Language
The point of this post comes from the article, It’s time to rethink the climate emergency narrative. The language we have been using has not resulted in any significant environmental action. But to get to that point, some context might help.
One of the first memorable experiences I had with language was when I learned to think of the natural world as Mother Earth. At first, it seemed uncomfortable to say and write. Part of that, at first, was I didn’t understand the difference, what Mother Earth is. It’s not simply substituting “Mother Earth” for “earth”. I wondered what it meant to have such a “mother.” How do I communicate (language) with and pray to Mother Earth? How do I express this addition to my own language? Is that even possible?
I’ve been writing about numerous terms and concepts I’ve been studying. Many of these have been introduced into my language very recently. To describe new justice descriptions and actions (polycrisis, hypernormalization). Or the regenerated use of an old term (Mutual Aid, LANDBACK).
Mutual Aid
prefigurative politics
LANDBACK
abolition of police and prisons
forced assimilation
global burning
polycrisis
hypernormalization
absurdity
I realized I usually wrote Mutual Aid with capital letters (language), which I meant to convey a specific use of that concept today. The idea of mutual aid has been how civilizations before ours operated and cared for each other. However, the capitalist economic system trained people to only care for themselves.
Bomb Time
My last post was about yet another new term, “Bomb Time.” (It’s Official, We are now Living in “Bomb Time”)
Ever watch footage from one of old atomic bomb tests where they record the typical houses reacting to an atomic blast? You can see the house literally “flash ignite” as the massive thermal pulse from the bomb washes over it.”…
In human time the next century seems like a long period. Of all the people born today, only a handful will live to be 100. But because global warming is happening so much faster than normal, because we are living in “bomb time”, they will be able to see its effects happening throughout their lives.
Living in “Bomb Time” Ep. 01 by Richard Crim, medium.com, August 16, 2020.
That description of atomic bomb tests led me to use Microsoft Designer (an AI-aided graphics tool) to create this image.
It’s time to rethink the climate emergency narrative
Don’t confuse a concern with emergency
It’s easy to get confused if you only look at surveys focusing just on climate as they indicate that people recognize climate change as a serious and imminent threat to the planet, and actually consider it to be a global emergency. At the same time, in reality we see a more complicated relationships with climate change. Yes, it is a concern for many people, but not the top one or even one of the top three. This is evident, for example, in recent election outcomes, notably in Argentina and the Netherlands, where winning candidates are hostile to climate policies in the case of the latter and even skeptical of climate science in the case of the former. This sentiment is further reflected in the strong support for Trump in polls, and general surveys asking voters about their primary concerns.
It seems like that while people may worry about climate change, they prioritize other pressing issues such as economy, health, safety, and societal matters. In other words, for many voters, climate is not an immediate concern to the extent that they are willing to support candidates whose policies are likely to worsen the climate situation because they prioritize other urgent matters like the economy and personal finances. This is not great for those of us seeing climate as one of the top threats to humanity, if not the top one, but this is the reality and we need to acknowledge it.
All in all, this is a problem. If most people don’t see climate change as an emergency, it suggests that this narrative is not working.
It’s time to rethink the climate emergency narrative. Is calling climate change an emergency working? The latest elections and trends worldwide call the effectiveness of this narrative into question. With people prioritizing other concerns, is it time to look for a new narrative that would resonate with a broader audience? by Raz Godelnik, medium.com, 12/2/2023
“A WORD HAS POWER in and of itself,” writes N. Scott Momaday. “It comes from nothing into sound and meaning; it gives origin to all things. By means of words can a man deal with the world on equal terms. And the word is sacred.”
In ancient Greek, pneuma meant both “breath” and “divine breath of inspiration.” The Latin word spiritus, or “breathe,” is also the root word for “spirit.”
Husshhhhhhhh, shhhhhhhhh, can you hear the voice of the wind? In what direction is it telling you to go?
N. Scott Momady
Now of course, there isn’t just one language in the world, there are about 7,000 languages spoken around the world. And all the languages differ from one another in all kinds of ways. Some languages have different sounds, they have different vocabularies, and they also have different structures — very importantly, different structures. That begs the question: Does the language we speak shape the way we think? Now, this is an ancient question. People have been speculating about this question forever.
So let me tell you about some of my favorite examples. I’ll start with an example from an Aboriginal community in Australia that I had the chance to work with. These are the Kuuk Thaayorre people. They live in Pormpuraaw at the very west edge of Cape York. What’s cool about Kuuk Thaayorre is, in Kuuk Thaayorre, they don’t use words like “left” and “right,” and instead, everything is in cardinal directions: north, south, east and west. And when I say everything, I really mean everything. You would say something like, “Oh, there’s an ant on your southwest leg.” Or, “Move your cup to the north-northeast a little bit.” In fact, the way that you say “hello” in Kuuk Thaayorre is you say, “Which way are you going?” And the answer should be, “North-northeast in the far distance. How about you?”
But that would actually get you oriented pretty fast, right? Because you literally couldn’t get past “hello,” if you didn’t know which way you were going. In fact, people who speak languages like this stay oriented really well. They stay oriented better than we used to think humans could. We used to think that humans were worse than other creatures because of some biological excuse: “Oh, we don’t have magnets in our beaks or in our scales.” No; if your language and your culture trains you to do it, actually, you can do it. There are humans around the world who stay oriented really well.
How language shapes the way we think, Lera Boroditsky, TEDWomen 2017, November 2017
If we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world.
Ludwig Wittgenstein