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Sonder: n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, wo

Sonder: n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk. This word was popularized by the site Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, and I believe it, as the opposite, hearkens back to solipsism, the philosophical idea of you being the only one to exist. It is interesting to see this word "sonder" not referenced at all in the article, I would have imagined it a meme within the Internet at this point. [0] https://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/post/23536922667/sonder https://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/post/23536922667/...

routerl 4y ago
I've always thought of this as another perspective on Shakespeare's "There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." To believe otherwise is to have lost the wonder of discovery.
- atoav 4y ago
  This is the great thing of having a nerdy side: You know that literally everything will get interesting if you just dive into it deep enough. Sometimes I feel sad for people who cannot experience that joy.
  - dorkwood 4y ago
    > Sometimes I feel sad for people who cannot experience that joy. I feel the same, but then I think to myself: maybe those people are experiencing some quality of existence that I'm not, and thinking to themselves "this is the life".
  - NovaVeles 4y ago
    Alternatively - "The nicest thing about anything is not knowing what it is." - George Carlin. Not knowing how a cloud works is magical for instance. But taking this line of thinking too far can be disastrous. There is a happy middle ground.
    - prox 4y ago
      It’s called the Aesthetic. From aisthanesthai "to perceive (by the senses or by the mind), to feel.” , it’s when your senses are working at their peak and thinking goes to the background. So you can enjoy an aesthetic experience in a far different manner than the unaesthetic, like reading, or figuring out a puzzle, etc.
    - Y78434221423 4y ago
      This argument was dealt with by Richard Dawkins in his book Unweaving the Rainbow: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unweaving_the_Rainbow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unweaving_the_Rainbow
    - atoav 4y ago
      I don't think so. There is of course a childlike magic in looking at the clouds and dreaming of the people who live there. But the feeling of fantasy a child gets when looking at clouds does only partly stem from not knowing what they consist of. I have many topics that still fascinate me as much as they did when I was a kid – to be honest, maybe even more than back then, because now I know how ridiculously complex they are and what ultra-specific conditions needed to be there for this to emerge. Knowing more doesn't make things less miraculous, but more so. And despite knowing a lot about fluid dynamics and clouds I can still just stare at a beautiful cloud in awe and wonder how it would be to live up there in the naive, romantic sense. I know a lot about acoustics and what makes my instrument work, but in the end I can still just sit there and play it. If anything that knowledge allows me to connect more intimately with the world around me Losing your childlike side is something that happens to many people, because they are afraid of how it is being perceived from the outside – and then they internalize this so much that they don't even allow themselves awe and wonder even inside the privacy of their own heads. Maybe this is coupled with the Dunning-Kruger effect? So if someone is in the valley of people who don't know a lot, but think they know everything, the wonder of the world around them might indeed be lost for them.
  - jvm___ 4y ago
    My current theory is that everything is a network. Prove me wrong, find something that's not a node on a complication network.
hatsunearu 4y ago
maybe I'm just an asshole but I've felt whatever is the opposite of sonder these days when I come across people that are so clueless and inattentive they might as well be zombies.
- finnh 4y ago
  it's hard to reconcile, right? conversely I've been the clueless guy enough to realize we all do it. like getting angry at random trash and then thinking "you know, maybe someone dropped this by accident when they thought they got it into their pocket"
  - ericbarrett 4y ago
    Every time I try to think so charitably I end up driving behind somebody who chucks a plastic water bottle out their window into a national forest.
- chaps 4y ago
  At some point in your life, somebody's undoubtedly thought the same thing about you. Probably even a bunch of people over many years.
  - b3morales 4y ago
    As depicted by xkcd: https://xkcd.com/610/ https://xkcd.com/610/
    - hatsunearu 4y ago
      Wow, there really is an XKCD for everything
  - bigDinosaur 4y ago
    Although you may be right, and they may be wrong. Not that I advocate going around thinking like this as it'll only lead to unhappiness and poor relationships (and you'll also very possibly be wrong).
boredemployee 4y ago
I usually have that reflection when I'm travelling. It's indeed a depressing feeling. Last time it happened I was in the middle of Rome/Italy with many unknown faces around me, that I was seeing for the first time and - thinking at that time - that I will never see them again.
- ThalesX 4y ago
  I've had a melancholic moment traveling in a bus on the narrow roads in Nepal, and seeing some rock faces, just realizing that while the rocks will be there long after I am gone, I will never set my eyes on the same rock face again. So many years later and I still think about that rock face for some reason.
eyelidlessness 4y ago
This is a concept I’ve wanted a word for, for over 20 years. Thank you for sharing it.
- carabiner 4y ago
  The sad thing is, it's a fake Tumblr word not recognized by any dictionary. Not OED or MW or anywhere else. Tumblr has coined a lot of interesting words though; "genderfluid" is another that started as a joke, then had people adopting it as sexuality for real.
  - NovaVeles 4y ago
    Official language recognition generally lags the real world by a significant amount. A word can be in use for many years before it even gets a consideration into a dictionary. Dictionary's reflect the world, not dictate it.
  - rzzzt 4y ago
    That's the goal of the author, to make up words for complex feelings and phenomena: https://www.youtube.com/c/obscuresorrows https://www.youtube.com/c/obscuresorrows
  - eyelidlessness 4y ago
    I’m not sure when this supposed joke began, but from what I found[1] with a quick search “genderfluid” was used at least as early as 1994 and not as a joke. The same source cites an appearance in Urban Dictionary in 2007, but the entry doesn’t appear anymore and the Wayback link is currently returning 503 errors for me. 1: https://lgbtqia.fandom.com/wiki/Genderfluid#Etymology https://lgbtqia.fandom.com/wiki/Genderfluid#Etymology
  - Kye 4y ago
    You've misunderstood the function of a dictionary. It doesn't create or validate words, or identities. Also: genderfluid isn't a sexuality. You've taken a terrible tumble into things you do not understand.

routerl 4y ago

I've always thought of this as another perspective on Shakespeare's "There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." To believe otherwise is to have lost the wonder of discovery.

atoav 4y ago
This is the great thing of having a nerdy side: You know that literally everything will get interesting if you just dive into it deep enough. Sometimes I feel sad for people who cannot experience that joy.
- dorkwood 4y ago
  > Sometimes I feel sad for people who cannot experience that joy. I feel the same, but then I think to myself: maybe those people are experiencing some quality of existence that I'm not, and thinking to themselves "this is the life".
- NovaVeles 4y ago
  Alternatively - "The nicest thing about anything is not knowing what it is." - George Carlin. Not knowing how a cloud works is magical for instance. But taking this line of thinking too far can be disastrous. There is a happy middle ground.
  - prox 4y ago
    It’s called the Aesthetic. From aisthanesthai "to perceive (by the senses or by the mind), to feel.” , it’s when your senses are working at their peak and thinking goes to the background. So you can enjoy an aesthetic experience in a far different manner than the unaesthetic, like reading, or figuring out a puzzle, etc.
  - Y78434221423 4y ago
    This argument was dealt with by Richard Dawkins in his book Unweaving the Rainbow: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unweaving_the_Rainbow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unweaving_the_Rainbow
  - atoav 4y ago
    I don't think so. There is of course a childlike magic in looking at the clouds and dreaming of the people who live there. But the feeling of fantasy a child gets when looking at clouds does only partly stem from not knowing what they consist of. I have many topics that still fascinate me as much as they did when I was a kid – to be honest, maybe even more than back then, because now I know how ridiculously complex they are and what ultra-specific conditions needed to be there for this to emerge. Knowing more doesn't make things less miraculous, but more so. And despite knowing a lot about fluid dynamics and clouds I can still just stare at a beautiful cloud in awe and wonder how it would be to live up there in the naive, romantic sense. I know a lot about acoustics and what makes my instrument work, but in the end I can still just sit there and play it. If anything that knowledge allows me to connect more intimately with the world around me Losing your childlike side is something that happens to many people, because they are afraid of how it is being perceived from the outside – and then they internalize this so much that they don't even allow themselves awe and wonder even inside the privacy of their own heads. Maybe this is coupled with the Dunning-Kruger effect? So if someone is in the valley of people who don't know a lot, but think they know everything, the wonder of the world around them might indeed be lost for them.
- jvm___ 4y ago
  My current theory is that everything is a network. Prove me wrong, find something that's not a node on a complication network.

hatsunearu 4y ago

maybe I'm just an asshole but I've felt whatever is the opposite of sonder these days when I come across people that are so clueless and inattentive they might as well be zombies.

finnh 4y ago
it's hard to reconcile, right? conversely I've been the clueless guy enough to realize we all do it. like getting angry at random trash and then thinking "you know, maybe someone dropped this by accident when they thought they got it into their pocket"
- ericbarrett 4y ago
  Every time I try to think so charitably I end up driving behind somebody who chucks a plastic water bottle out their window into a national forest.
chaps 4y ago
At some point in your life, somebody's undoubtedly thought the same thing about you. Probably even a bunch of people over many years.
- b3morales 4y ago
  As depicted by xkcd: https://xkcd.com/610/ https://xkcd.com/610/
  - hatsunearu 4y ago
    Wow, there really is an XKCD for everything
- bigDinosaur 4y ago
  Although you may be right, and they may be wrong. Not that I advocate going around thinking like this as it'll only lead to unhappiness and poor relationships (and you'll also very possibly be wrong).

boredemployee 4y ago

I usually have that reflection when I'm travelling. It's indeed a depressing feeling. Last time it happened I was in the middle of Rome/Italy with many unknown faces around me, that I was seeing for the first time and - thinking at that time - that I will never see them again.

ThalesX 4y ago
I've had a melancholic moment traveling in a bus on the narrow roads in Nepal, and seeing some rock faces, just realizing that while the rocks will be there long after I am gone, I will never set my eyes on the same rock face again. So many years later and I still think about that rock face for some reason.

eyelidlessness 4y ago

This is a concept I’ve wanted a word for, for over 20 years. Thank you for sharing it.

carabiner 4y ago
The sad thing is, it's a fake Tumblr word not recognized by any dictionary. Not OED or MW or anywhere else. Tumblr has coined a lot of interesting words though; "genderfluid" is another that started as a joke, then had people adopting it as sexuality for real.
- NovaVeles 4y ago
  Official language recognition generally lags the real world by a significant amount. A word can be in use for many years before it even gets a consideration into a dictionary. Dictionary's reflect the world, not dictate it.
- rzzzt 4y ago
  That's the goal of the author, to make up words for complex feelings and phenomena: https://www.youtube.com/c/obscuresorrows https://www.youtube.com/c/obscuresorrows
- eyelidlessness 4y ago
  I’m not sure when this supposed joke began, but from what I found[1] with a quick search “genderfluid” was used at least as early as 1994 and not as a joke. The same source cites an appearance in Urban Dictionary in 2007, but the entry doesn’t appear anymore and the Wayback link is currently returning 503 errors for me. 1: https://lgbtqia.fandom.com/wiki/Genderfluid#Etymology https://lgbtqia.fandom.com/wiki/Genderfluid#Etymology
- Kye 4y ago
  You've misunderstood the function of a dictionary. It doesn't create or validate words, or identities. Also: genderfluid isn't a sexuality. You've taken a terrible tumble into things you do not understand.