Life and Language Out of Balance: Ideas from Gandhi and Nadkarni for Linguistic Sarvodaya (Emancipation for All)

Paralleling the structure of M.V. Nadkarni’s 2015 essay “Gandhi’s civilizational alternative and dealing with climate change,” Maroski probes the nature of climate change as a complex problem, that it is a symptom of life being so out of balance such that normal homeodynamics are not sufficient to rebalance Earth’s interconnected systems. Of the many contributors to this situation, three are discussed—exponential technology, loss of ecological pattern literacy, and a mindset of having “dominion over.” Gandhi’s call for a civilizational alternative, that is, a mindset or cultural shift reflects Donella Meadows’ high-level leverage points. Maroski proposes that in order to make such changes to mindset and culture, it is necessary to investigate the assumptions underlying them that are embedded in language. Using Gandhi’s metaphor of rights and duties being two sides of the same coin, Maroski expands that idea to include the many interdependent polarities in language that need to be reconceived as distinct but not separate. One such polarity that is key to planetary well-being is growth and destruction. By humans focusing on growth to the neglect of destruction, the planet rebalances herself through the opposite pole. Maroski suggests that by building such polarities into the structure of language, we could presence both or several poles of the fundamental polarities that govern our existence, and thereby better steward our future human and planetary well-being.