Etcetera #43: Nominative Determinism, Florida, Satire

Naming systems are reflections of a culture’s values, but, as I’ve argued, it’s a two-way street—the way we name ourselves reinforces these values and frames how we think about ourselves and the world around us. When legibility, individuality, and stability of identity are the master values of our personal nomenclature, of course we will look for legible, de-personalized solutions (e.g. technology, laws, governmental programs) to society’s ills (environmental degradation, social isolation and loss of community, mental health and addiction, to name just a few).

The ecocide happening here is comparable for our size to the destruction of the Amazon, but much less remarked upon. Few of the perpetrators understand how they hurt the quality of life for people living in Florida and hamstring any possibility of climate crisis resiliency. Prodevelopment flacks like to pull out the estimates of the millions who will continue to flock to Florida by 2030 or 2040 to justify rampant development. Even some Florida economists ignore the effects of the climate crisis in their projects for 2049, expecting continued economic growth. but these estimates are just a grim joke, and some of those regurgitating them know that. By 2050, the world likely will be grappling with the fallout from 1.5- to 2-degree temperature rise and it’s unlikely people will be flocking to a state quickly dissolving around all of its edges.

British satire can reveal and criticise our cultural foibles and failures: think of Brass Eye’s attack on British media sensationalism in its episodes on drugs and sex, or the treatment of class anxiety in Keeping Up Appearances and Fawlty Towers. But when comics who have come through the Oxbridge-to-satire pipeline – through the Cambridge Footlights, for instance – are the ones designing, funding and producing the shows, their class commitments and cultural biases are replicated in those very shows. Even when British satirists are nominally anti-Tory, they’re far more likely to scratch at their class-based irritation at progressives than to effectively target someone like Boris Johnson – a rich Oxford man who’s built his career on being a walking Spitting Image character.