Definitions by Dumuabzu
Rewilding
The ecological equivalent of saying "my bad" and hitting the ultimate undo button. It’s not just conservation, but actively restoring ecosystems to their wild, self-regulating state, often by reintroducing keystone species like wolves, beavers, or bison that engineers the landscape back to health. The goal is to create connected, thriving wild spaces where nature calls the shots, from the soil microbes up to the apex predators. It’s a rejection of tidy, managed landscapes in favor of complex, messy, and resilient wilderness.
Example: "The farmers were pissed when they reintroduced wolves for rewilding, but now the deer aren't stripping all the trees, the rivers are meandering again thanks to beavers, and the ecosystem is lit without any human maintenance."
Geoengineering
When humanity, after failing its driver's test for Planet Earth, decides the only solution is to hotwire the climate system with planetary-scale tech. It’s the desperate Hail Mary of climate change, involving massive interventions like spraying reflective aerosols into the stratosphere to bounce away sunlight (Solar Radiation Management) or seeding the oceans with iron to suck CO2 out of the air. Critics call it a dangerous, global-scale experiment with potentially catastrophic side-effects, like messing up monsoon rains. Proponents argue we're already running an unintended experiment by burning fossil fuels, so we might need a giant thermostat.
Example: "Bro, my carbon guilt is so bad I started biking to work. Then I read about geoengineering and now I'm just waiting for them to launch the giant space mirrors to fix everything while I keep my SUV."
Geoengineering by Dumuabzu January 29, 2026
Psychosis Bigotry
Systemic discrimination and prejudice against people who experience psychosis, based on the assumption that their perceptions and thoughts are inherently less valuable, reliable, or meaningful. This bigotry extends beyond stigma to affect healthcare (where physical complaints are dismissed as "psychosomatic"), legal rights (deemed unreliable witnesses), housing, and employment. It operates on the core belief that the psychotic mind is a broken version of a "normal" mind, rather than a different way of being that might contain unique insights or perspectives, however distressingly framed.
Example: An artist with a schizophrenia diagnosis creates profound, intricate paintings inspired by their visual hallucinations. The art world criticizes it as "outsider art" (a ghettoizing category) and focuses solely on the diagnosis as a novelty. A gallery show is titled "Art of Madness." This is psychosis bigotry: it reduces the artist's complex creative process and lived experience to a symptom, fetishizing their condition while denying them the status of a deliberate, skilled artist. Their mind is seen as a source of spectacle, not intellect.
Psychosis Bigotry by Dumuabzu January 25, 2026
Psychosis Slurs
Derogatory terms that use psychotic experiences as metaphors for nonsense, chaos, or unreliability. These slurs (e.g., "That idea is psychotic," "What a schizo take," "He's delusional") casually equate severe mental distress with being wrong, stupid, or untrustworthy. They stigmatize clinical conditions by making them synonyms for intellectual or moral failure. In discourse, they are used to pathologize an opponent's position, shutting down debate by implying their very cognition is diseased and thus their arguments are not just incorrect, but symptomatic.
Example: During a complex debate on economic theory, one participant presents a heterodox model. A critic, instead of engaging the math, tweets: "This schizoid economics is just word salad. The author is clearly off his meds." The slurs "schizoid" and "off his meds" transplant the discussion from the realm of ideas to the realm of pathology. They don't argue; they diagnose, rendering the theory and its proponent inherently illegitimate. Psychosis Slurs.
Psychosis Slurs by Dumuabzu January 25, 2026
Hard Problem of Psychosis
The fundamental challenge of bridging the experiential divide between the psychotic and non-psychotic mind. It's not just about treating symptoms, but about the near-impossibility of an outsider truly understanding the subjective reality of psychosis—where hallucinations have the sensory force of truth, and delusions form a coherent, alternative worldview. The hard problem is epistemological: How can therapeutic or medical models claim authority over an internal experience they cannot fully access or validate? This raises ethical questions about coercion ("forcing" someone back to a consensus reality) and the nature of reality itself.
Example: A man believes a government satellite is broadcasting thoughts into his head. Medication silences the "voice," but to him, the cure feels like the authorities successfully "jammed his receiver." The psychiatrist sees a treated illness. The patient sees a confirmed conspiracy. The hard problem: There is no neutral ground to adjudicate these realities. All therapy is, from one perspective, the imposition of one reality map (neurotypical, consensual) over another (psychotic). This makes "recovery" a deeply philosophical, not just clinical, process of navigating incompatible worlds. Hard Problem of Psychosis.
Hard Problem of Psychosis by Dumuabzu January 25, 2026
Local Assemblies and Local Communes
Scaled-up versions of neighborhood systems, encompassing a larger district like a village, town, or city ward. Local Assemblies are the sovereign decision-making bodies for that territory, potentially federating with other assemblies. Local Communes are the implementation of communist or anarchist principles at this scale, where the assembly collectively owns and manages major local resources (housing, utilities, workshops), abolishes private property in favor of usership, and organizes production for local need. They represent a vision of politics as a daily, participatory activity rather than a spectacle every few years.
Example: In a small de-industrialized town, the city council is corrupt and powerless. Citizens form a Local Assembly in the old union hall, open to all residents. It becomes the real governing body. They transition to a Local Commune by taking over a shuttered factory to run it co-operatively, converting empty homes into communal housing based on need, and creating a local currency for trade with other communes. The police are replaced by community peacekeepers accountable to the assembly. The commune becomes a self-sufficient, directly democratic cell. Local Assemblies and Local Communes.
Local Assemblies and Local Communes by Dumuabzu January 25, 2026
Neighborhood Assemblies and Neighborhood Communes
Direct, face-to-face democratic institutions where residents of a local area (a neighborhood, block, or housing complex) gather to make binding decisions on matters affecting their immediate community. A Neighborhood Assembly is the general deliberative body—the town hall for local issues. A Neighborhood Commune is the more radical form where this assembly assumes direct political and economic control, managing shared resources (gardens, tools, childcare), security, and dispute resolution, often operating on principles of consensus and mutual aid. They are laboratories of hyper-local self-governance, bypassing traditional municipal bureaucracy.
Example: After the city repeatedly fails to repair a dangerous intersection, residents of the Oak Street block form a Neighborhood Assembly. They meet monthly in a garage. They vote to install a community-funded traffic calming plan. This evolves into a Neighborhood Commune: they pool money to buy tools for a communal garden in a vacant lot, organize a rotating schedule for elderly care, and run a local security patrol. They've created a micro-polity based on direct participation, making the city government largely irrelevant for their daily lives. Neighborhood Assemblies and Neighborhood Communes.
Neighborhood Assemblies and Neighborhood Communes by Dumuabzu January 25, 2026