Spoiler Alert: Words are powerful. “Use your words,” we tell kids. Words are transformative for peaceful conflict resolution. They’re more creative, potent, and connective than coercion or fists.
Controlling what’s said, or forbidding the use of terms or whole languages is right out of the authoritarian playbook. Censorship weaponizes language to thwart the potency of unified resistance and peaceful protest. Muting DEI language is an attempt to weaken and disenfranchise the marginalized and voiceless. Muting Green language is tantamount to biocide. Silent complicity only makes it easy for perpetrators of environmental and eco-injustice to wield imaginary power against ideological adversaries. Suppression and oppression are authoritarian clenched fists.
Journalists, authors, and advocates protecting human rights, free speech, and environmental justice, defenders of public education and intellectual integrity, immigrant justice, and the rights of Nature – not to mention late-night comedians – are under siege for saying words deemed contrary to a solipsistic world-view, or not framing reality a certain way. Pernicious attacks on terms associated with DEI, the rights of marginalized populations, immigrant justice, and climate justice are being normalized and punishable by force – firing, imprisonment, and threats against safety, autonomy, intellectual integrity, and ethical praxis.
There’s a growing list of Green terms banned or expunged from federal government communication, including “environmental justice,” “clean energy,” “water conservation,” “carbon footprint,” “climate science,” and “pollution abatement,” among many others related to racial and indigenous justice, women, sexuality, gender and basic human rights. Even the term “resilience” is under attack. As I’ve said elsewhere, there are a million ways to DEI, and there are just as many ways to fly above Green censorship.
A brief session of “Luna Moth-erapy” might help. What can we learn?
They’re luminous! Adult winged Luna Moths (Actius Luna – for the Roman moon goddess, Luna; Linneaus, System Naturae, 1758) have relatively short life spans, about a week, living off energy stored as lime green caterpillars feasting on sweet gum, walnut, hickory, persimmon, sumac, and paper birch leaves. Graceful, delicate, mysterious creatures of light!
Luna Moths are consummate experts at the art of conserving energy. Hatched as eggs, they develop as five distinct instar iterations in their larval stage, and all five instars feature green hairy spines on their dorsal surface. The spines can cause irritation on contact, but they do not sting and are not poisonous. Spines, called crochets, are mainly showy deterrents, making the caterpillar difficult to grasp and ingest.
Larva remain on the same tree where they hatch until they descend to Earth’s surface to spin a thin silk cocoon, where they pupate for a couple of weeks, unless there is a diapause for winter, in which case pupation can last nine months. Warming temps are their emergence cue.
Once they are ready to emerge, they wriggle vigorously within the cocoon, creating noise and making a circular opening from which they emerge as an imago, winged with swollen abdomens. They pump hemolymph from their abdominal region into their wings to make them flight-ready, a process that takes 2-3 hours. They are nocturnal fliers – nighttime lovers attracted to subtle light like la bella Luna, the beautiful moon for which they’re named.
Their primary purpose before death is reproduction. They are quite adept at attraction and mating. To attract a mate, females release potent scent pheromones that males can detect with antennae from a distance of +6 mi (+11 km). Males can travel miles in the direction of the wind carrying the scent. They couple after midnight, and the process of mating can take several hours. Moonlight stamina! They live to mate, yes, and they know how to conserve their energy. They fast their entire adult lives. Because they have no way to digest food beyond the larval stage, they must draw on stored energy for survival and reproduction. That energy must last their entire adult lifetime.
Also adept at repulsion, Luna Moths thwart predators in creative ways: through persistent clicking noises, through “gut-dumping,” emitting a foul-smelling regurgitated liquid, and by twirling the long tails of their hindwings to confuse the echolocation of bats and other predators who feed on them. Clicking warns predators they are about to expel the putrid gut muck, a handy trait for a bad date, indeed. And when unwanted predators pursue, they can elude them with spinning tail trails.
In sum, Luna Moths are great at conserving energy, can confuse predators with a whirling tailspin, create noise as warning and puke when necessary, attract mates from miles away with a potent scent, and fashion an opening to emerge when the timing is right. What can we learn?
Pay attention to the luminous Luna Moth for eluding censorship, certainly. Luna Moth signifies effervescence in darkness, with life lessons for prioritization, predatory repellant, attraction, adaptation, and resilience.
Prioritization: Life is short. Prioritize accordingly. Ensure the values you hold for justice are well defined, clearly articulated, promoted, and proclaimed. Make some noise when predators threaten. Emerge boldly. Use your words. They’re powerful symbols for resistance. Luna Moth images can be potent symbols used as emojis or icons, displayed on phone protectors, stickers, jewelry, social media badges, reusable grocery bags, garden flags, or body art, just to name a few. “Luna” – what a great name!
Predatory Repellant: Use your words, your spinners, and your spininess as deterrents. Regurgitate the fetid fluids when necessary. There are a zillion ways to gut-dump the censorship nonsense by co-creating meaning frames, metaphors, and neologisms (new words) that reframe the dialogue: “Gut-Dumping for Intestinal Fortitude,” “Cocoon Opening for Winged Emergence,” “Spine Defense for the Courageous Heart,” “Luna Moth Energy for Going the Distance,” and so on. Green every title, text, and tweet by imitating Nature’s own resiliency with unlimited creative languaging, and keep the censors at bay.
Attraction: Be scents-ible! Don’t try to take it all on alone. Find your mates. Reach out. Connect. Positive energy, a sense of humor, intellectual honesty, humility, and curiosity are a potent combination for attraction. Inclusion is the social fragrance that is irresistible. Attract others through your own natural skills, especially by being yourself, investing in your best potential self, loving who and what you love, and broadcasting your subtle scents-ibility far and wide. Extend your full sensorium to the natural world and go toward what draws you. Tell your truth, forbidden or hidden. It will be your legacy for future generations.
Adaptation: Turning a phrase inside-out and upside-down has all the earmarks of creative word-play that thwarts even the most insidious language control-freaks. We can do this with a flourish when we co-create with our favorite eco- word nerds. “Biophany for a Global Chorus,” “Maintaining the Verdis Quo,” “Integral Ecology,” “Legacy Wings,” etc. So many opportunities are there for brainstorming new ways to articulate our love for and attraction to Nature. Expand evocative eco-discourse. Biophilia is just one word, and it’s a good one. Resilience is another. If the temp is rising on “forbidden terms,” invent others. It is time to emerge from what confines. “Luna Moth-erapy!”
Resilience: Store up energy for the long journey. Egg to larval instars, to pupa, to imago, to adult flyer, Luna Moths know about conservation and innovation. We can also store up creative energy from feeding our imagination, intellect, and affect. The more we read and network with environmental authors and organizations, advocates, research scientists, ethical thinkers, eco-philosophers, musicians-of-Earth and poets, the more we will employ Whole Nature Literacy to adapt to a world of mind-shrunken censorship. Find an opening. Rachel Carson, Aldo Leopold, John Muir, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Jane Goodall, E.O. Wilson, Bill McKibben, Wendell Berry, Thomas Berry, Joanna Macy, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Suzanne Simard, Robert Macfarlane, Mary Oliver, Mary Reynolds, and so many others provide vision, resources and alternative languaging to help us emerge from the cocoon of censorship and fly beyond the constrictive lunacy.
We can defy Green censorship. Leave the cocoon of hushed compliance. Come away flying.
Luna Moth-erapy for Resilience!
