Jen's Crash Course on -Ism's

“Not that I condone fascism, or any -ism for that matter. -Ism's in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an -ism, he should believe in himself. I quote John Lennon, "I don't believe in Beatles, I just believe in me." Good point there. After all, he was the walrus. I could be the walrus. I'd still have to bum rides off people.”~ Ferris Bueller

I was set to do an entire blog entry on the evils of -isms… you know, racism, sexism, ageism and all the isms that seem to define hatred. Then I did some research. I found an entire list of words that end in the word -ism, and a lot of them are really positive. Why don’t we ever hear anything about illuminism (belief in an inward spiritual light) or humanism (belief that human interests and mind are paramount)? Why do we focus so much on that which is negative?

I admit I’m guilty of it myself. If someone gives me good news about something, I’ll be the first to say, “But what’s the bad news?” I think of myself as cautious, but could it be that I’m one of the majority of Americans (if not people worldwide) who cannot simply focus on the positive? Is this considered fatalism (doctrine that events are fixed and humans are powerless)?

I don’t believe it’s any type of -ism at all. I believe, especially in the day and age that we live in, that it is human nature for us to lean more toward negativity. We have a hard time focusing on those GOOD -isms because they’re so hard to see around us, while the bad ones (racism, ageism and sexism) are prevalent daily. We have politicians who tell us that their opponents aren’t qualified to lead us because they aren’t of the right skin color, we have health care workers who are paid to take excellent care of the elderly and abuse them instead, we have men and women competing for the same job opportunities with men consistently being paid higher rates because they’re MEN.

We live in a world where -isms are synonymous with discrimination.

How do we correct these problems? First, we all know we’ll never live in an ideal world, but on some level we must also know that we must do away with the ignorance. I was fortunate enough to be raised in a household with parents who taught me from the start that skin color and native language do not make a human being more or less human, nor does the age or anatomy. Unfortunately, my parents did not tell me that not everyone was raised the same way they raised me. And so I plead, please teach your children that one very vital lesson. Teach them what we ALL learned when we were small (whether your parents taught you or you learned it in Sunday School):

“"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

In all of my years of nursing, the most important to me were the very first ones when I was working in surgery. Without being excessively graphic, I had the opportunity to see human bodies lay open and realized that on the inside, we really are all EXACTLY the same. Why should any of us be treated any differently?

If you're interested, here's a link that includes a list of "ism" words and their meanings. I found this to be quite useful in my research.

http://phrontistery.info/isms.html