Some Words That Will Matter In 2024 (Gettysburg Times op-ed)

One of the quickest ways to disappear a thing—a problem or an opportunity—is to take away the words we need to describe it.  And, if you can’t just cancel it entirely, the second best way to get rid of a troublesome word is to change its meaning.

Back in 1987, for example, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher tackled the troublesome word society. “There’s no such thing as society,” she said in an interview. “There are individual men and women and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look after themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then, also, to look after our neighbors.”

Liberals usually opt for the easy layup and focus on criticizing Thatcher’s off the cuff remark dismissing society as a meaningful term. But in context she does go on to make a more complicated point.  “People need to look after themselves” and not look to government for help. While they are at it, they need to look after their neighbors as well.  “Neighbors,” I suspect, were for Thatcher those who live nearby and share our lifestyle and point of view. Most people, most of the time, should “look after themselves” it seems.

What disappears along with the word society, however, is the notion that government has a role to play in meeting certain kinds of widely shared, persistently unmet needs.  Government is, in fact, the real target of Thatcher’s famous remark, or at least the notion that government can be effective, efficient, even nimble. That it can, in fact, be indispensable for certain tasks well beyond fighting wars and policing the streets.

What also disappears perhaps is a sense of responsibility toward those beyond our immediate circle.

In more recent days as our country has become more divided and the battle over language has intensified, the word green has also come in for a bit of a beating. It has been both co-opted, as for example when oil companies and plastics manufacturers are said to “go green,” and demonized when “green new deals” are invoked by activists and the occasional elected leader. Folks who in my world are cozy with the idea of “creation care” at church may grow a little uneasy at the thought of stepping out of the closet as full blown “green voters” thanks to the way powerful interests have “adjusted” the word.

Words are magic, clearly, and green is a word worth defending for sure  But what are some other words worth fighting for given the tough times in which we find ourselves? 

My first choice might be community, partly because it’s still a word that works for so many different kinds of people. Community is near at hand and easier to understand than society. It means volunteers fighting fires and housing the homeless. It’s about Scouts and bake sales, churches and school boards. It’s about giving back and paying forward on the blessings we have already received.  The editorial pages of some of our local newspapers may be a bit “off the rails” these days, but the other pages in those papers are alive with community. Community as a word and as an idea offers a potential meeting ground for all of us, even in our deeply divided country.

The word community also reveals something essential about being human. Community connects us with others and it’s in relationship to other human beings that we become the people we are meant to be.  Or so it often seems.

Democracy is another big word for me. Never pure. Historically, it seems to need to be embodied in a republic of laws and norms in order to have half a chance of working properly and persisting over time.  Power needs to be balanced by countervailing power, checked and balanced.  And all of us need to be held accountable, and accountability, for me, is another word definitely worth fighting for.

Without accountability, bad actors of all kinds enjoy impunity, and society—or if you prefer, our communities—fall apart.  It’s kind of an old-fashioned thing to say, but nobody—and that means nobody—can regard themselves, or be regarded, as above the law.  If you are going to talk Constitution and carry a copy in your back pocket, then you have also got to live the Constitution and defend it even when your guy loses an election.

Freedom may be the most important word to fight for, especially given that the word is so often misused to justify political and economic mischief of various kinds.  Given our history, nobody is going to get away with disappearing freedom, but people can, and often do, tinker with its meaning.

At times the word can be used to justify the excesses of profit-driven markets that are described as “free” even while sometimes doing significant damage to workers, our communities and our environment. Markets, in fact, always run by rules and somebody makes those rules, most often people working for powerful economic interests.  Describing markets as “free” is a way of attempting to hide that reality.

People, not money, are the ones meant to be free.  But freedom, if we are going to live as good neighbors and thrive as productive, mostly happy citizens, needs a little balancing.  Freedom needs to be balanced by a sense of responsibility toward others, toward our communities, and maybe even—sorry to bring it up!—toward society as a whole.

Community, democracy, accountability, freedom AND responsibility—all good words to have handy as we move into 2024!

Will Lane

Will Lane, host of the Green Gettysburg Book Club, teaches part-time in the Environmental Studies Department at Gettysburg College.