There’s a name for that feeling of not being able to get your bearings in an uncertain world: Zozobra
Five questions with Wake Forest Philosophy Professor Francisco Gallegos
Understanding the word “zozobra” and the insights of Mexican philosophers behind it may help bring people together and create community during times of uncertainty.
Associate Professor of Philosophy Francisco Gallegos, who studies the philosophy of emotions, says zozobra names the feeling of disorientation many have felt in response to disruptive political and social changes.
Gallegos, who joined the Wake Forest faculty in 2018, teaches courses on social and political philosophy and studies Latin American philosophy. He is the co-author of a book on the contemporary relevance of Mexican philosopher Jorge Portilla (1918-1963) called “The Disintegration of Community” and co-editor of “The Latinx Philosophy Reader,” published this year.
What is zozobra?
“Zozobra” is an ordinary Spanish word for anxiety, but it has connotations that English terms for anxiety don’t have. The verb “zozobrar” means “to capsize,” and according to the Mexican philosophers that I study, including Jorge Portilla, zozobra is a distinctive kind of anxiety we feel when we are at sea in historical currents that are pushing us about, and we are not able to make sense of what’s happening. Zozobra is a feeling of groundlessness, an anxiety that comes from being unable to settle into a single point of view, being pulled between two or more extremes—a feeling of being seasick, almost at an existential level. The image of a ship at sea in a storm, swinging violently from one side of the boat, from one extreme to the other, on the verge of turning upside down and sinking, perfectly captures what it’s like to experience zozobra.
Where does zozobra come from?
According to Portilla, zozobra comes from cracks in the frameworks of meaning that people rely on to make sense of our world: the shared understanding of what is real and who is trustworthy, what risks we face and how to meet them, what basic decency requires of us and what ideals our nation aspires to. From this perspective, zozobra is a natural and appropriate emotion or mood that people feel in response to social disintegration, the breakdown of the shared norms, values, institutions, practices, skills, and traditions that weave communities and societies into existence and hold them together.
How do shared norms create a “horizon of understanding?“
Portilla argues that shared norms and practices constitute a community’s “horizon of understanding.” This metaphor of a horizon is instructive. Just as we rely on the horizon to help us to orient ourselves in space as we navigate toward our destination, we also rely on a shared horizon of understanding as we navigate our present historical moment and move toward an uncertain future. When these shared norms, traditions, values, institutions, and ways of relating to each other begin to break down, a community and a society can dis-integrate, or pull apart. And when this happens, a person may have a hard time making sense of what’s happening, how to feel, and what to think. We experience the loss of a shared horizon of meaning as a disabling of our internal GPS navigation system, an inability to exercise the capacities we once relied on to decide how to be in this world as we find it—how to think, feel, and act in response to the challenges and opportunities of the present moment.
How is zozobra different from other forms of anxiety?
One limitation of the English word “anxiety” is that we think of anxiety as a subjective experience of an individual. But at this moment, it is understandable to conclude that our shared horizons of understanding are under enormous strain. When we look to the future, many people have a sense that our communities and societies do not share a robust framework for making sense of what is true and what is most important. And so, understandably, many people are finding it difficult to feel confident that we are collectively prepared to meet a future that seems to be coming directly toward us at full speed: the ecological crisis, migration crisis, famine, war, disease, AI, genetic engineering, and global challenges to democracy, to name a just a few.
In this context, we might find it more accurate and helpful to describe ourselves not merely as “stressed” or “anxious” but as feeling “zozobra.” And for this reason, zozobra can show up in our emotional lives in many different ways. A key insight from Mexican philosophy is that when a person experiences themselves as living in a disintegrating society, they will feel it on an emotional level — not merely as a passing mood of anxiety, but as a pervasive structure of their emotional life as a whole. For this reason, zozobra might not show up as a simple experience of stress or anxiety, but as experiences of intense ambivalence and cognitive dissonance, sudden swings from one emotion to another, and being torn between irreconcilable perspectives.
What can we do to address this feeling?
Zozobra can show up in our lives in many different ways, and for this reason, people experiencing zozobra might be confused about the instability of their emotions and moods. But according to the philosophers I study, the ways that zozobra shows up in our emotional lives often fit a distinctive pattern, and it is a pattern that we can learn to see. And once you learn to see that pattern, this can be very helpful, because when you learn to see something, you can learn to work with it in a more skillful way.
Understanding the concept of zozobra may help bring people together and create community. Naming the feeling and focusing on the common experience, instead of channeling inner turmoil into blame and anger, can be a shared point for coming together across differences and can help guide us through many disruptive changes in our world. Because zozobra is both deeply distressing and confusing, people find it quite therapeutic and empowering to talk about it, and to read authors like Jorge Portilla who describe and analyze the emotional experience of social disintegration so insightfully—and with a good dose of humor and drama woven into the philosophical prose. Portilla’s essay, “The Spiritual Crisis of the United States,” is delightful and funny and predicts so many of our current challenges as a nation.
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