My interest in words that sum up melancholia or human yearning (in a way that standard English just can’t) continues. A Twitter friend (Dr Daz) sent me this read about “solastalgia”, a word invented by (retired) Murdoch University professor of sustainability and environmental philosopher Glenn Albrecht.
Solastalgia describes “the homesickness you have when you are still at home”.
By the late 1990s open-cut coal mining had drastically changed the landscape of the Upper Hunter region of NSW – for the worse. As a result, the people of the region were suffering from a form of chronic distress that saw their previously positive sense of place (“topophilia”) and love of their home and landscape, turn bad. Albrecht realised that there was no concept in the English language that adequately described this distressed state. And so he invented the term to describe the existential melancholia experienced with the negative transformation (desolation) of a loved home environment.
But it soon took off around the world as A Word that summed up succinctly A Thing we’re collectively feeling about the planet. That is, bad stuff is happening and we feel ill-at-ease about it.
Says Albrecht:
“One of the reasons for international interest in the concept of solastalgia is that we are in the middle of a pandemic of earth-related distress that will only get worse. Everything that was once familiar and trusted in our environment will be