How We Talk Can Determine How We Live : Some words illuminate short- term gain, distracting attention from long-term consequence.
Back in the 1970s when my feminist friends said they felt excluded by the word man --as in “the future of man”--I thought they were making a fuss over nothing.
But it was easy enough to say people or humanity instead of man , so I did, and gradually my gender-deafness turned into sensitivity. I feel more a part of the future of humanity than the future of man. The words policeman and workman and congressman screen me out, while police and worker and member of Congress, however awkward, invite me in.
Words make a difference. Every public-relations person knows that, every general who calls killing civilians “collateral damage,” every industrialist who is “creating jobs” rather than making profits and “downsizing” rather than uncreating jobs. The builders of garbage incinerators insist on calling them “trash-to-energy converters.” The unborn person is a baby to those who want to prohibit abortion, but a fetus to those who want abortion to be legal. Words exclude or include, they wound or heal, they clarify or obfuscate or disguise. They set up patterns in our minds, and those patterns cause us to act, or not. Follow the rise and fall of words-- glasnost, crack, e-mail , junk bonds, biotechnology --and you key into the evolution (or devolution) of history. Change words and you can change history.
Which is why the word sustainability is so important. I work in a global community in which sustainability is the central word, the highest value, the guide to the future of humankind. But it’s not a word you hear in the news. The words sustainability, sustainable development or sustainable growth are beginning to bounce around the world, but they often cause confusion, especially in high places.
Sustainability . The ability to sustain, to keep going, to provide for the long term. Meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs--that’s how the World Commission on Environment and Development defined it in 1987. In practical terms, sustainability means not cutting a forest faster than it grows, not pumping ground water faster than it recharges, not catching fish before they’ve had a chance to breed, not dumping wastes faster than nature can absorb or recycle them.
Just as the use of gender-neutral language makes you aware of how words can be used to put down women, the use of sustainability language tunes you in to words that illuminate short-term gain while distracting attention from long-term consequence. “That’s progress,” we say, as we pave over fertile fields. Everyone knows you can’t stop progress. “Technology” is a magic incantation that will clean up any mess, and if technology won’t do it, “the market” will. The most powerful, thought-stopping word of all is growth.
Growth is our cultural icon, our mantra, our grail. We sift through the economic indicators, looking, hoping, for signs of growth. We support the North American Free Trade Agreement and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade because they will bring growth. Environmental regulations should not be allowed to slow growth. Growth of what? For whom? How long can we keep it up? What will we do when it’s over? Can we be sure it’s harmless?
It is a step toward precise thinking to say man when you mean a male, woman when you mean a female and person or human when you mean both--and it’s a way to root out prejudicial thoughts that are no less oppressive for being only semiconscious. Similarly, it’s a step toward precision and sustainability to say growth when you mean an increase in physical size and development when you mean, as the dictionary says, “to realize the potentialities of, to bring to a fuller, greater, or better state.” Development means to get better, growth means to get bigger.
That kind of precision dethrones growth and turns it into something you might be either for or against, depending on what is growing. Growth of food for the hungry is good, as long as the Earth can support it. Growth of fishing boats in an overfished territory is a disaster. A light bulb that gives the same light using one-eighth as much electricity means negative growth worth celebrating.
The planet Earth develops, diversifies, evolves. It does not grow. The same must ultimately be true of the human economy, if it is to be sustained on and by this planet. Sustainable growth is neither desirable nor possible. But sustainable development, providing more services to human beings while putting less load on the environment, is entirely possible, if we develop the words to talk about it, understand it, act on it and bring it into being.