Inter-generational Dyschronia

Dischronometria (sometimes abbreviated to dyschronia) is a dysfunction in which the individual is unable to estimate the amount of time which has passed. Although usually applied to individuals, does our culture show signs of inter-generational dyschronia?

There certainly appear to be signs that our culture does so. Being unable to accurately assess the amount of time that has passed, we also seem incapable of fully appreciating the changes that have taken place over that period. Notably, we seem to be unable to recognise the amount of change that has taken place in the epochs and ages before our individual births.

The pictures that accompany this blogpiece illustrate how dyschronia can distort our ability to identify changes over time periods extending beyond our own individual lifetimes.

Our lifetimes, when measured against the aeons of earth history, are fleeting. Without the ability to step back from our limited lifeline it is very easy to miss the significance of change.

Even when the pace of change occurs exponentially we can miss the significance because we are only witnessing a very small slice of time. We then project that slice onto our own relatively short lifetime, much the same way as a single frame of a movie gives us only a fragment of the entire movie.

Why is this?

A couple of graphs may help to demonstrate. 

Fig 1 shows the graph of an exponential function. As the graph shows, although growth starts out fairly evenly after a period of time the slope of the curve begins to steepen, and then steepens very fast.

This graph is a representational one and, on the x-axis, suggests a timeline stretching from 2000 BCE through to 2000CE and beyond. Nothing specifically is depicted by the curve. It is simply an indication showing what happens under exponential growth. It could be any of the following: population, resource use, carbon emissions, species extinction, etc.

The blue sided rectangle is intended to represent an individual lifetime. (Please note that this is not to scale.)

Fig 2 is the rectangle in Fig 1 extracted and stretched along an x-axis commensurate with the x-axis of Fig 1. This is to symbolise how an individual lifetime is perceived versus that of some 4000 years.

The first thing to notice is that the gradient of the curve in Fig 2 is significantly flatter than that of Fig 1. Thus, when change is viewed simply against one’s own lifetime, any change may seem to be linear and not changing especially quickly.

To push the metaphor further, it can be noted that against the background, the width of the curve in Fig 2 is much greater than it is in Fig 1. We could interpret this to mean that the individual whose life course this depicts views themselves as more significant than is suggested in Fig 1.

Without stepping back and seeing a wider picture, our sense of time can become condensed into the years that have elapsed since our birth and maybe a decade or two before that if we listened to the stories of our parents, uncles, aunts, and grandparents.

The danger in this way of perceiving time and the changes that occur is that we miss how significant those changes are and hence, fail to act in ways that prevent or forestall any hazardous changes.

Those who are able to stand back and look at a longer timeframe are able to notice the steepness of the curves of exponential growth. Sadly, it seems, when these hazards are pointed out, many will deny the hazard because they are viewing time only from within their own narrow timespan.

Sigh!

Cities: Loss of Sensuality

Humans are sensuous beings. We delight in smells, tastes, sight, hearing, and touch. Of these, touch could be claimed to be the most sought after, or desired.

According to developmental psychologists, touch is the first sense developed by fetuses, beginning in the first trimester of pregnancy. Once born, the initial skin-to-skin contact is vital in the bonding of mother and child. If someone’s finger is placed in the palm of an infant, the automatic response of the baby is to curl their own fingers around it to grasp it.

Babies are comforted by being held, especially skin-to-skin, against the body of their parent. The benefits of this close contact flow towards the parents also. Parent’s blood pressure and hormone levels are regulated by the contact. Research shows that an adult’s oxytocin (a.k.a. the love hormone) levels rise during contact with a baby.

As babies grow and pass through childhood, adolescence, and into adulthood, so too does sensuality grow and develop.

In western styled cultures, if we are brought up in a healthy environment, our expression of this sensuality develops in a healthy manner.  A healthy individual grows and develops within a healthy “family” and particularly within a healthy society. A healthy society remains healthy when those within it are also healthy.

Communication and a sense of bonded community are expressions of just such a healthy society.

Cities, however, weaken such communication and bonds. Cities are places of strangers, not of known community members.

Stanley Milgram, the American social psychologist, pointed out in 1970 that, ‘City life, as we experience it, constitutes a continuous set of encounters with overload, and of resulting adaptations.’¹ In citing Milgram’s research, Paul Shepard summarized the human response to these encounters and adaptations as showing an, ‘…inbuilt, predictable shutting-down response to high human density.’²

Milgram provides examples of these encounters, and Shepard adds further, more psychologically damaging, examples.

Milgram describes four methods by which city-dwellers respond and adapt to the overload resulting from high-density living.  

• Bystander interventions in crises are severely diminished.
• Lack of willingness to trust and assist strangers.
• Deficiency of civil niceties.
• Retreat into anonymity.

To these, Shepard adds a shutting down of contact with nonhuman fauna. This, he claims throughout his book, has enormous repercussions for growing children that continue on into adulthood.

All these adaptations slowly, but surely, diminish the sensuousness that we might have come to expect from our time in the womb.

Yet, it need not be so, Shepard claims. He cites the example of the !Kung people who, ‘…though living in small groups in vast savannas like to sit touching each other around their fires at night and build their huts close together.’

Certainly, the attraction of city life and dweller may be appealing, but in that life there is an enormous loss, most of which may not be consciously noticed.

The strain on human interactions, child development, and personal well-being from city living may be greater than any one of us imagines. As our urban centres continue to grow in size, the strain may at some stage reach breaking point, exacerbating social collapse.

Notes:

1. Stanley Milgram, The Experience of Living in Cities, published by American Association for the Advancement of Science, in Science, 13 March 1970.

2. Paul Shepard, Nature and Madness, University of Georgia Press, Athens and London, 1982, p 98

3. Ibid, p 95

Photographic Memories

In a 1994 interview Paul Shepard, professor of Natural Philosophy and Human Ecology, declared that we (humans) were meant to have ‘encountered a beautiful and strange otherness’ as our birthright. For Shepard this otherness grows out of a maternal relationship and is ‘surrounded by living plants, rich in texture, smell, and motion…(and) unfiltered, unpolluted air, the flicker of wild birds, real sunshine and rain, mud to be tasted and tree bark to grasp, the sounds of wind and water, the calls of animals and insects as well as human voices.’¹

Our birthright, in his delightful description, is of a child completely immersed within the natural world and sensuously enjoying that immersion. Shepard goes on a few lines later to state that these surroundings become internalized and incorporated as the self. This concept is reminiscent of the Buddhist notion of non-self, wherein the distinction between I and nature is non-existent.

Sadly, however, the birthright that Shepard would like for all to experience is no longer available to us. We have been stripped of a beautiful and strange otherness. The eco-psychologist, Chellis Glendinning, calls this Earthgrief.

The psychotherapist and grief counsellor, Francis Weller, picks up on Glendinning’s motif and Shepard’s interview answer. ‘We are born…’ he writes ‘…expecting a rich and sensuous relationship with the earth…’ When we do not receive this, we experience a grief that we may not be able to put into words because ‘…we may not even realize (what) we have lost.’²

Weller calls this the Fourth (of five) Gate of Grief, and he admits to not knowing how we know we have been missing this birthright. He does, however, note that when we gain access to this knowledge ‘…a wave of recognition rises that we have lived without this love, this acknowledgment, and the support of this village all our lives.’

How does the recognition of this loss arise? If our birthright has been lost, how do we re-discover it, or remember it?

Photographic Memories

For most of the year we work, sleep, eat, and play in a sanitised and artificial setting. It is the environment we have been adapted to and coerced into since our birth.

Yet once, or twice if we are lucky, a year we get the chance to briefly escape the artificiality by going on holiday. Often, we take this holiday by camping by the sea, trekking in the mountains, or spending time in some other natural setting.

Such short periods of time spent surrounded by a beautiful and strange otherness evokes long dormant memories within our bodies and consciousness.

What do we do? How do we maintain connection with these memories?

Many of us may take photographs. Snapshots of holiday scenes and activities are possibly amongst the most oft taken of photographs. When we look at them later, we are reminded of a beautiful and strange otherness.

Yet, although the photographs are a vicarious substitute for the real thing, they do remind us of the birthright we were meant to encounter.

As we look at these photographs, we may experience a sadness because the experience was so fleeting. There is no shame in suffering a feeling of grief. For that is what is real, and is attested by all three of the authors I have mentioned in this blogpiece – Paul Shepard, Chellis Glendinning, and Francis Weller.

Anyone wishing to delve further into the Fourth Gate of Grief is encouraged to read his book.

Notes:

1. Paul Shepard, Nature and Madness, The University of Georgia Press, Athens & London, 1998

2. Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow, North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, California, 2015

Dumbest Idea Yet

Eärendil

There have been some weird, crazy, and stupid ideas originating in the minds of humans over the years. The latest I have heard of has to be the dumbest yet.

The California based company, Reflect Orbital, has come up with the idea of putting arrays of mirrors into orbit around Earth to reflect sunlight back upon Earth at nighttime. The company claims that these mirrors will 1. enable lighting after dark and 2. increase the amount of sunlight available for solar panels.

The company’s stated aim is to launch and have operating 50,000 reflector satellites by 2035.

Reflect Orbital was founded in 2021 by an aerospace engineer and a mechanical engineer. In July 2026 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC, an independent agency of the US Federal government) granted the company a license to launch a proof-of-concept satellite to be launched as rideshare with a SpaceX mission sometime this year.

This satellite is to be named Eärendil, a character from Tolkien’s The Silmarillon. Eärendil sails across the heavens with a sparkling jewel bound to his brow. The jewel shines down it’s light and becomes the Morning Star. I wonder what Tolkien would make of Reflect Orbital’s first satellite, let alone 49,999 more of them?

In its decision to grant the license, FCC declared that the project is groundbreaking technology and that testing it is in the public interest. Somehow, the public does not agree. More than 1,800 public comments have been made about the project, with most of these opposed to the idea.

The founders of the company (both engineers) are obviously intelligent beings, yet their idea has to be one of the dumbest yet.

Humans may be intelligent, yet incapable of wisdom. Intelligence might enable us to make or do something. Wisdom enables us to determine whether it is a good or advisable thing to do. This idea of reflector satellites is proof that wisdom does not derive from intelligence.

Let me briefly outline three reasons for this assertion.

1. Earth-based astronomy would be placed at risk. Astronomers have predicted that 50,000 reflector satellites would make the night sky 3-4 times brighter than present. Large, professional, telescopes may be immune in some way, as the company has said that it can mitigate this risk for these telescopes. But that does not allay the fears of amateur back-yard stargazers and children and youngsters wishing to focus their telescopes on the planets, moons, and comets of the night sky. The sense of wonder inspired by gazing at the night sky will be severely diminished.
2. It is estimated that 50%-70% of animal species are nocturnal or exhibit some form of nocturnal behaviour. These reflector satellites will hamper their feeding, mating, and sleeping patterns. For some, it will seriously impede their navigational abilities.
3. The circadian rhythms of humans are likely to be gravely disrupted. Circadian rhythm sleep disorder (CRSD) has been shown to be a factor in bipolar disease,¹ depressive disorders in young people,² and in fatigue, insomnia, appetite loss, irritability, headaches, and other health issues. Long term disruption to circadian rhythms impinges severely the underlying metabolic functions of our makeup. In turn, this can translate into illnesses such as Multiple Sclerosis³ and cardiovascular diseases.⁴

The day/night cycle has been a naturally occurring one for millions of years. Animal and plant species have adapted to this rhythmic cycle (some have even adapted to rhythms as long as five months or more).

Interfering with this rhythm is asking for disaster.

Reflecting light upon Earth during what is normally nighttime is the dumbest idea yet.

Notes:

1. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6812517/  accessed 7 September 2026

2. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(21)00034-1/abstract  accessed 7 September 2026

3. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0149763414000104?via%3Dihub  accessed 7 September 2026

4. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2657421/  accessed 7 September 2026

We Are Neanderthals

In 1856 the first recognised fossil belonging to the species Homo neanderthalensis (aka the Neanderthals) was discovered in the Neander Valley, Germany. Neanderthals inhabited Europe, Western and Central Asia during the Middle and Late Pleistocene epochs (approximately 800,000 to 12,000 years ago.) They became extinct approximately 40,000 years ago, although some may have survived a few thousand years longer in the Gibraltar region.

Another species, the Denisovans, were only recently identified, in 2010. The Denisovans inhabited Asia from about 200,000 to 32,000 years ago.

DNA studies of Neanderthals has been possible since the late 1990s, and their full sequence was published in 2010. Denisovans too, have had their DNA analysed.

One of the offshoots of these genetic analyses has been to discover that Europeans and Eurasians contain, on average, 1-4% Neanderthal DNA. People living in Asia, SE Asia, Melanesia, and Australian first nations people contain 4-6% Denisovan DNA.

Initially it was thought that the only people without any DNA from either of these species were sub-Saharan Africans. However, recently, it has been discovered that here too, Neanderthal DNA represents approximately 0.5% of their DNA. This has been cited as evidence for back-migration following the migration of Homo sapiens out of Africa.

These genetic discoveries show that inter-breeding occurred between Homo sapiens, Homo neanderthalensis, and Denisovans.

We modern humans (Homo sapiens) contain 1-4% Neanderthal DNA, or 4-6% Denisovan DNA.

We are humans with Neanderthal or Denisovan DNA.

That’s one way to look at it. But wait!

What if we took an oblique perspective?

What if instead of thinking that Homo sapiens contain Neanderthal DNA, we took the perspective that we are Neanderthal with between 96% and 99% Sapiens?

Ridiculous, I hear some scream.

Yet, we think this sort of thought many times. For example, I was born in New Zealand, as were my parents and all my grandparents. Yet, I can still identify myself as having Scottish, German, and English ancestry. I could, if I wanted, say I am Scottish, or German.

So, why not think of ourselves as Neanderthal, or Denisovan?

It is not as stupid as it may seem. It may even overcome some of the prejudice about Neanderthals that can be heard. It may also challenge the snide comments of “knuckle-dragger,” “ape,” or “caveman” that sometimes get levelled at those we think are stupid or inferior to ourselves.

Furthermore, thinking this way may help us recognise the benefits Neanderthal DNA offers us. Our immune system was given a boost, enabling us to ward off pathogens common in Europe and Eurasia and enabled us to survive in new territories. Our skin and hair were modified, supporting our ability to adapt to colder climates and differing levels of sunlight. It seems too, that our metabolism may have been influenced by Neanderthal DNA, allowing for adaptation to differing food availability.

Yes, it is possible to call ourselves Neanderthals, with Sapiens DNA.

Conjubilant and Confelicitous

In lastweek’s blog I proposed that the English language needed an antonym for the word schadenfreude. The Pali language from 2,500 years ago had a word meaning to delight in the happiness of another person. That word is muditā. However, I stated, the English language did not and suggested that English needs to find one.

Since that post I have had a couple of conversations with friends about this lack in the English language. Those conversations came up with a couple of candidates to fill the gap.

The first is the word conjubilant, which was suggested by one friend. As we know, to be jubilant is to be happy, joyful, or pleased. Jubilation is often expressed openly. Adding the prefix con attaches the meaning of with to the adjective jubilant. Thus, we get a word that means to be happy with, or joyful together.

Then, we did a search and discovered that the word conjubilant already exists in the English language. It entered the English language in the 17^th century and reached its peak usage (albeit limited) in the late 19^th and early 20^th century. Today, it is considered a rare and archaic word.

Conjubilant though, does not quite encompass the meaning of delighting in the happiness of another (or others.) It means to be joyful with others, perhaps in celebration of a common success or triumph, rather than being joyful for others.

The other word came through a more intensive search. We discovered (or, more accurately, re-discovered) the word confelicity. This word more accurately describes the feeling of pleasure in someone else’s joy or happiness.

As with the previous word, confelicity is also rarely used and has faded into disuse. Confelicity was coined during the (European) Enlightenment by scholars keen to derive an antonym to the word schadenfreude. If the history and experience of living in Enlightenment times is recalled, it is understandable why scholars and others would seek such a word.

However, confelicity remained embedded within the vocabulary of high-status and academic circles. It did not enter common parlance and has rarely to this day done so.

We could help it do so.

The words we use both describe the world about us as well as shaping our understanding of the world. The best-known formulation of this idea is the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, named after two early 20^th century linguists, Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf.

The hypothesis recognises that some concepts in one culture do not exist in another. One of the reasons for this may be that the concept does not have a word that names it. The hypothesis suggests that if a language does not have a word for a particular concept then the concept will, at best, be poorly defined, and, at worst, remain unrecognised. The most famous example of this is that of the Inuit language with more than 100 words for “snow” as the linguist Whorf (of Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis fame) announced.

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis has two forms, a strong form and a weak form. The strong form submits that language determines thought and therefore our perception of the world. The weak form says that language influences thought. Modern linguistic scholarship accepts the weak form, with the strong form having fallen out of favour since World War 2.

Because words influence the way in which we perceive the world and ourselves, we could use words in a more thoughtful, considered, and encouraging manner.

Let us consider the two words, schadenfreude and confelicity.

Schadenfreude has increased tenfold in usage in the last forty years. In contrast, confelicity has hardly registered in usage.

When we look around the world we can see instances of schadenfreude most everywhere we look. We see it politically, we see it economically, we see it in our education systems, we can sometimes even see it in our health and welfare systems.

Confelicity, on the other hand, is not so often witnessed.

Might that be because we do not use the word?

As the famous aphorism goes: if you don’t use it, you lose it.

If we don’t use the word, we lose not just the word, we lose the concept it describes.

Let’s start using the word confelicity.

Let’s start being confelicitous.

English Needs An Antonym For Schadenfreude

In the mid-1800s the English language adopted the German word schadenfreude. In German schadenfreude means damage-joy. Dictionaries define it as malicious joy in witnessing the misfortune of others.

During the first century after adoption the word hardly entered common parlance. It began to be used more often from the mid-20^th century onward and by the mid-1980s was being used once in every 100 million words used.

However, since then its use has skyrocketed to being used once in every ten million words by 2020. A massive tenfold upsurge in less than forty years!

Prior to schadenfreude English had the word gloat from the 16^th century. Originally it meant to look at furtively and has a common root with the familiar glower. Parallel with the use of schadenfreude, gloat has also become more frequently used since the 1980s, having quadrupled in use in the same forty years.

What does this say about our culture? Are we becoming further and further disconnected from one another to the extent that we talk more often about finding joy in someone else’s lack of joy?

The words we use have an influence upon our worldview and our cultural psyche, and vice versa. Hence, a word such as schadenfreude both describes our worldview and shapes it at the same time.

Certainly, when we look around, and listen to some of the conversations around us, we hear examples of this often. The game of “us” versus “them” is frequently played out. Racism, sexism, and other forms of prejudice play this game. One of the prizes in this game is when the “us” team defeats the “them” team and “we” are able to gloat over the misfortune of “them.” That is schadenfreude.

An Antonym

Does English have an antonym to schadenfreude?

It appears not. English has words that come close to the meaning of being unhappy at someone else’s misfortune: e.g. sympathy, pity, compassion. But English does not have a specific word meaning to be happy at someone else’s happiness, joy, or good fortune.

Other languages do. The Pali language, for example, has the word muditā, meaning the joyfulness that comes from delighting in the joy of others. The word is used in Hindu texts that are at least two thousand years old, and was used by the Buddha even earlier.

Muditā has been in use in the Pali language, and others in India and surrounding areas, for well over two millennia. It has made a significant contribution to the worldview of cultures in that part of the world.

English, and German, it would seem have not been influenced by any similar words.

It’s time we found one.

An attempt was made by a commune in the Haight-Ashbury neighbourhood of San Francisco in the early 1980s. The Kerista Commune was an intentional grouping of people who believed in and practiced polyamory. In an effort to reject sentiments such as jealousy and envy the commune members fashioned the word compersion, from the French word compère (partner) and the English suffix sion. The meaning attributed to the word however was limited. It signified the happiness one felt for the happiness of a partner. Compersion was not extended to others outside the polyamorous community.

So, the English language is still looking for a word that means to take delight in the joy, happiness, or good fortune of others, whether of one’s immediate grouping or outside that grouping.

At a time when we English speakers are using words associated with finding joy in others discomfort more frequently, the search for an antonym for schadenfreude and gloat is vital.

The other approach we could use is to regularly appreciate, applaud, and find joy in the happiness of others. Out of such a milieu an antonym for schadenfreude might emerge.