Hang around the same semantic field for any length of time and a sense of exhaustion is sure to creep in. I should know; I’ve waded hip-deep in ‘heritage,’ ‘tradition,’ and ‘time-honoured craft’ for as long as I can remember. I’ve proffered, tendered, and bandied such words with reckless, almost arrogant abandon - to the point where I forget their exact meaning, their exact weight, and measure. Semantic satiation, they call it. You can’t blame me; they’re beautiful words, rich with the rose-tinted safety of nostalgia and the saccharinity of the backward glance. Sustainability, on the other hand, is a far uglier word for the simple fact that it’s laden with all the weight and dread and doom of time itself. It speaks to a different form of exhaustion: the exhaustion of our own, forward march...
