This week we printed a listing of 9 world buzzwords that can possible be within the headlines of 2023. Some positively sound new(ish) — like polycrisis, referring to the overlapping crises that the world is going through. Others are historical — like poverty, which is on the rise once more due to the pandemic, conflicts, local weather change and extra.
We requested you to appoint extra buzzwords for 2023. Due to all who despatched in contributions. Listed here are 5 extra phrases to look at for within the yr forward.
Elite-directed progress
Savanna Schuermann, a lecturer within the anthropology division at San Diego State College, proposes:
“One buzzword or idea I see lacking out of your piece is ‘elite-directed progress.’
The issues you write about within the story — poverty, local weather change, baby losing — stem from the identical cultural trigger. Energy has grow to be concentrated amongst elites — determination makers who make selections that profit themselves however are maladaptive for the inhabitants and surroundings (“maladaptation” might be a buzzword too) as a result of these determination makers are insulated from the impacts of their insurance policies. So they’re both unaware of the hostile human penalties their insurance policies have or they do not care.”
Microplastics
These tiny bits of plastic — some too small to be seen with the bare eye — are popping up everywhere in the globe, in nature and in people, elevating considerations about their affect on each the surroundings and well being. The small items of plastic particles can come from many sources — on account of industrial waste in addition to from packaging, ropes, bottles and clothes. Final yr, NPR wrote a couple of research that even recognized microplastics within the lungs of dwelling individuals, including that “the plastics have beforehand been present in human blood, excrement and within the depths of the ocean.”
Submitted by H. Keifer
Precariat
Somebody who lives precariously, who doesn’t stay in safety. Wikipedia notes that the phrase precariat is “a portmanteau merging precarious with proletariat.” It may be utilized in quite a lot of contexts. “Migrants make up a big share of the world’s precariat. They’re a explanation for its progress and in peril of changing into its main victims, demonized and made the scapegoat of issues not of their making,” in line with the e-book The Precariat: The New Harmful Class. And, in 2016, NPR wrote about “the ill-paid temps and contingent staff that some have referred to as the ‘precariat.’ “
Submitted by Peter Ciarrochi
Solastalgia
Solastalgia is, in line with Wikipedia and different sources, “a neologism, shaped by the mix of the Latin phrases sōlācium (consolation) and the Greek root -algia (ache, struggling, grief), that describes a type of emotional or existential misery attributable to environmental change.” NPR used this time period in a narrative describing the emotional response of Arizonans who needed to flee their properties as a consequence of a lightning-sparked wildfire. It has to do with “a way that you simply’re dropping your property, though you have not left it. Simply the anticipation of a pure catastrophe can produce its personal sort of disappointment referred to as solastalgia.”
Submitted by Clara Sutherland
Superabundance
The phrase itself is loads prefer it sounds. Webster’s says: “an quantity or provide greater than enough to satisfy one’s wants.” The libertarian assume tank Cato Institute makes use of the time period in what it calls a “controversial and counterintuitive” new e-book, Superabundance: The Story of Inhabitants Development, Innovation, and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet. The thesis: “Inhabitants progress and freedom to innovate make Earth’s sources extra, not much less, plentiful.”
Submitted by Jonathan Babiak
