Saturday, January 26, 2008

Compersion, Quink and Pronoia

We are in the business of creating a new culture. Part of this is creating a new language. Turns out there are all kinds of words and concepts in English which are asymmetrically negative.

Jealousy is when you feel bad about your intimates relationship (or feared relationship) with someone else. What if you feel good about it ? There is a word, most people have never heard of it: compersion.

Quink is a word (coined by Tobias Kampf formerly known as Frodo) which is the opposite of trama, when a sudden and dramatic event permanently improves ones life.

Pronoia is the suspicion that the Universe is conspiring on your behalf. It is the antidote to paranoia. And has been popularized by my illusive friend Rob Brezsny.

Now with names for some of these positive concepts, try watching for them, dropping them into conversation (always ready to share the definition) and popularizing them.

1 comment:

Rosie said...

Fingerbook: Dictionary for Change (Change Your Language, Change Your Reality)
It occurs to me that someone ought to go systematically through the dictionary and find all the instances of imbalanced negatives... But then I also read the dictionary for pleasure.