Geistgarten • noun • (guy-sst-garr-dunn)
Definition: the growth and cultivation of one’s spirit, mind, soul, and intelligence
Origin: The Sustainable Culture Lab, German
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My book THE CRIME WITHOUT A NAME was released on October 12, 2021 and NPR has picked it as one of the top books of the year!
You can order the book—including the audiobook—and watch recordings of my book tour discussions at Eaton and the New York Public Library at thecrimewithoutaname.com.
This is our 100th newsletter and I am so excited to have been able to share this linguistic journey with all of you.
This newsletter and The Sustainable Culture Lab are extensions of my philosophical work to use language, culture, and activism to create sustainable change. The impetus of my work derives from a profound realization that occurred to me after I discovered the word “ethnocide” and my book The Crime Without a Name: Ethnocide and the Erasure of Culture in America (TCWAN) is arguably the most noticeable extension of my philosophy.
For me, the word ethnocide equated to a profound moment because I had found a word that could precisely describe how I understood the United States. Instead of being limited by inadequate conversations about race, I could now have conversations about culture and cultural destruction, and how American inequality derives from the normalization of destroying culture.
America’s notions of race largely derive from colonizers inflicting ethnocide upon African and Indigenous people, and then demonizing these non-European “races.” In America, discussions about race will only reinforce ethnocidal divisions, so we will never be able to solve or transcend racial division in America without discussing ethnocide.
Discovering the word ethnocide equated to the beginning of the journey and not the end. It made it abundantly clear to me that American English may also suffer from a profound lack of the necessary words for describing our society. If ethnocide was a foundational aspect of American society, yet America never felt the need to invent that word, then how many other words might we be lacking to describe our own society?
I knew that my new linguistic journey would consist of both unearthing significant, but neglected words, and also creating brand new words.
In TCWAN, I coined more than 10 new words and phrases, and this newsletter has allowed me to continue that journey.
This week’s word (our 100th word!) speaks to the journey all of us are embarking on as we work to make the world a better place through language.
All You Need is Geist
In TCWAN, I coined the word Geistmord meaning the killing or murder of Geist. The inception of Geistmord comes from Geist, a German word that does not have an adequate English translation but loosely means “ghost,” “soul,” “spirit,” “mind,” and “intelligence.”
In German, your spirit or soul is also your mind and intelligence, but in English, your soul and intelligence are commonly considered as two different things.
Geist can be both singular and collective so a group of people can also have a collective Geist, and when we discuss Geist in a collective sense, we are actually describing a people’s culture. A people’s culture can manifest in the food, clothes, art, language, etc. that they create, but their Geist is what guides the creation of these cultural items.
In TCWAN, Geistmord is used to describe how ethnocide also aspires to crush or break the soul of the people being oppressed. Ethnocidal slaveowners aspired to “break” enslaved people, but this break was not a physical break. If a slave’s body was broken they could not work, so slaveowners aspired to break the spirit, soul, or mind of these people. Physical terror and torture are aspects of Geistmord, but the destruction of culture, the shattering of familial and communal bonds, and the denial of education are all a part of a systemic agenda to break the Geist of African people in America.
We need the word Geistmord to clearly identify and articulate the problem. Now, we need Geistgarten so that we can create and articulate the solution. In my next book, I plan on diving deeper into this topic.
Recently, I’ve recommended to some friends that they try a meditation by the Indian mystic Sadhguru called Isha Kriya. I like this meditation because it is proactive and not reactive. It is not a meditation about relieving stress or tension. It is supposed to give your body good energy which should proactively help you deal with stressful situations without getting stressed out. Essentially, good energy can empower your Geist so I wanted to know what my friends thought of the meditation.
The other day one of my friends called me up and we spoke about the meditation because he could not understand the mantra. In the meditation, you repeat “I’m not this body. I’m not even the mind,” and my friend wanted to know how if they were neither the body nor the mind, then what exactly are they?
This was a great question, and I told him that the answer was Geist.
For example, identical twins are the closest replicas of human beings that human beings can create, yet identical twins are not identical robots. Their bodies including their brains are essentially identical, but they exist as completely different individuals because of something inexplicable that ends up defining who they are. The inexplicable attribute is their spirit or their Geist, and that is who they truly are.
This is what all of us are.
As life goes by, our bodies and our minds will change as we gather more knowledge and experiences, but our Geist is actually what shapes and defines us as we make our way through the world.
What I wanted my friend to cultivate is Geist and grow his Geistgarten, but his journey had a profound impediment because American English did not have the word for the vital part of himself that he needed to grow.
This is a problem that I have recognized in many people, even myself, and this is why the word Geistgarten can be so impactful.
We Must Cultivate Our Garden
One of the most popular books in the western world for the past 300 years ends with the line, “but we must cultivate our garden,” yet we do not get much clarity about what one should aspire to grow.
In Voltaire’s Candide, we are encouraged to cultivate our garden so that we do not give up and resign ourselves to an unpleasant fate within a chaotic world. No matter what the world throws at us we still must cultivate our garden, but without wisdom how can we be sure that we are cultivating a healthy and not toxic garden?
Two weeks ago, our word was “propaganda,” and this word derives from “propagate.” There is nothing inherently negative about propagation, but if people either knowingly or unknowingly propagate toxic gardens then propaganda, which is just Latin for “propagate,” will now have a negative meaning.
Thus, the goal cannot be to merely cultivate our garden, but to have the wisdom to increase the likelihood that we cultivate a healthy, constructive garden and not a toxic, destructive one.
Geistgarten means “spirit garden,” and part of the inspiration for coining this word derives from the simple realization that all Americans attend kindergarten. Millions of children attend kindergarten, but rarely do we stop to think about what that word means. Translated from German, it means “children garden” and the goal is to provide young people with the necessary tools and resources to grow.
This understanding of gardening as a method for personal growth should not be limited to merely one year of education. We need to use the language of gardening in relation to ourselves, our community, and our culture as we work and cultivate growth.
We must cultivate a good, sustainable, nurturing, Eǔtopian space. Yet in order to cultivate a healthy, physical environment, we must also cultivate our Geist because our Geist helps shape the physical things that we manifest.
These 100 words, and the many more to come, are part of our Geistgarten. As these words show, it is much easier to cultivate your Geist, prevent Geistmord, and combat ethnocide once you have the words to articulate the things that you experience but never had the words to describe
Later this week, I will send all of you the list of 100 words so that you can further explore our linguistic Geistgarten.