Culture Blogs
Exploring Pagans and their relationship with that earthiest of earth symbols, money.
Denouncing capitalism
I have a real problem with capitalism. I get this little twitch whenever I see it in action, an urge to rise up and say, "NO! This is wrong!" Each year that passes I see capitalist forces making deeper inroads into our culture, and at times it's simply infuriating. Of course, given the mind-boggling diversity within the Pagan movement, capitalist forces see opportunity around every corner, and seize every opportunity that presents itself.
I fear that we are losing to the capitalists, and I think it's time to rise up and loudly denounce everything they stand for.
Capitalism was extremely popular among the enlightened thinkers who helped cobble together the United States of America from its colonial progenitors, a fact which is easier to see when reading their original words, rather than the memes which disseminate pithy quotes these days. English has strong German roots, and German is, hands down, the most capitalist language of them all.
My own writing is as free of capitalism as it can be. I only use a capital at the beginning of a sentence, or in the case of a proper noun, that it, the unique name of a unique thing. If something else can be described with a word, it's not a name, so it does not deserve a capital.
- I worship gods, not Gods, although individual deities (never Deities!) have names. Just because something is associated with a god doesn't mean it demands, requires, or deserves a capital letter.
- My religion is Pagan because that's a proper noun describing a particular thing -- albeit an ambiguous, much-debated thing -- and so it retains the capital even when used as an adjective. Wiccan, Hellenic, Kemetic, Heathen get the same treatment.
- Although I am a polytheist, that's not a religion, so it's lower case all the way.
- I occasionally do magic, but never Magic.
- When I "do the work," I do it in lower case.
- My compass points to north, south, east, and west.
- The elements are likewise lowered; I can light an infinite number of fires, so I don't write it as Fire. Even if I am trying to summon it into myself or worship it directly.
- Capitals are not to be used for emphasis, to imply that something is sacred, or to distinguish between a physical object and its essential essence. If something deserves a capital, it deserves the respect of a unique name.
- The use of a capital letter does not change the pronunciation of a word in English, not one whit. If a passage is read aloud, can the listener identify which words are capitalized? E should be able to do so if they are all at the beginning of sentences, or denoting proper names. E will just be guessing about anything else, which means that those words should not be capitalized.
Oh, you thought I was talking about the economic concept? Well, it is April Fool's Day, after all.
Comments
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Tuesday, 01 April 2014
Internet and universe are two words I dig in my heels and refuse to capitalize because they're both, well, universal.
I think the rule for capitalizing all nouns comes from the German. Germans also are to blame for our compound words, and a love of clogging up the words with nouns rather than using adjectives to move things along. They have a lot to answer for. -
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When my grandmother learned letters, all nouns had capital letters. I suspect that changed because the invention of typewriters and Linotype machines made it more difficult for print media to use so many capital letters. Today we could have our computers just do it without any extra effort but its gone out of style. I still see some people using all capitals on internet. That's hard to read. My spell checker won't allow "internet" without wanting a capital.