Why Language Matters

Words shape perception. Reclaiming and reframing how we speak about nations is part of global healing and equity.

The other day, I was in conversation with a dear colleague—someone I deeply admire and trust—when the words slipped out of my mouth before I could catch them: “You know, Indonesia is kind of like a third world country…”

As soon as I said it, I felt a rush of discomfort. My stomach tightened. My face flushed. I paused, caught between the momentum of the conversation and the weight of the words I’d just used.

I’ve spent years unlearning the narratives I was raised with. I am still unlearning much and learning at a whole new level that which I never even knew to question. I’ve walked the path of decolonization not just as a concept, but as a lived experience. And yet, here was this phrase—third world—still embedded somewhere deep in my language, like an old program I hadn’t fully deleted.

After the call, I couldn’t let it go. I sat with it. I asked myself why I said it. Where it came from. What it really meant.

And what I saw was this: I had used a phrase that carries with it a whole history of hierarchy, judgment, and colonial imagination.

The term “third world” emerged during the Cold War, originally to describe countries that were not aligned with either the capitalist First World or the communist Second World. But over time, it became code. Code for poverty. For struggle. For underdevelopment. For nations seen as less than.

It’s not just outdated—it’s damaging.

Because what these words erase is the truth.

The truth that long before Europeans arrived on foreign shores, the world was rich with thriving civilizations. Across Africa, Asia, the Pacific, and the Americas, Ancestral Peoples had languages, laws, philosophies, trade systems, treaties, art, and deep spiritual wisdom. They lived in harmony with land and cosmos in ways that modernity is only beginning to remember.

These weren’t people waiting to be civilized.

They were people already living in alignment—with community, with creation, with story.

So where did this idea come from—that some countries are “first” and others “third”? And more importantly, why does it still linger in the way we speak today?

Even though many governments and scholars have moved away from this terminology, it remains stuck in popular culture. It persists because the worldview that created it still shapes how we measure worth: GDP, consumption, growth, power. It persists because so many of us have internalized the myth that economic wealth is the same as value.

But when we measure nations by what they lack, we miss everything they offer. And we risk perpetuating the same systems of domination and erasure that so many of us are trying to heal from.

This blog isn’t about shaming anyone. It’s about noticing. It’s about becoming more conscious. It’s about reclaiming the power of our words—and the stories they carry.

I am committed to transforming how I speak.

Because how we speak reflects how we see.

And how we see determines what we value.

So instead of using terms that rank and reduce, I want to speak in ways that uplift and reveal. I want to recognize nations and peoples not for their place on some imaginary ladder, but for their unique contributions, visions, cultures, and strengths.

Closing Reflection

What might be possible if we began to see and speak of nations not by what they lack, but by what they protect, contribute, and envision?

May we become more reverent with our language.

May we learn to speak in ways that honor, rather than diminish.

And may our words become bridges toward the world we are here to create.