'I have to be where I can see the sea'
Just now I was introduced to a relatively new word while listening to 'To The Best of Our Knowledge' on NPR. The word is solastalgia, coined by Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht. The word is a 'riff' (using Albrecht's phrase from the NPR interview) on Nostalgia. Nostalgia, a word coined in the 17th century, refers to a melancholy desire to return to a home you have left (the meaning has been broadened since then). Solastalgia refers to melancholy due to changes to your home (i.e. your home has left you).
Albrecht originally used this term to describe people living in an agricultural area of New South Wales that was being transformed by coal production. Unfortunately, the term has found wide application, around the world. Here on dKos we have seen any number of examples of solastalgia related to the oil disaster, many of presumptive (i.e. the changes have not yet happened). Examples are here, here, and here.
The term has also attracted attention to the broader issue of the 'ecopsychology' with articles in the New York Times and elsewhere. I'm not going to summarize these works. Instead I'll just focus on one consequence.
Another term is soliphilia, a love of place. This is something I feel very strongly - there are places I have lived for which I have a deep abiding love and attachment. Not everyone feels the same. I think two factors come into play the reduce soliphilia. One is living in suburbs and exurbs. The landscape is very homogenized and existence in such places seems to involve driving between widely dispersed locations. The other is the continuous degradation of the environment - a lack of soliphilia may be a good defense against the grief of solastalgia.
One of the greatest things that could be accomplished in a battle against climate change and other environmental problems is to encourage more people to more connected to the places they live and experience. The quote at the top of this diary comes from a woman I met on the Shetland Islands a couple of weeks ago and the picture above shows where she lives. I was quite envious of her deep attachment to where she lived. I went out on a walk in the long twilight of a far northern evening in June and ended up here.
When I described where I had gone to her, she said 'That's my place'. Not meaning that she owned it but that was a place of great meaning to her, a place that she went when she needed something from the world. Her place was small lochs nestled in hills above a bay. It could be a neighborhood in a big city. Not having such places seems a sad thing for both the people who lack them and the world.
So how do we encourage soliphilia? Otherwise I think it will be a case of "You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone" for very many people.