Skip to main content

The **ismist.


This is ism-era; let’s call it the age of ismisms.  Too, too many to count such as socialism, communism, capitalism, atheism, progressivism, reformationism, Catholicism, patriotism, classicism, actualism, activism, rationalism, positivism, agnosticism, and thousands more.  Are you an ismist?  You must, if only to keep current with your group membership. You say, “no sir, not for me,” I believe in individualism. There you are, an ismist. No escape.

Every ism is a container of characteristics. On the celestial shelf reserved for humanity, we find countless such containers.  Thus, containerism.

In fact our entire society is dense with –isms.  They even come in combinations.  How about the progressive atheism? Or capitalistic socialism and its severe cousin fascism?  Or pseudo-dualism? Are you one of those?  Perhaps you are a follower of antidisestablishmentarianism?  This is the nature of our modern characteristicism society – all to be fit or crammed into a slot, double slot, or worse.  Once there, you are stuck with attributions you may neither accept nor understand.  

Once you identify, you are known, condemned perhaps by some, applauded by others, and no doubt confused by many more.

There you have it. I am a fervent ismismist, though not sure which one, however favoring optimism with overtones of skepticism, naturally hoping to be called a realism-ist.

Yep, I'm a optism-skepticism-realism-ist.  So confused I must be.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Human Simulation is Possible - by Humans

  Human Simulation: Agent-Based Modeling and the Computational Case for Our Reality   1.       Introduction In the essay, we introduce the notion that humanity could be a deliberate simulation based on an extremely simple single-celled organism, hardly anything more complex than that. This will allow an (apparently) new interpretation of the notion that humanity is simulated, but that there is no master engineer at a massive number of dials and switches, responsible for every twist and turn of our universe and lives. We begin with the notion that the universe exists and operates under its own laws. So, given the Earth [2] , when and where life first began, it was infused with a living agent, self-actualized, reproductive, and with other basic rules for its operations, interactions, and much of what single-celled organisms do today. The idea from this occurred some years back when writing code in ActionScript (formerly Flash), I was able to create...

The Calculus of Ideas and Patterns

  Introduction. When dealing with ideas, patterns, intuition, and brainstorming, we need operations or rules not unlike those of arithmetic. The goal is not proof, a finished device, or a fait accompli , but rather a foundation for further investigation and study. In some cases, these operations may yield a proposition, that is, something capable of being proved. In this sense, they form a practical logic of intuition. The article concludes with a few select examples from a variety of venues. Setting. We are working with a given idea, problem, or project, or simply just thinking. Our aim is to discover pathways, patterns, or conceptual connections that may be useful. The following operations describe ways in which ideas and patterns can be generated, transformed, or refined. These also work toward understanding the imagination. Yet, this framework is distinguished from formal logic and proof. We are tempted to call them as “soft logic” because while nothing is proved, reasons...

No Sympathy From Me

Suicide Coming Home Many years ago, a friend hung himself in his basement.  I was a pall-bearer at his funeral. I was shocked I was so asked.  I did this.  I did not understand why a good-looking fellow, intelligent, kindly, and true could do such a thing. He did. I do not.  His family suffered greatly.  Yet he left no issue.   Thankfully. To my mind Country singer Mindy McCready, 37, showed us the very height of personal selfishness by committing suicide.  By giving birth to two offspring, she accepted the responsibility to raise her newborn and six-year old son.  She abrogated it spectacularly.  (As did the father a month ago.)  Though she may have suffered depression for any number of reasons, she has little sympathy from me for leaving behind a legacy that is now lost, is now parent-less, and may drift into problems of their own in the future.    There is shame and heartbreak in all this, but blame should be...