Extinction Sickness Community Depression
It is not just species that face the threat of extinction, but ways of thinking, being, and becoming.
If you were to compare a map of endangered languages (see here) and a map charting species extinction (like this one), you might notice some alarming overlap. Though data can tell us a lot if we’re willing to look at it with clear eyes, it cannot tell us everything. There are extinctions we cannot chart, cannot graph, cannot track. We feel something is lost.
This feeling, which becomes grief or sorrow or confusion or fear or anger or something ineffable, is sometimes easily exploited by those who wish to do so. Something is missing but I cannot precisely say what, and I am alienated from the levers of popular culture and from a mass media that tell me precisely what I should need and want in life, and how to go about getting it, as if they know, as if they have any idea what kind of life I’m living and what kind of person I am.
I fear that alienation is easy to exploit, but think it is also an easy rebellion against exploitation. That rebellion is sometimes easy to manipulate into a rebellion against those trying to help. This makes for a messy situation, I think.
Alienation is feral, not wild.
(Depending on how you define such words I guess.)