PRUNING THE SUFFIX -ISM
By Frank Newton
Mon. Jan. 10th, 2022
1. Purification
In my country there is a great need for purification; perhaps in other countries, too. Purification does not mean killing enemies and poisoning their wells. It means improving the contents of our hearts.
Hearts in the Biblical sense. It is well known that in the Bible, your heart rarely refers to the thing that pumps blood. Your heart normally means your attitude center. The Bible uses "your mind" to refer to your thought center, and "your heart" to refer to your attitude center.
So, in the worship of Holy Communion, "Lift up your hearts" means "Exalt your attitude." The ‑s at the end of hearts does not mean you have more than one heart. It means the sentence is addressed to more than one person. "Lift up your hearts" means "Lift up your heart, all of you." And going from there, "Lift up your attitude, all of you."
But where was I? Purification.
2. Purification of Words
An important part of purification is purifying our words. Words are intimately connected with attitudes and beliefs. When we purify our words, we are purifying our beliefs. That is what the ancient Chinese philosopher Mencius -- or rather, the guy who translated Mencius into English -- referred to as rectification of names: getting our words right, in order to get our ideas right.
(Notice that, when we describe Mencius as a philosopher, "philosopher" means the same thing as "prophet.")
3. Critique of -ism Words
The first problem with -ism words is that they make your language sound as if you believe that everything can be explained in terms of politics. That is totally false. There are a ton of things on our planet that are better explained by farming, by human nature, by God, by accidents of birth, by all kinds of sins (not just greed), by love, by hate, by the rules of the road, and so forth. The suffix -ism exalts politics above all other explanations of things. Putting politics on a pedestal by itself is a really bad idea.
Second, words ending in -ism are warlike. They make people say "Kill! Kill!"
The third problem with -ism words is that they preach to the choir. Going back to talking about my country, America is in a pickle. We desperately need to find ways to talk to fellow Americans who think differently from us. Saying that Americans who think differently from us are "not real Americans" is simply a mental preparation for killing them. And killing some of your fellow-Americans because you think they're "not real Americans" is deeply unpatriotic.
But let me get back to the problem of preaching to the choir. It is our patriotic duty to express our ideas and beliefs in ways that people who disagree with us can understand. It is also our patriotic duty to express our ideas and beliefs in ways that clueless people can understand. You need to believe that!
Talking about our beliefs is like teaching arithmetic. But beware!! Talking about our beliefs is not like making other people memorize something. It is like talking about one and two and three, in ways that clueless people can understand.
That's what we need to do. We need to talk about one and two and three in ways that clueless people can understand. That means getting rid of a ton of words ending in -ism that clutter up our rhetoric -- that make our words meaningless to the very people who need to hear them -- that clog the arteries of our political system and harden our hearts -- words that are driving us toward the madness of civil war, because of our mindless worship of fancy words when we should be cultivating plain speaking without coarseness, plain speaking tempered with politeness and motivated by desire to explain ourselves.
4. Replacements for Stupid and Uninspired -ism Words
activism political involvement
ageism prejudice against old people
Americanism patriotism of Americans
Aristotelianism philosophy à la Aristotle
asterism pile of asterisks
Caledonianism Scottish patriotism, patriotism of the
Scots
Calvinism following John Calvin's teachings
clericalism worship of the clergy
collaborationism supporting the occupier
colloquialism a colloquial word or phrase
constructivism constructiveness
defeatism defeatist thinking
despotism tyranny
eclecticism eclecticalness. (You can also say eclectic-ness. For some reason, eclectic-alness sounds
better to me.)
emotionalism crying and grieving
equestrianism horse-riding
exoticism love for exotic pictures
fanaticism fanaticalness
formalism 1. formality. 2. dithering about form.
functionalism making things functional; making
things that work
idealism idealist thinking
imperialism empire-building
institutionalism worship of institutions
Marxism Marxist thinking
messianism hankering after a messiah
minimalism pruning
monasticism monastic life
monotheism "One God Only"
mysticism mystical philosophy
negativism negative thinking
nihilism the "Nothing
Matters" philosophy
nonsensicalism nonsense
obstructionism getting in the way, blocking the path
Platonism philosophy à la Plato
polytheism worshipping many gods
radicalism radicalness
realism philosophy of sticking to
the facts
regionalism any regional word or phrase
revivalism reviving religion
royalism 1. supporting the king. 2. supporting kings.
secessionism support for secession
Southernism any Southern word or phrase
survivalism 1. survival skills. 2. fascination with survival skills.
symbolism 1. symbol. 2. symbols.
3. symbol-lovers.
For some words,
the replacement will need to be long, or multifaceted, or both.
annihilationism 1. belief that the world
will end in the transformation of Everything into Nothing.
2.
a bloody and wicked desire to kill a lot of people.
anti-Americanism knee-jerk opposition to Americans
anti-capitalism knee-jerk opposition to
capitalism
antidisestablishmentarianism resistance to getting rid of special
privileges for a certain branch of Christianity
apocalypticism dithering about the end
of the world
Arianism Christians
following Arius
Arminianism Christians following
Arminius
Atticism imitating
Athenian Greek
boosterism 1. irritating
attempts to increase everyone's awareness of your hometown.
2.
ugly songs to praise a big city, like "New York! New York! a Wonderful
Town."
chauvinism patriotism taken
to crazy extremes
colonialism 1. colony-making.
2.
squatting on land with the help of your army.
3.
treating someone else's country as your Promised Land.
creationism 1. belief that the
universe was created by God.
2.
teaching that the universe was created by God during the scheduled time for
teaching science.
ecumenism 1. bringing
Christians together.
2.
bringing different religions together.
determinism [You tell me what
this means, and we'll figure out what to replace it with.]
egoism or
egotism 1. me-first
thinking.
2.
trampling on the rights of others.
Elizabethanism 1. the energy and style
of the English people in the Age of Elizabeth the First.
2.
imitating the energy and style of the English people in the Age of Elizabeth
the First.
empiricism being guided by
experience and experiments
environmentalism taking nature seriously
escapism admiring
beautiful things when you should be preparing to fight
estheticism 1. neglecting to
feed your children so you'll have more time for art.
2.
hoity-toity gestures and a hoity-toity tone of voice.
exceptionalism 1. arrogance.
2.
allowing your feeling of superiority to sabotage your dealings with foreigners.
Gallicism 1. a Gallicism
means a French expression.
2.
Gallicism also means love of all things French.
heathenism non-Christianity
Hitlerism witless support
for wicked leaders
industrialism 1. factory-building.
2.
worship of factories.
3.
forcing people off their farms.
intellectualism being "sicklied
over (or o'er) with the pale cast of thought," as Hamlet said, or
fascinated by "useless and pointless knowledge," as Bob Dylan said
Jeffersonianism [Help me out here. Maybe I'm supposed to know what this means,
but I don't.]
Lancastrianism support for the House of
Lancaster
librarianism excessive love of call
numbers
mannerism an attempt at
stylishness
mentalism [You tell me
what this means, and we'll figure out what to replace it with.]
militarism giving up too
easily on peaceful solutions
minimalism (in
art) eliminating luxuriance
in art
modernism 1. the modern age.
2.
modern thinking.
3.
worship of modernity.
nationalism nations hating
each other
nativism 1. harsh
treatment of immigrants.
2.
support for the small minority of people who are the original inhabitants.
naturalism 1. a
nature-loving attitude.
2.
nature-based thinking.
3.
naturalness.
nominalism [You tell me what
this means, and we'll figure out what to replace it with.]
operationalism [You tell me what this
means, and we'll figure out what to replace it with.]
Pan-Slavism the belief that Slavic
countries need to support each other
parochialism 1. narrow or petty loyalties
(same as tribalism).
2.
narrow loyalties in Europe.
pastoralism 1. sheep-herding.
2.
wanting to live like a shepherd, dreaming of a shepherd's life.
paternalism thinking that the
father is always the smarter parent
post-modernism trying to figure out what comes
after modernism
pre-millennialism [People who understand the
Book of Revelation can figure out another word for this.]
pseudo-intellectualism pretending to be an intellectual
Note.
I am not against the word pseudo-intellectual. The point is: when you commit the sin of
adding -ism, your punishment should be, not only do you have to replace the
suffix -ism, but you also have to replace
the prefix pseudo-.
puritanism fanatical dislike
of earthly thinking
recidivism getting thrown
back in prison again
revisionism useless tinkering
with ideas
roboticism doing the robot
walk
sensationalism prurient interests; getting
paid to scratch someone else's itch
supernaturalism belief in things that
science can't explain
transcendentalism the ideas of Emerson and
Thoreau
tribalism narrow or
petty loyalties
Trinitarianism thinking of God as a
cloverleaf
triumphalism dragging the captured
enemy through your capital city in a parade, and then strangling them (one by
one, or all at once)
Victorianism thinking like Queen
Victoria's generation
Zionism 1. a movement
for Jews to return to the Promised Land.
2.
taking back the Promised Land.
⁂ There are so many of these critters! This is only a beginning.
Note. I am not asking you to write "Pan-Slavism (the belief that Slavic countries need to support each other)." I am asking you to avoid the word "Pan-Slavism" completely. Telling people what "Pan-Slavism" means (outside of a dictionary) just opens the door for this giant mush and mishmash of rarely-understood words to creep back into our language.
What is more, I am also asking people who make
Russian-English dictionaries not to translate "панславизм" as
"Pan-Slavism." I am asking
them to translate it as "the belief that Slavic countries need to support
each other." Don't even let
English-speakers suspect that our ancestors allowed this crushed automobile to come
into the English language!!
5. Compromising on -ism
We cannot get rid of all -ism words, because some of them are too useful or widespread, and figuring out what to replace them with would be a waste of time. We need to make a list of protected -ism words. Here is a beginning.
Words to Keep -- baptism, Buddhism,
capitalism, communism, conservativism, criticism, cynicism, extremism, Fascism,
heroism, Judaism, liberalism, optimism, patriotism, pessimism, skepticism, socialism,
Stoicism. Also words for the beliefs and
ideas of other religious groups: atheism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Methodism, Presbyterianism,
etc.
Other Words to Keep -- Words which do not include the "-ism" idea, such as aneurysm, cataclysm, prism, schism.
6. Purification of Words Again
I am completely against political correctness, but that's way too big to fit into this essay!
7. Conclusions
* -Ism is an out-of-control suffix. With a few exceptions -- think of optimism and pessimism -- words ending in -ism make your language completely incomprehensible to most of your fellow-citizens, and especially to the man on the street.
* Looking at the lists of replacements above shows that, in many cases, I am asking you to speak in shorter words, but more words. For a good purpose: to make your babble comprehensible to your fellow-citizens.
* With a few exceptions, words ending in -ism should be replaced with almost anything else that makes sense in context.
* The rarer an -ism word is, the more it needs to be replaced with something else.
* If the -ism word expresses a positive attitude, you should replace it with another expression that conveys a positive attitude. If the -ism word expresses a negative attitude, you should replace it with another expression that conveys a negative attitude.
Let's close with a quotation from "The Leader of the Pack":
"Get the picture? -- We see."
