Anemoia, Adronitis and Adomania
Articulating phenomenon and sensations with new language
2025 is here. The next year in the Gregorian calendar. A measurement of time most of the world uses today. Usually I write about geopolitical issues, but this month I decided to focus on a specific phenomenon that is part of our unique experience of being human.
There are novel experiences for we humans, brought about by the implementation of tech in our daily lives within the past twenty years. We are sacrificing effort and authenticity for ease, comfort and enhanced reality (illusion) of ourselves and our environments. We have traded in-person contact with virtual and text communications. We rely on, and in most cases are addicted to screens.
Our children and grandchildren see us with our cellphones, iPads, Chromebooks and laptops as beings attached to screens first-not them. They see our ear buds, skull candies, headphones and know we are not fully concentrating on what they say or what they feel. They receive the message even as infants, that the “world” and view on screens is more engaging and important than they are. Often the adults respond more quickly to the Pavlovian screen sounds than they do to their children’s voices. It has become an expectation by many children that they will be handed a mobile phone or iPad to quiet them or amuse them instead of face-to-face interaction with their family, teachers or elders. With few exceptions, we have addicted ourselves and the next generation to tech tools.
There is a surge on social media of teenagers and young adults who yearn of a time when human contact was the norm. In western countries, they only know of this from the media. Their generation has never known a time without the screens. These occurrences and interactions portrayed in films, photographs and other media are ones they can only imagine and perhaps hunger for as we might have when viewing media about the pioneer times or even the “Roaring Twenties”.
A luscious new dictionary of language to describe sensations associated with these new phenomenon we humans face is entitled, “The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows” by John Koenig. The book and website associated with this work delineates a number of emotions and conditions previously described by a number of adjectives and phrases, now distilled into “new” vocabulary he has created. It is a mix of languages from Greek, German, Anglo Saxon, Latin and other roots meshed together.
For example: the word “adronitis” sounds almost medical, but the definition is related to a contemporary condition condensed into a noun which means:
“n. frustration with how long it takes to get to know someone—spending the first few weeks chatting in their psychological entryway, with each subsequent conversation like entering a different anteroom, each a little closer to the center of the house—wishing instead that you could start there and work your way out, exchanging your deepest secrets first, before easing into casualness, until you’ve built up enough mystery over the years to ask them where they’re from, and what they do for a living.”
Can you relate? Koenig points out that:
”The desire to be close to another person is so inherent to human beings, and yet we talk about dogs and the weather before we'll talk about our families”.
Rene Magritte’s surrealism painting entitled, “The Lovers” in 1928.
An anxiety about the speed of change is expressed by the new word, “Adomania”. Mania most people grasp as a frenzy, exaggerated obsession. It implies an inability to stop.
Adomania according to Koenig is:
“n. the sense that the future is arriving ahead of schedule, that all those years predicted, are bursting from their hypothetical cages into the arena of the present, furiously bucking the grip of your expectations…”
Have you ever heard the phrase, “Stop the world I want to get off?” It was the name of a musical comedy first performed in London in 1961, and then on Broadway in New York in 1962. People connected with this sentiment decades ago.
In fact, 17 countries (at present) are providing chemical means for people to end their lives for a number of reasons including: “depression, anxiety, pain (both physical and emotional), disabilities and incurable conditions”.
You and your medical providers can make the choice to “get off” the planet with their assistance. Human beings including minors as young as 12 years old in some countries (the Netherlands, Belgium, Canada) can consent to “assisted suicide” as of 2024. These procedures are becoming “normalized” in media and certain societies. Children are growing up with this publicized as an option for them should life present seemingly insurmountable challenges.
While on the one hand there has been a diminishment of language in the mainstream media, including in the scripts, dialogues in films, series and popular podcasts - this effort to enrich our vocabularies is a welcome effort.
I’ll close with one last pithy example he created: Emodox.
“n. someone whose mood is perpetually out of sync with everyone else around them, prone to feelings of naptime panic, heart-to-heart snark, or dance club pensiveness.
From emotional + dox, not conforming to expected norms. Pronounced “ee-moh-doks.”
This new word describes many of us who are considered “divergents”. I’m definitely divergent and an emodox in certain crowds. Partly it’s because I’m often hiddled.
Click on the link to find the definition of that word and many others John Koening generated. Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
Happy New Year 2025 to you all!
May you retain your humanity, purpose and healthy perspectives in the times to come. Beware of the altschmerz all around you.