Now you can feel homesick from the comforts of your own home, thanks to a modern mental illness called solastalgia. It’s a relatively new word, derived from the Latin terms solacium and algia (meaning solace and pain respectively) by philosopher Glenn Albrecht. Solastalgia is the word you would use to describe the incredible sadness people feel as forestry is swept back in favour of suburban subdivisions and strip malls, and animal populations are choked into extinction. Weather is now volatile and unpredictable. Rivers are either polluted or drying up. Nutrient-stripped soil no longer bears fruit. It’s like Mother Earth herself is evicting the human race from tenancy.
The subtle hints that we are no longer welcome to live here have been evident for years. In Myths of the Near Future, a short-story collection by J. G. Ballard (1982), Ballard suggests today’s widespread addiction to pornography “means that nature is alerting us to some threat of extinction.” A few years later, a 1992 study from the Cross-National Collaborative Group (JAMA 1992 Dec 2;268(21):3098-105) revealed an upward trend of major depression and other forms of mental illness with each successively younger birth age bracket. Hispanic samples were the only ones to escape the caustic spiral. The bottom line of the study was we’re all going crazy, and the numbers back it up.
Let’s face it. As tenants of this planet, the human race needs make some heroic changes in consumption. Either that, or be the next species evicted into extinction.
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