As noted in a previous diary in this series of Resistance Words it was the book by Glenn A. Albrecht called Earth Emotions that contributed towards my creating the Resistance Words group. Consider this diary an introduction to Albrecht’s new words with Solastalgia used as an example. This will be a two part diary with the second one to be published as soon as I can. After publishing the second part I will address each word individually.
I did a diary on Earth Emotions and I’m republishing it beyond the fold. See: Solastalgia: The Feeling When The Waveform Of The Destruction Of Your Home Collapses On You.
Solastalgia is a Resistance Word and applies to our current COVID-19 disease situation. Each of us will be feeling Solastalgia for the times before Covid-19. Solastalgia names it and it also is a form of cognitive compression as covered by the French linguist Gilles Fauconnier.
In upcoming Resistance Words diaries, after I publish part two, I will be covering all of Albrecht’s new words one at a time. But solastalgia is a word that is needed now.
I first felt a hint of solastalgia when visiting my old home in El Sobrante, California where I grew up in the 60’s. (El Sobrante is a unincorporated area 26 miles east of San Francisco.) I had been away for for about 20 years and all the natural hills and valleys that adjoined my home had been replaced by housing. As I looked out on the change I felt something that I had no words for. An unease, a loss, a feeling that part of me was missing. But, I never had a word for it until now.
It was the book by Glenn A. Albrecht called Earth Emotions that brought this new word to me. I bought the book because of the sub-title New Words for a New World. I had no idea what the book was about until I opened it up and started reading. It was my interest in language and the science of linguistic framing that attracted me to buying the book because words are the only tools We The People have to try and direct America on a course to save what we can of life on earth.
I say a hint of solastalgia because as I read Albrecht’s book I was exposed to his life story that motivated him to create the word. His personal experience of solastalgia was a thousand times more intense than mine. But, as I learned while reading his book the word was intended to apply both to local and global environmental change. So, I think it is OK to apply it to my situation as long as I qualify and understand my emotional experience to be mild and trivial to the experience of Albrecht.
Please jump the fold for more of my thoughts on solastalgia and why it is important for Democrats to learn to use the word to name what we are feeling.
It was 1959 when I moved into my old home in El Sobrante, California. Ours was in a new development and we were one first families to move in to this area called Whitecliff. My new home was surrounded by bare ugly graded land waiting for more homes to be built. The only development was the completed roads and the power poles lining them. Construction on the new homes was furiously going on around us. However only a half mile west was an older development.
I started the local elementary school mid year and most all the kids in my class lived in the older section. I was surprised that they commented on how unhappy they were about the new development. They talked about all their favorite places being bulldozed over. All I could do is listen to them because as children none of us were in control of where we lived and we all had to accept our situation.
Thankfully, all the kids understood I was not personally responsible for the loss of their hills. Time passed and we all accepted the new situation as part of inevitability of modernization as was taught in class. I should note that the new development only was built on about 10% of the open hills. The remaining undeveloped hills were untouched. For us there was an unspoken acceptance that change happens for advancement of civilization.
In class, maybe the 3 or 4th grade, we all learned a simple, heavily redacted, version of the history of the Ohlone peoples that lived on the land before us. Its focus was on food, shelter, and dress. No discussion of why they were not living there now. So, for me exploring the hills was an adventure in finding traces of the Ohlone peoples that lived there. Finding the naturally growing plants they used and hoping to find artifacts. As a child I never found a trace of them.
It was years later that in a general anthropology class in college that I learned the truth about how the Ohlone were rounded up by the Catholic church mission system as slave labor. It is my understanding that the Ohlone peoples were of a gentle nature and lived in harmony on the bounty provided by the San Francisco bay area. The Ohlone history ended due their lack of immunity to European diseases. They quickly died in captivity only a few guards and a compound wall away from their home of thousands of years. If ever there was good example of weaponizing religion it is in the Spanish colonization of the Americas.
Can any of us feel the horror the Ohlone felt as the pious frauds of the Catholic church directed armed soldiers to rip them away from their home with violent force to be placed in detention camps, called missions, for religious indoctrination and a life of slavery?
(From the album Solastalgia by Missy Higgins)
In the introduction to his book Earth Emotions Albrecht recounts some of the cultural beliefs of the indigenous peoples of Australia that allowed them to survive environmental change in Australia for more than 80 thousand years. (Perhaps 125,000 years. See Wikipedia: Indigenous Australians) He tells of the connection with the stars and the life cycles of animals that shaped the stories that influenced the culture.
He shares with the reader a number of aboriginal stories that allowed survival knowledge to be passed from one generation to the next via an oral tradition. These stories used their keen observations of the land and sky to metaphorically map there value for survival onto a way of living that allowed them to survive for all those thousands of years.
Albrecht in chapter 1, titled A Sumbiography, recounts his childhood experiences growing up. This chapter like the introduction is critical for the understanding of the power and scope of the the word solastalgia. It is the local grounding for the feeling that can be applied to a global phenomenon.
I thrived in Manning to become a fast, dark, skinny kid and a nature boy. I was forever in the bush finding lizards and snakes, and in the creeks exploring for jilgies, (small marron) and long-necked tortoises. And then there were the birds. I have been in love with birds for as long as I can remember. I was told by my parents that, as a newly graduated toddler, I ran away from home to visit old Mr. and Mrs. Moore three doors down. They owned a venerable Sulphur-crested Cockatoo who lived in a large cage. He was a good talker and could sing “Dance Cocky.” Clearly, I was prone to “follow the birds: from a very early age. From Earth Emotions by Glenn A. Albrecht: Soft cover version, page 15
I thrived in Manning to become a fast, dark, skinny kid and a nature boy. I was forever in the bush finding lizards and snakes, and in the creeks exploring for jilgies, (small marron) and long-necked tortoises. And then there were the birds. I have been in love with birds for as long as I can remember. I was told by my parents that, as a newly graduated toddler, I ran away from home to visit old Mr. and Mrs. Moore three doors down. They owned a venerable Sulphur-crested Cockatoo who lived in a large cage. He was a good talker and could sing “Dance Cocky.” Clearly, I was prone to “follow the birds: from a very early age.
From Earth Emotions by Glenn A. Albrecht: Soft cover version, page 15
Albrecht grew up with one foot in the modern Manning community and and the other foot firmly connected with plants and animals in the untamed undeveloped areas just beyond Manning. His home was defined not so much by the physical roof over his head but by the hundreds of walks and connections he had with the land around him. It was defined by his connection to the living plants, animals, air, and sky he found around him.
In his sumbiography he also speaks of the difficulties he had in school because of racial prejudice against him as perpetrated by the promoters of white nationalism in Australia. He says it caused him to spend even more time alone studying his beloved birds and their habitat.
He reached a point in his formal education in where he needed to move from Manning clear across the Australian continent to continue to pursue his graduate studies. In his new home he found a new ecology and and a whole new assortment of birds to study and to care for while he finished up his studies. Later in life he became a Professor of Sustainability at Murdoch University in Western Australia.
The introduction and first chapter lay a solid foundation for the third chapter to discuss the concept of solastalgia in detail. In this chapter he describes the development of the word and its slow acceptance by the world community. Albrecht credits the feeling he had when he first looked out on the open air coal mines in the upper Hunter region of New South Wales with sparking the idea that a new word was needed to describe the feeling.
One of my earliest respondents with respect to my understanding of solastalgia was Wendy Bowman, an Upper Hunter woman who has been fighting coal mining in the upper Hunter for many decades. She even lost a family home to coal mining and had to move as the mine became the neighbor from hell; then her second home was also the subject was also the subject of a coal mining claim. Now in her eighties, Wendy personified solastalgia as the legitimate experience of emotional pain at the degradation of her love hove and valley. Yet at the same time, she exemplified a burning desire to restore the Upper Hunter as a place that could give generously of solace and beauty, and to protect those valuable places for agriculture, such as the rich alluvial river flats that remain. From Earth Emotions by Glenn A. Albrecht: Soft cover version, page 60
One of my earliest respondents with respect to my understanding of solastalgia was Wendy Bowman, an Upper Hunter woman who has been fighting coal mining in the upper Hunter for many decades. She even lost a family home to coal mining and had to move as the mine became the neighbor from hell; then her second home was also the subject was also the subject of a coal mining claim. Now in her eighties, Wendy personified solastalgia as the legitimate experience of emotional pain at the degradation of her love hove and valley. Yet at the same time, she exemplified a burning desire to restore the Upper Hunter as a place that could give generously of solace and beauty, and to protect those valuable places for agriculture, such as the rich alluvial river flats that remain.
From Earth Emotions by Glenn A. Albrecht: Soft cover version, page 60
I have another vivid memory that in retrospect I could identify a triggering a solastalgia feeling in me. It is in regard to the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill. Now, Santa Barbara is about 300 miles from the San Francisco Bay area I live in. One of my pleasures in life was visiting the beaches every week that were slightly south of San Francisco. A few weeks after the spill black gooey tar balls started showing up on the beach. The balls often covered in sand made walking on the beach difficult. It was hard to see the balls and when you stepped on them they stained the bottoms of your feet with goo. As the months passed wave action re-deposited tar in black ribbon strips woven into the lighter colored sand. It was a mess and took a few years to finally dissipate.
I could say a lot more about the book Earth Emotions as he introduces the reader to a number of additional words and concepts related to naming our feelings about climate and environmental change. But I will stop here and continue next week in part 2.
I would like to ask the readers to share in the comments any personal incidents that evoked the feeling of solastalgia in you. For a handy list of things that might trigger Solastalgia please see my diary Street Prophets Coffee Hour - Varieties of Encroachment.
Upward not Northward,
Jonathan Gordon (linkage)
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