Comments

1. Erno Hannink (2019-10-04) #

   Come to the Netherlands and we can have a nice conversation on Stoicism :)

2. Meg (2019-10-04) #

   I’d love to, too. Where do I sign up?

3. VIKRAMJIT BANERJEE (2019-10-04) #

   For liberalism tour Amsterdam and The Netherlands,it's the best feeling I got in the whole of Europe and only time I felt welcome on my last concert tour there,go figure

4. Olivian Breda (2019-10-04) #

   My tip on traveling:
   How to visit a new country like a PRO? – Blog de Olivian Breda https://olivian.ro/tourist/

5. Sean Crawford (2019-10-04) #

   If there can fiction book discussion clubs, perhaps there can be ism discussion meetings too.
   
   If anywhere on the planet there can folks to discuss ideas and isms with, then a university town like Oxford would be the place. I told my banker that if I move to another city it will be to a university town. "Why in the world would that matter?" "Because I'm smart."
   
   The local campus has periodic Friday night presentations on ancient Egypt. I think regular people would never go, only students and alumni.
   
   Johnson, who wrote the first dictionary, and Boswell and Garrick and other keen discussers met periodically in a pub. Luckily Boswell was there to record some of it.
   
   ...Gertrude Stein in Paris had a salon, attended by Hemingway, and comic writer Dorothy Parker in New York City had a big hotel round table. Orwell noted that writers, except for Kipling, never want to leave the big city for the colonies. I wonder if that's because they would miss intellectual company.
   
   How could a fellow enthusiast appear? By you symbolically asking, of course. Just as you can get a chess player to appear by going to the park and unfolding a chess board.
   
   A metaphor example: Next time I am staying in Central London I am going to wear one of those huge white stick-on name-tags.
   It will say, 'Hello, my name is... Looking for a bleeding heart liberal"
   ... because I would like to know why Europeans say putting Muslim immigrants into enclave/ghettos to discourage their assimilation is "for their own good."
   
   (My formative years were spent in North America; yes, I do understand that in Asian countries groups can stay "with their own kind" forever and ever, unto the tenth generation... but Asia is not Europe)

6. Kirk (2019-10-05) #

   I saw the image of the guy standing on the books looking over the wall. Interesting how our culture uses books as a denotation of education, while other cultures probably would use a picture of a wise elder, or the Earth herself, to indicate education.

7. O (2019-10-08) #

   You would probably love the french collection "Que sais-je ?" :
   https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Que_sais-je_%3F#Liste_des_titres_parus
   (a good indirect way to put your French skills in action)
   
   It's avery beautiful list of topics, from big ones such as "L'économie humaine" (number 32) to seemingly random ones like "La prise de notes" (number 3630).
   
   The books are usually well written, but I get the most fun from just browsing the huge wikipedia list. It's a nice pixelization of knowledge :p.

8. Pete (2019-10-10) #

   Where is Christianity in your list?
   Is it not an *ism?
   If not, what makes it different?

9. Laurence (2019-10-10) #

   Derek, cut to the chase and go and live in Liverpool for a while...trust me I’m a Scouser...??

10. Guinea C (2019-10-10) #

    How about environtalism?

11. David (2019-10-10) #

    You know, that is a really good idea. I thought I knew many of those "isms" But in reality I've only seen the metaphorical photos of them. I don't know them anymore than I know Paris by looking at a pic of the Eiffel Tower. I will try being an interested ism tourist.

12. Francis (2019-10-10) #

    Hi Derek,
    good idea. I would recommend Octoberfest to the Catholicism chapter. Get drunk and sing with two thousand people in a huge tent. I was there a week ago. It is bizarr but there is a magic to it, attractive to many.

13. Steve Kusaba (2019-10-10) #

    Talking to individuals is anecdotal. You could talk to 50 people and leave while forming an impression about a region yet another different 50 might have given off the opposite impression.
    
    The most important ISM you missed was (in my opinion!)voluntarism. In a long conversation I could make a strong case for the importance of this.
    
    Put your ISM through a prism
    Please don't see antagonism
    As I state my aphorism
    
    and:
    
    Individualism
    Will always lead to
    Abstract Impressionism
    
    HAIKU!!!

14. Ken Randall (2019-10-10) #

    Thats a lot of ism great pic the other bloke could of been just reading a book

15. Ken Randall (2019-10-10) #

    Yea Pete good ? Christianism maybe but note a lot of Christianity religions are ism's like Catholicism Mormonism and Zionism. Jehovah Witnessism doesnt seem right Witnesses interesting

16. Stephanie (2019-10-11) #

    I would slip in the courses to listen to the lectures. Much more fun to listen and perhaps enjoy the videos of the areas i want to learn.

17. Darrell Looney (2019-10-11) #

    The problem with -isms is that they are often a state of mind, bolstered by mass hysteria euphemistically referred to these days as "groupthink". I believe this fails as a tourist destination because with them one never actually gets anywhere except perhaps in their own mind.
    
    Actually the only -isms leading a person anywhere these days are truisms, but these are currently usually rejected by the same social activity called groupthink because of it's perception that these are relative things when in "truth" they are the only absolutes.

18. Denny Wong (2019-10-11) #

    Mind is like a parachute, once opened it it hard to deflate it. Evanescent of materials, remnant of experience and mind voyage. Standing on shoulders of giants to get a different perspective!

19. Dennis McClung (2019-10-11) #

    Great idea and great pic at the end of the ism list. There certainly are a lot of isms. My question would be, "What ism is the most humane ism and why???"

20. Lisa Monet (2019-10-11) #

    Yes!! And the cartoon! You could write an essay about how he got up there. :)

21. b (2019-10-11) #

    That site is AMAZING :o what a great resource

22. b (2019-10-11) #

    Sorry for double commenting but is there a way to get these in print??

23. Evangelos (2019-10-12) #

    Hey Derek,
    You forgot the most important -ism for humans... Narcissism! ☺
    Best wishes,
    Evangelos

24. Everett Adams (2019-10-12) #

    Don't forget Christianity, no ism

25. Jason Dreambig (2019-10-15) #

    One of my favorite ways to travel is to exchange work for places to stay. I've managed clothing stores in New Zealand, Milked cows for a day on the south island. Spent a month on a horse farm in Australia and prepared meals at bed&breakfasts in France.
    
    In a year from now I hope to explore more of Europe in the future as well. I normally use workaway to find my opportunities but there are many sites out there to choose from.
    
    Oh and whenever you want to explore Mormonism let me know and I can give you an inside view.
    
    Cheers
    Jason Dreambig

26. Steve Mann (2019-10-21) #

    There are so many "isms", I wouldn't know where to begin...........maybe at the top........Have you actually explored all of these "isms", Derek?

27. Aleix Ramon (2019-10-28) #

    Good idea - countries and cultures are ultimately about the people rather than about the sightseeing. Focusing directly on the mindsets of the locals seems to be a much more interesting and fun way of traveling.
    
    Another point of view would be to consider the sightseeing - monuments, cities - as a way to understand those mindsets, since they are a reflection of them.

28. Aleix Ramon (2019-10-28) #

    This same idea is the main reason why I love CouchSurfing (and any similar alternative).
    
    You live with the locals, eat what they eat, go where they go and get to know their friends. It's true that it's not 100% like being a local - you're still a foreigner and your host is likely to be more open-minded than most locals - but it's a great way to get very close to the -isms of a country.

29. Ahmad ibn Sudjimat (2020-06-10) #

    Hmm, that's interesting. Why didn't you read about Islam-"ism"? I can help you with a lot of ebooks, FOR FREE :)
    I was only showing books in their catalog that end with the letters “…ism”. I didn't mean I had read these or not read others. It was just a quick search with that criteria. That's why it didn't list their books on Islam and Islamic History. They have over 600 books. Ideally I would love to read them all! — Derek

30. Sean Crawford (2020-07-08) #

    I see where some commenters talk about meeting "the people."
    
    I did a speech at my club to explain how if you hope to talk on the sidewalk to strangers overseas, then you could first learn how to have a conversation with strangers on the sidewalk in your home city. Which is hard for folks from the emotionally-colder cultures.
    
    (I said to a friend from off-shore, "I'm proud to be a member of North America, but you've got to admit, we don't do emotions very well. Reply: "Ya, we say you guys are behind a pane of glass.")
    
    Success starts with deciding to learn, and having faith.
    
    I accidentally taught a computer-using friend to speak to strangers, by unconsciously role modelling. She told me so. She then told me her pretty friend can walk the length of our downtown without anyone speaking to her.

31. David W. Locke (2020-08-03) #

    I've seen the world. I know the world is not the same as the world I grew up in. I was an offshore American. We were raised on America, the fictional America where the Scopes trial got mentioned. It never went deeper than that. It was a censored and idealized place.
    
    We went home to America. We were glad to be going home. But, the censorship and idealiation of America held their places. We saw much, but saw nothing.
    
    Later, in my profession, I had to deal with the reality of epistemic cultures. Becoming means entering a culture, a way of thinking. That way of thinking doesn't go away. It is you.
    
    Before mom died she would insist that we go back to the PX and the commissary--all the usual places. She had me stepping back into that fictional America, a place here that is as it always was there, into that life of some forty plus years ago.
    
    There is always another culture, another fiction, another -ism. There was always a good, better, best until theirs were no more. Yours is always up to you.

32. Sean Crawford (2021-12-04) #

    Speaking of good and better, (above)
    When we say that "all cultures are equal" across time and space we don't mean equally the same, or carbon copies of each other. We merely mean equal under Allah. When I was at university we learned, for various things including art and culture, to distinguish the good, and to pursue the better.
    
    As Martin Luther King would say, culture does not advance on wheels of inevitability. We need to admit things and act for a better world.
    
    I for one see the German Weimar Republic as being better than the regime that replaced it; I see the Roman republic as better than the empire which replaced it. And the more secular Turkey as being better than the recently more Islamic one. I don't feel brave in making such judgements calls.

33. Juan (2022-03-07) #

    What's your most and least favorite ism?