ABSTRACT
The alternative to thinking of language as a conduit in a sender/receiver process of communication, in which words supposedly accurately represent real things, events, and relationships, is to recognize that words have a history and that their current meanings are framed, for the most part, by analogs chosen in the past. This chapter explores how much of today's ecologically problematic thinking is based on what Gregory Bateson refers to as "double bind thinking". In the West, patriarchy and anthropocentrism are examples of taken for granted explanatory/moral frameworks (root metaphors) that have not only framed how people think and behave, but also what they ignore. The cultural commons, which both Lakoff and Johnson could have made the focus of their discussion of embodied knowledge, includes the intergenerational knowledge, skills, and mutually supportive relationships that enable people to live more community-centered and thus less money dependent and less environmentally destructive lives.
