The Earth Does Not Speak in Prose

By Charlotte Du Cann, Paul Kingsnorth, Charlotte Du Cann blog

The minute there’s an orthodoxy of language and an orthodoxy of thought, which we all feel we have to stay within otherwise we’re going to get punished, or cancelled, then that’s the end of expression, that’s the end of any attempt to explore outside the boundaries. It’s what every orthodoxy from fascism to communism to theocracy tries to impose on the people to purify the culture, by forcing out anyone who thinks or speaks incorrectly. 

Is a Techno-linguistic Transition Inevitable?

By Erik Assadourian, Gaianism

So get outside every day. Somewhere. Walk barefoot through a park, collect some wild edibles, do some yoga in your yard, some breathing exercises in the forest, or simply sit under a tree somewhere, whatever you can. This will help heal you, and keep you happy in the unplugged world and tethered to the real world.

Messaging guru offers list of words to use and avoid to build support for climate solutions

By Erik Curren, Erik Curran

f you’ve heard of Frank Luntz, you may know him as the evil-genius messaging expert who advised Republicans how to twist words to support their policy priorities. But Luntz seems to have gotten religion on climate. He has stopped minimizing the problem of global heating and has instead decided to do the opposite — to try to help activists raise the alarm.

Using Language to Make the World of Fossil Fuels Strange and Ugly

By Matthew Hoffman, The Conversation

As a society, we have not made the status quo strange and the negative aspects of fossil fuel dominance visible in our language and labels: dirty, gas-powered cars; polluting, coal-fired electricity; unsustainable, oil-dependent agriculture. And we need to.

Against ‘Sustainability’ and Other Plastic Words

By Andrew Nikiforuk, The Tyee

So try something new and get uncivilized. Banish plastic words from your vocabulary, just as you might eliminate plastic from your household.

Down the Memory Hole: Trump’s Strategic Assault on Democracy, Word by Word

By Karen Greenberg, TomDispatch

Perhaps instead of hurling insults at President Trump’s incompetence and the seeming disarray of his presidency, it might be worth taking a step back and asking ourselves whether there is indeed a larger goal in mind: namely, a slow, patient, incremental dismantling of democracy, beginning with its most precious words.

What Story Shall we Tell?

By Chris MacDonald, Anima/Soul

This is not a fable from a galaxy far, far away. It’s from a study by researchers at Lund University in Sweden. Jedek is spoken by a small community of people in the Malaysian highlands, and the language features described above are not uncommon among cultures not yet swept aside in the civilizational deluge. They are part of our human heritage.

How the greatest technology ever developed backfired on us

By Ugo Bardi, Cassandra's legacy

Language is the real break of humans with everything else that walks, crawls, or flies on the earth...But, as for all technologies, it has unexpected consequences.

Sustainability Sucks

By Lisa Fernandes, Bangor Daily News

Framing a project or a business as "sustainable" no longer serves us.  The dominant use of the word has ceased to mean what some of us orginally intended and, in fact, the term has been co-opted and watered down in many cases.  Labelling something "sustainable" may even alienate potential allies, or at least people with whom you might want to get along.  What do we really mean?  What do we really want?  Let's find the new language set that can help us get there.

Commoning in the City

By Dougald Hine, STIR

As Ivan Illich and Anthony McCann have argued, historically, the commons was not simply a pool of resources to be managed, but an alternative to seeing the world as made of resources.