Mottonai, wabi-sabi, urassen: Degrowth language has been around for ages.

Does anybody know the Japanese terms „mottonai“ or „wabi-sabi“? Or the Austrian verb „urassen“? It stands for excessive or wasteful behaviour. „Nicht urassen“ means something like „don’t overuse“.

There are terms in our cultural body of language, mostly colloquial, which describe frugal and modest lifestyles. Many of them are narrow in their use, but specific in their ethical meaning. They’re not broad and abstract like „green“ or „eco“. They’re born from tradition.

They are passed on from generation to generation, not designed or invented for wide or global use.

Such language and its origin follows a totally different pattern, a more organic one, than words like „sustainable“ or „conscious“. These are big PR and marketing words you’d hardly use in your community or hear from your grandparents. These big and supposedly meaningful words are something entirely else than the small and little known words from certain corners of our planet.

The big words follow the idea of global capitalism. You want to have a word to rule them all. Set the agenda. Everybody should use it. Remove other words and win the war of meaning.

All while these smaller words have so much history and still don’t try to mean something to everyone. Just to a small group. And it’s okay that way. Because there are many more other words for other groups, with similar associations but certainly the same moral and ethical meaning.

This is the change we need right there:

Many meaningful words rather than one meaningless global hashtag.

Inspired by Harry Flood in Adbusters: