Fighting the “good” fight and why our words depict reality
Saturday, February 28th, 2009Recently I have begun to explore the language we use and I have become aware of the simple irony in the statement “Fight Global Warming”. For these are the words used by leaders of the movement to impress upon people the need to change course. Could fighting actually be at the source for this pollution, for this massive use of resources, for this abuse in policy towards our environment, and those who inhabit it?
Everything we need to learn we learned in kindergarten and the biggest lesson I recall my teachers saying was to share and be nice to one another. Meanwhile, thousands of flyers, posters, handbills, etc. get printed with “Fight Global Warming” as a call to what beating up ourselves or the air. How about picking up the mighty hands and punch oneself for we are the people who gets in the car, turns on the light, uses a toilet, eats meat, buys clothes from a large mall who gets their goods from a far away place and lays our heads down on a pillow of synthetic oil just to get up and do it all over again the next day.
I offer that instead of using the words “Fight Global Warming” we turn to such vernacular as “Transform ourselves”, offer “Fierce Love and Compassion” to one another and above all “Communicate” about solutions so that we change from being “Consumers” to “Solutionaries” and finally “Accept” ourselves and each other for the mistakes we and our ancestors have made and begin to “Clean Up” our mess.
I stand for the conversation that brings us to the place where we hold ourselves accountable in a loving non-judgemental way and begin to make choices from that place. Fighting and the language of fighting is mired in the male dominant patriarch paradigm, leaving me uninspired to take action. Wanting something to change and using the same language as that which got us into the problem is insanity. We are living in the insane construct with language being the achilles heel.
To CHANGE our our planet is to CHANGE our language.
Lindsay Hassett
Change Agent #9 aka Betty Biodiesel, Sister Solar and more to come