From: Damien Broderick (damienb@unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Sun Aug 03 2003 - 20:49:20 MDT
At 06:08 PM 8/3/03 -0700, Natasha wrote:
> Extropy Institute prefers not
>to use "ism" for the extropian philosophy.
Natasha has made this lexical point repeatedly of late. It reminds me of my
own irritation when most people use `sci fi' for what I and almost everyone
inside the science fiction community have always called `sf' or `SF'; or
when I hear `deconstructionism' instead of `deconstruction'. These
distinctions strike outsiders as utterly inconsequential, and insisting on
them as laughable, but I can't help myself. Still--
In the case of `extropy', I find it hard to see how this recently coined
noun has any special claim to group-membership status. The usual patterns
in German (I think) suggest that the equivalent term for extropy theory in
that language would be `extropismus', akin to `extropism' in English--as
indeed it does seem to be used in Europe--and I admit that's rather ugly.
Most people here are extropians, not extropists, although some are
exhibitionists. But I suppose the point isn't the *word* as such, it's the
automatic implication of group-think that goes with any -ism. At least
nobody has yet suggest Extropianity. :)
Damien Broderick
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