesty permeates these pages, there's a core of decency to the man that will empower his legacy for decades to come. And what is that legacy? Advocacy for the sea, the final dumping ground for human waste, a convenient place to hide our mistakes because we don't have to live in the soup that we've turned toxic with our experiments gone wrong. Many of Mr. Cousteau's roles, filmaker, explorer, activist, innovator, were positions he adopted to speak up for the sea from which all life on this planet stemmed and without which we could not survive. But while this effort is dominated by these passionate opinions, there's room enough for Mr. Cousteau's personal life, the events which gave him form, the events that spurred him on to greatness, the events which made him stronger. These inspire as much as they amaze.

This is a solidly constructed and moving portrait of a man and his loving relationship with the world around him. It is a book about a man who never lost his curiosity, his desire to see and embrace the new. His innovator's spirit is as delightful as the unreserved joy he takes in the simple pleasures of friends and beauty. It's only major flaw is the book's conclusion, taken up in the main by Mr. Cousteau's personal imagining of what the future of humanity will look like. He explores evolution, clean technology, and spiritualism, uniting them into a naturalist, humanist philosophy which, while admirable, is completely unrealistic. Mr. Cousteau was a dreamer and so I should've predicted this indulgent episode in wishful thinking. I didn't though and, consequently, I was left taken aback by Mr. Cousteau's inability to acknowledge those core drivers which keep humanity from achieving any form of utopia. The most powerful of these is self-interest which gives rise to other, lesser forces like greed and covetousness and selfishness. Mr. Cousteau does not address these needs, an omission which saps the legitimacy from his idealistic vision of the future. (3/5 Stars)