Today we introduce another useful expression.
Metathesiophobic catatonia (n.): paralysis induced by fear of the perception that any action, including any decision, will change the future. Those of the multiversal persuasion might decribe this as inertia brought on by terror that the slightest exercise of agency will result in the agent entering an adjacent parallel universe, forever barred from the one in which the action was performed, unable to return to a world where the decision was never taken.
And our friend Jack Shackaway himself appears to be suffering a touch of metathesiophobic catatonia, a condition otherwise known as pathological dither. (See Jack’s recent post on the uneasy superposition he claims freelancers tend to experience.)
‘The Garden of Forking Paths,’ a story in Jorge Luis Borges’ Labyrinths, is apropos.
Links to other handy expressions (including neologisms hot off the Collin Piprell In Reality Press): cymbalalalazophobia; apocalyptic cosmophobia; hobologoist; iktsuarpok; to cabbage; democrazy; beepification. There are more, but I’m too lazy to look for them.
