Communication is important in these days and age. I have already spoken about the ‘power of the narrative’. It’s all about the stories we tell and how we tell them. Stories are made of words, and vocabulary is something that is constantly evolving. There is a cycle whereby ‘new words’ enter our everyday lives, then become overused (some may say abused) and then new ones enter and the cycle starts again. This has become somewhat the strategy in an arms race between capitalists and ‘tree huggers’ for the confusions of everything in between.
Think of the word ‘resilient’ - I bet you are as sick of it as I am. What does resilient even mean? And while the word has managed somewhat to enter my own mantra for the tough times (it sounded good), it's meaningless. While for me ‘resilient’ will always be associated with the PhD thesis of my friend Lydia who was always talking about the definition of resilience and the different components making it up (in ecology), the word has so many meanings depending on which definition you choose . Plus, resilience was so over used and abused that even ‘Willie Peyote’ in his latest single sings ‘I swear I’ll go crazy if I hear say again resilience ( ‘Giuro, do di matto se vi sento dire ancora resilienza’ ). 'Sustainable' is another word in this track, becoming meaningless greenwashing. 'Regenerative' is taking over, as something that seems more ‘purposeful’ (we will see when that gets taken out of context for capitalism use, as we are already seeing ‘regenerative markets’) Some other words may not be as abused, but may have some other issues. For example ‘natural capital’ and ‘natural resources’ seem to commodify too much the natural world into an anthropocentric view of it, simply referring to nature, to the living system may be a better alternative, or instead of ’natural infrastructure’ it would be more productive to use the single features directly. See, wording can have such an importance, that in this fast paced world where we are communicating so much on media, we often overlook this aspect, and maybe even use the common words on purpose to trick the algorithms to find our posts.. but maybe we should be just that little bit more careful..
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