Why We Need New Words for Nature: The way we talk about the natural world can shape our relationship to it. In a time of environmental crisis, should we be paying more attention to the language we use?

by Former_Expert_5794

3 comments

  2. We do need better words for nature…………not ones that come from a book of lies that Theists pompously trot out there; while helping destroy the world with resistance to renewables and EV’s. As if Orwell’s grim warning about the importance of language doesn’t speak to us after 70 plus years, YES, language is so important! If we assume (as that crap book implies) that we are “masters of the world” it would not matter what we say; (idiotic higher power) gave it to us /s.

    As humans, we need to have reverence in our language for the natural world. Current research on evolution tells us that 98% of every species this planet ever had are now extinct. Humans are not going to outlive it, climate change. Some will, but most won’t. The only issue is that they will take a bunch of the species with them in trying to avoid the fallout of our evil. If life survived the mass extinction of the dinosaurs, it will climate change. However, it might be a LONG time before things are ever normal again. We really effed up as a species! That famous line from the movie Aliens that condemns corporatism: “I don’t seem them f**king each other over for a percentage.” Language matters.

  3. Strongly agree. I did my Master’s Thesis on the *process* of developing this relationship. It was a fascinating topic, but was often difficult because we simply lack the language to describe what *it* is.

    There’s no doubt that every single person has some type of relationship to nature. For the purpose of the study (using qualitative depth interviews) I just called it an eco-social perspective. ‘Eco-social perspective’ was clunky, and from the study it was clear that we (including a very exhaustive literature review) plainly lack the terminology to understand this phenomenon.

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