Summary
Ontological shock is the jolt of finding that something you took to be bedrock reality isn’t: the moment when the foundation of your world is shaken. Ontology is the study of what is real, so the shock is to a person’s sense of what exists and can be relied on, which goes deeper than having an opinion challenged.
We met the term in a June 2025 episode of the podcast Planet: Critical, in which host Rachel Donald talks with Damien Williams, who teaches philosophy and data science, about why people can no longer agree on shared facts and why other people’s realities feel threatening.
Rationale
A caution for our interest in “unlearning and deconditioning”. If loosening a deep assumption can feel like the ground giving way, that work needs care, company and time, and people may fairly resist it.