Politics and the English Language*

Thanks to my sister and to Jerry for this one.

"Every now and then a single word emerges from our common parlance to achieve the status of a master term. Such a word gives expression to discrete needs and purposes, but it also provides a perspicuous lens through which to view the ethical disposition and emotional temper of a culture at a particular moment in time. The argument of this essay is that “sustainability” has become just such a word for our moment, deserving closer attention than it has so far received." read more...
http://iasc-culture.org/THR/THR_article_2012_Summer_Yates.php

* with apologies to George Orwell
https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm

Very interesting piece. Made me think of a passage in the 1994 book The Quark and the Jaguar by Murray Gell-Mann, on page 346:
"Now, what is meant by sustainable? In Through the Looking Glass, Humpty Dumpty explains to Alice how he uses words to mean anything he wants, paying them for the privilege each Saturday night (the end of the nineteenth-century work week). These days a great many people must be paying wages to the word "sustainable."