Beyond Chiroptophobia

The Grey-headed Flying-fox (Pteropus poliocephalus ... Greek polios, 'grey', cephalus, 'head') lives in a big colony near Tocal. I have been thinking about them lately as bats and viruses have been in the news. The history of human interaction with Flying foxes is a curious mixture ranging from chiroptophobia (fear of bats), to forms of …

‘Sumbios’

I preferentially use the ancient Greek ‘sumbios’ for a family of new concepts I am developing. The term ‘symbiosis’ is a New Latin and German construction of the scientific community in Germany around the late 1800s (although some identify its first use from around 1622). According to the Concise Oxford Dictionary, the modern term ‘symbiosis’ …

Sumbiotude

If I live to be one hundred years of age, it is my hope that my life will come to exemplify a neologism that is best defined as sumbiotude, or the state of living together. Sumbiotude is the exact opposite of solitude: instead of contemplating life in isolation, sumbiotude involves contemplation and completion of a …

Isolalgia

The pain and distress felt when one is in a state of forced isolation during a pandemic or any other event that requires non-voluntary or reluctant social isolation.  The feeling of desolation when detached from your usual human-built landscape and the strange loneliness felt when the city, the village, the streets are virtually empty of …

Meuavalent:

Meuavalent: The resolution of opposing sets of emotions during a time of crisis and/or disaster. For example, the current need to move from the emotions of the Anthropocene to the emotions of the Symbiocene, from terraphthoran emotions to terranasciant emotions. Right now (April 2020) humans are in a meuavalent moment in our history where in …