“Do the right thing”: these are the words we need for a different world and to make the essential visible

ROMA – “Making the essential visible” is the theme of the 20th edition of “Do the right thing! Fair of critical consumption and sustainable lifestyles” which celebrates its 20 years with an 80-word “glossary” on rights, social and environmental sustainability. The world cannot be changed with words but to imagine any change the first step is to give it a name. His name is “From saying to doing” the glossary published on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the fair “Do the right thing!” (22-24 March, in Milan).

The eighty words without rhetoric. Eighty essential words, from “Trees” to “Zero”. This is not a mere rhetorical exercise. The 80 words chosen and commented on are the precipitation of two decades of cultural, social, climatic and lexical changes. The vocabulary was born from the need to “make the essential visible” – the theme of this 20th edition – but above all it wants to tell through words how the world has changed since the early 2000s, when the slogan “Another world is possible” resonated strongly of hope, to today, in which Fridays for future issue dark warnings such as “No planet B”.

But what are the words chosen? They are, for example, the words that have always been distinctive of the solidarity economy, such as “Sustainability” or “Critical consumption” and which, like any living matter, have grown, have gained strength, have become common use, have attracted satellite words , have evolved and today have a different meaning and “weight”, as a consequence of cultural and historical transformations. They are the words that have “aged well”, to the point of becoming classics, such as the oxymoron “Ethical Finance” or “Fair Trade; but they are also neologisms that express the restlessness or discomfort of an era, such as “Infodemia” or “Eco-anxiety”, or the young sisters of resistance, such as “Restanza” or “Resilienza”. These are the controversial words that stimulate debate such as “Desgrowth” and “Greenwashing”; or those that reveal the positioning of the fair in the text, as in the case of “Weapons” or “Inequality”.

The origin and meaning of words that open worlds. But the main objective of most of the lemmas is to distill and concentrate in a few lines and jokes the essential information on the origin, meaning and relevance of words that sometimes open up worlds, such as “Rights” or “Integral Ecology”, up to abstract concepts such as “Limite” or “Proximità”, but always remaining faithful to a secular and linear dissemination choice, which was from the beginning that of the journalists of Terre di mezzo who invented “Do the right thing!”. Or we focus on the themes that the fair helps to bring to light, such as “Organic”, “Responsible Tourism” or “Walks”, with a special attention to food in “Hunger”, “Sovereignty”, “Land grabbing” . When words are not enough, there are numbers to support the meaning, with updated statistics and authoritative sources, with quotes from illustrious speakers among those of the almost 5 thousand cultural events proposed in these 20 years, for example Francesco Gesualdi or Naomi Klein.

The narrative that creates great global scenarios. In short, there is a common thread that accompanies the words, a narrative that creates large global scenarios – read “Capital”, “Hunger”, “Transition” -; or that embroiders in everyday life – for example “Relationships”, “Care”, “Community” -; that prods the polluting economy -“Fossils”, “Plastic”, “Footprint”- or that tries to mend the wounds of the world -with “Free”, “Other Economy”, “Common Good”-; it ties the knot on issues that cannot be forgotten such as “Migrants”, “Women” and “Future”. Words can finally, over time and in collective elaboration, become action: those who discover the essential invisible to the eyes can become their own prince and move from saying to doing, crossing the proverbial sea. During the days of the fair the glossary will be online and downloadable in the “Press” section of the “Do the right thing!”.

* Massimo Acanfora, journalist, author of the glossary