Jargon

 Maybe It’s Time We Get Back To the Taproot

A lot of the barriers we come across today seem to be our language barriers, more specifically our professional jargon.  Take for instance the term sustainability.  When most of us think sustainability we are probably picturing solar panels, wind turbines, greenhouses, and electric cars.  Now this is all well and good as this type of movement is in the right direction, but words that are synonymous with sustainable are as follows: endurable, tolerable, and maintainable.  The problem with this kind of speaking is that we can’t endure, tolerate, or maintain our infrastructure anymore.  It is unsustainable in its entirety; as a whole it must be re-designed and retrofitted in extremely creative ways.  So in the “green business,” we need to facilitate the evolution of a name change in our industry.  An expression that I think better capsulizes what we are looking for is regeneration, a word that is being used on a regular by people in the so-called “sustainable” industry.   Reclaim, recreate, and reeducate are words that are synonymous with regeneration.  These terms better exemplify what we are trying to do, which is allowing a space for a new way of life to enter, to emerge.    

In order for this to happen, we have to let go of the things that we selfishly cherish for the short term but know aren’t going to do us any good in the future.  Now what these things are seem to still be up for debate amongst many groups.  I think if we get rid of our largest moral hazard first then all the other connections will link up from there.  I also think we can all agree that our most alluring bait that all us humans face is a lavish and endless amount of money.  The ones who are chasing nothing but the dollar signs are doing so at all costs.  When I imagine what the dollar was supposed to buy I go back to the 1950’s and 60’s even though I wasn’t even born yet.  The American Dream was being sold everywhere and most everyone was all in.  The white picket fence, a two-story house on the outside of town, a sporty car in the driveway, and a freshly manicured lawn in front was the investment.  In its purity the idea was revolutionary for community all over the world, but as time went on something went astray.  Our national debt reflects our unhappiness with our collective venture.  We have lost sight of our dream, and thus it is turning into an American Nightmare. 

It’s time we get back to the taproot!  Most all of us are familiar with the term grass roots, and we associate this word with community, spontaneous organization, and locality.  All of those things are heavily welcomed, but we need to decipher the jargon that is keeping us from transcending our cultural border.  It is a struggle within each and every one of us to move on and welcome the new world.  It’s time we regroup and regenerate. 

The lawn was a symbol of wealth and in its infancy could only be maintained by the richest of the rich with indentured servants.  Everywhere we go we see lawns.  It’s become quite complex, in fact one could say that it has become its own complex.  Prisoners maintain our roadsides and children travel for miles in the minivan in order to arrive at a recreational complex where they can participate in structured games that have very strict rules and guidelines.  The energy that goes into sustaining these public fields remains immense.  Rising gas costs, shrinking freshwater supply, and the time it takes in labor to upkeep these lawns cannot be maintained forever.  Not to mention, most of all, is that lawns suppress nature and deplete land fertility.  The Fertile Crescent at one time was extremely lush, but human developments accompanied with destructive agriculture and infrastructure turned the place into a desert.  Unfortunately, that’s exactly what we are doing here.  Old growth forests are begging to thrive again, and will win out in the long run.  Maybe getting back to the grass roots isn’t such a good idea anymore.

The taproot is the main root of a plant that primarily grows straight down in order to get the deepest amount of hydration and minerals.  A more regenerative lifestyle would be one that is rooted deeply into the surrounding environment.  In laymen’s terms we need an environment that is surrounded with more trees, more taproots.  With all that lawn space available maybe we could use it more efficiently as a food forest, a kind of personal Garden of Eden.  Maybe instead of having twenty sport fields all next to each other, we could have one communal field in all neighborhoods that all children could access and participate in random gatherings with other kids without having to pay an umpire or a referee.  Maybe if we just tweaked our dream a little we would dismantle the temptations that are perverting it.  Could it really be as simple as growing food in the spaces that we had pictured as lawns and creating easy to get to communal fields? I think so, and I feel it’s the place to start, the right direction.

So in order to let go of the American Dream that once was we need to let go of the dollar, move on and create new visions.  Just by altering the jargon we use in the green industry a tad we can better illuminate our overall objective.  If we want to sustain the system as is then we need to get back to the grass roots, but if we truly want to regenerate a new system, then we need to get back to the taproots!