In any language there are words that must be mastered so as not to appear Johny Very Foreigner or a complete sack of potatoes: cat, thank you, eat etc; there are words that, correctly used, show an interest in the language or a “bottom caning and gym teacher who later in life gets arrested for liking small boys just a little too much” education: facetious, paradox, penultimate; then comes an almost inexhaustible amount of delicious-sounding words, the judicious use of which sets one aside from hoi-polloi: peradventure, nidificate, ataraxia.

There is, in my mind, one further category of words, of which the word “floccinaucinihilipilification” belongs. Whilst I may not know what an ereption is, or be unsure if a comment about my napiform head should elicit a coy smile or a broken bottle in the groin, these words have at least in their favour that I can write/pronounce them.

I could possibly get away unscathed by throwing the occasional “lippitude” or “hebetate” in my quotidian conversations (or, for that matter, “quotidian”), but I’d most likely be calling for an ambulance at the mere mumbled mention of the sesquipedian “floccinaucinihilipilification”.

I spend a fair amount of time browsing dictionaries and the like, finding what I consider to be interesting words to learn for my own pleasure, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to waste much-needed brenergy (that’s not a word, I just needed something that sounded a bit less childlike than brain energy) on something that will lead to either pain or cause others to think I’m an arrogant toss-brush.

Sesquipedaliophobia, by the way, is the fear of long words. Thinking this to be a joke I delved around a bit, and found out that it seems to be an accepted word. The ironical word for this fear is hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia.

Probably written about the same time as my previous literary find (around 1994), a short diatribe about religion found its way onto paper, thus preserving my hubristic ramblings forever. I still agree with a fair amount of what I wrote then, though there is also a great deal that oversimplifies the subject, and probably just as much that is wrong; however, regardless the validity of the text, I definitely come across as a supercilious pansophist, which fits perfectly with the erstwhile teenage/young adult Jon. Despite the arrogance of it all, here it is:

The main problem with Western religion is the tenet that we are born as sinners and that our only salvation is to repent, to give ourselves over, to a higher being.

Most of our anxieties, our fears, our inhibitions, are given to us in childhood, and this notion of eternal damnation through constant indoctrination reinforces our inadequacies as human beings.

The sooner we recognise the falacy of religion, the sooner we shake off this self-limiting ideology, then the sooner we can realise the inherent goodness that lies repressed at the very centre of each of us.

The real evil reveals itself when religious and political indoctrination is complete, when sexual, racial and gender bigotry, competitiveness and unemotional apathy are the norm, whilst harmony, co-operation and community responsibility are ill-conceived utopian ideas to be scorned.

It is time that each and every one of us realises the truth. Then, and only then, can we begin to repair the damage done, and remember: at the very base of our being we have had the potential to do incredible things for the Universe.

Realise this and we are at the beginning of true enlightenment.