The Ways We "-ism"

Humans are creatures who reason, we obey because we reason, we rebel because we reason, we learn knowledge because we reason, we get confused because we reason. The process of reasoning enables us to understand the world around us, and more importantly, recognize our existence. In order to reason, one must have the ability to use a language, language is the way reasoning exist, because language is where people store meanings and what they uses to express meanings. Therefore, it is rightful for us to infer that different languages provide different reasonings. Meanings and concepts are stored in different ways in different language, and based on these diverse sets of ideologies, people think and understand their world in different ways.

The composition and inner logic of English words provide speakers a unique way of reasoning. For instance, when an English speaker wishes to discuss about a system of beliefs, they would use words that have the suffix “-ism”, “alcoholism”, “heroism”, “athleticism”, etc.. These “-ism” words are great summaries of the sets of ideologies that exists in English, by understanding these “-ism” words, people are able to recognize the colorful and complex ideologies implied in the western, particularly English culture.

We learn about ideas, opinions, and groups of people, and categorizes them with “-isms” almost everyday. We perceive the world based on the sets of knowledge we learn or we come up with. However, should we view our world only based on these “-ism” words? How does these words help preserve the meanings about ideologies and sets of beliefs?

According to Mariam Webster Dictionary, “-isms” have the following definitions:
1. the act, practice, or process of doing something
2. behavior like that of a specified kind of person or thing
3. unfair treatment of a group of people who have a particular quality
These definitions not only tells the basic use of “-ism”, it also reveals the fact that this suffix can be used in an extremely broad extent. Here are some significant ways people use “-ism” words.

Heroism

Heroism is a set of ideologies that is extremely popular and widely used nowadays. It mainly consists ideas about sacrificing, saving others, being extremely powerful and justified. This set of ideology is being modified and enhanced quickly nowadays. For instance, the super hero movies form Hollywood nowadays popularized heroism, they applied heroism and heroic figures in all kinds of situations with a great variety of backgrounds. However, these changes and artistic perceptions of heroism is becoming more and more superficial nowadays. When we compare Iron Man 3 with The Odyssey, it is hard to find much fundamental differences. What’s changed was mainly the settings of the story, the ideologies that are implied in their heroic acts, and the authors’ purpose of writing the stories. Heroism is not only art and stories nowadays, it gets dyed in scrambled paints of the modern ideologies in today’s world.

Athleticism

Athlete is one of the most ancient role for humanity, from the discobolus in Ancient Greek, to NBA basketball players like Kobe Bryant, they have left an enormous amount of diverse spirits and ideas. The traits these people, or any other people who enjoys sports conveyed are viewed as Athleticism. This kind of character mainly refers to a person’s strong and persistent willpower, bravery against difficulties, leadership, and abilities to cooperate in teamwork. Traits like physical powers are also significant parts of athleticism, but it does not mean that one can only uphold the spirit of athleticism when he/she has a supreme physical power.

As a result of the well-developed and diverse types of sports nowadays, it is getting harder and harder for the concept of Athleticism to summarize the spirits in sports. The characters needed to succeed in a shooting competition might be very different from the characters needed for succeeding in a soccer match. Therefore, the concept of athleticism is inspiring people from multiple different aspects, and all of them should be considered as accurate interpretations of athleticism.

Alcoholism

Unlike the concepts listed above, alcoholism is a rather negative set of ideologies. It mainly refers to the continuous excessive or compulsive use of alcoholic drinks. When a person frequently drinks too much alcohol, he should be considered as committing to alcoholism. This concept reveals a alternative use of “-ism” words from only summarizing sets of ideologies. In this case, alcoholism is not only a summary of characteristics about alcohol, it also refers to a medical phenomenon that is based on an excessive use of alcoholic drinks. Not only did “-ism” words establish concepts based on characters and ideologies in our society, their presence also created new concepts that enlarged our mental world, and offered more meanings that we can express.

Racism

The concept of racism is one of my most frequently seen “-ism” words. This popular concept mainly refers to the belief that people in different races should have different social status, and more importantly the belief of one race is more superior than the others. The presence of events and beliefs that can be considered as racism has a rather long and complicated history, however, the word racism is being created and used in a comparatively short amount of time. In today’s world, it is really easy for people to be focusing on some very specific and strict ideas or opinions about races and equality when discussing about racism. There are protests and violent activities conducted directly based on these ideas. In such a time when everyone are active on using this concept in everywhere, lesser and lesser and lesser people care about the actual meaning of this concept. People all want to do something about it, while in fact this concept is not well-understood. It is harder and harder for us to summarize these movements as simply about protesting or discussing about racism.

Each “-ism” word is like an icon that represents an idea, the suffix is created for this purpose. However, people’s use of these terms in different situations gradually modifies these meanings, none of the terminologies are stable definitions as long as they are being used by people. Therefore, understanding and categorizing our world using “-ism” words is requires us to hold an open mind toward different sets of ideologies. I used to perceive these “-ism” words as standardized rule to judge the things in life and payed a great amount of effort on learning and using these terms. However, as my understanding of these words gets deeper, I realize that none of the “credible” concepts are concrete and defined. Although the examples listed above provided clear explanations for those concepts, none of the examples will make sense after 10 years. Reasoning should not be a programmed process based on a set system of ideologies, because all of these “-isms” or these concepts are alive — the use of these words keeps them alive and changing. Do not let these “-isms” define you, because as we can see, we defined the ways we “-ism”.

26 October 2017