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Birds Expanding the Human Imagination
Developing a new vocabulary to describe human relationships with the living world
© Greg Miles
Glenn Albrecht grew up in a “bird lover’s paradise” in western Australia. But when he saw how coal mining displaced communities, polluted the air and water, and decimated bird populations, Glenn lacked the words for his emotions. He created the concept of ‘solastalgia’ to describe the pain of witnessing environmental harm where you live. He imagines a possible future era, called the ‘Symbiocene,’ when human activity will, once again, be fully interconnected with the ebb and flow of the rest of nature and therefore cause no more destruction of life on Earth.
BirdNote®
Birds Expanding the Human Imagination
Written by Nick Bayard
This is BirdNote.
[Gray Fantail calls]
Glenn Albrecht grew up in a “bird lover’s paradise” in western Australia, where the calls of Western Rosellas, Golden-shouldered Parrots, and Gray Fantails gave him a rich sense of place.
[Gray Fantail calls]
But when he saw how coal mining displaced communities, polluted the air and water, and decimated bird populations, Glenn lacked the words to describe his emotions.
Glenn Albrecht: The philosopher Wittgenstein once wrote that ‘the limits of my language are the limits of my world…’ If that’s true, then if you create more language, new language, you actually expand your world.
So, Glenn created the concept of ‘solastalgia’ in 2003 to describe the pain of witnessing environmental harm where you live. He defines it as the “homesickness you have when you’re still at home and your home is leaving you.”
Glenn Albrecht: I want to disrupt business as usual, and the way I’m doing it is with disruptive language.
Glenn imagines a possible future era, called the ‘Symbiocene,’ when human activity will, once again, be fully interconnected with the ebb and flow of the rest of nature and therefore cause no more destruction of life on Earth. He says the massive declines in bird populations are just one sign that we need to expand our imaginations about how we coexist with all forms of life.
Glenn Albrecht: Instead of being depressed about the future we can have radical anticipation of the future that we ourselves are creating.
[A group of Western Rosellas calling]
For BirdNote, I’m Nick Bayard.
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Senior Producer: John Kessler
Producer: Mark Bramhill
Managing Editor: Jazzi Johnson
Managing Producer: Conor Gearin
Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Gray Fantail ML233491 recorded by Tony Baylis, Gray Fantail ML78535181 recorded by Ian Davies, and Gray Fantail ML272046311 recorded by Ramit Singal. Western Rosellas ML181375201 recorded by Marie Chappell.
BirdNote’s theme was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
© 2023 BirdNote January 2023
Narrator: Nick Bayard
ID# albrechtg-01-2023-03-22 albrechtg-01
