Labels

Before I go on explaining this, I want to make sure you all understand that much of this is not based on actual fact - it is merely speculation and thoughts/ideas from my own mind. That being said, I will talk about it as though it is fact, because in my mind this is what I've come to know and regard as fact. But I like to keep an open mind, so some of these "facts" are subject to change.

I believe that putting labels on things encourages the mind to see the labeled things in a certain way, and makes it difficult to see past the label. When someone cannot see past the label, they see what the label implies and nothing more.

The mind learns in a funny way. We learn in concepts, and those concepts give birth to new pieces of knowledge. It's like a web, where at the very center are the most basic concepts we learned at the youngest points of our lives. By default we compare newly learned concepts and experiences with previously learned ones that are similar because comparing them makes it easier to learn and remember. You aren't really learning something entirely new if you can compare it to something you already know. It's like starting a progress bar that's already at 46%.

That being said, slapping a label on something is similar to this method of learning we have. If we don't totally understand something, we label it and categorize it to make it more familiar. If we discover a new species on Earth with feathers that lays eggs, we compare it to the other species. Obviously if it lays eggs like a chicken, it must be a bird, right?

This works all well and good for many things, but there are some things that should not be given labels. I believe that the label "corporation" can be a bad one, for example. "Corporation" implies a singular object or being, and the very word itself feels mechanical or non-human. The reality is that "corporations" are people who work for a "group" or a "company."

But here we encounter more labels. "Group" and "company" are two labels that can mean the same thing, but also have different sounding meanings. A "group" sounds like there are a number of human beings working toward a cause of some kind, whereas a "company," despite is earlier root meanings of being basically the same as a "group," sounds like a singular entity again. A smaller company is often referred to as a "business." But I think I digress.

Corporations being referred to, and treated as a singular being leads the mind to categorize it in the wrong place. Rather than comprehending that the corporation is made up of hundred or thousands of people who work for a living, paying bills, raising families, each with their own personalities, problems, abilities, and set of friends, we instead identify that the corporation is a single, non-human life form.

When something with the company name branded on it doesn't work effectively, then the company is to blame, right? Is that to say that every single one of the thousands of people working for that corporation did something wrong? When somebody files a law suit against a corporation, are they thinking about taking the money from the corporation, or are they thinking about taking money from the thousands of people who work there?

The people in power who make decisions in these corporations should also be considered. When they make big decisions, are they making those decisions thinking of how it will affect the corporation as a being, or are they making those decisions considering how it will affect the thousands of people working for them?

We go to a chain restaurant. Subway, for example. Let's say you've never been to a Subway. You're on your way to work and order a sandwich for lunch. You find out at lunchtime that the sandwich you got was sub-par (no pun intended). There wasn't enough meat on it, or not enough olives, or something. Now do you blame the company and say that Subway makes bad sandwiches, or do you blame the server? 

It's your first time going, so I bet you blamed the company without even considering that maybe different people behind the counter means different quality sandwiches. All of the people making those sandwiches are human beings, just like the rest of us, with personal backstories just as detailed as ours. It just so happens that this particular person was having a bad day, or just got yelled at by his/her boss for giving the previous person too much meat on their sandwich. Or maybe they were new to the job and you didn't realize it.

The Subway you walked into was given a label: "Subway." And that label made your mind run a comparison check with the other similar concepts you know. I don't know how your mind works, but mine would go like this: 

Subway = brand name.
Brand name = company/corporation.
Company/corporation = non-human entity or small group of rich people.

Now because there wasn't enough meat and/or olives on that sandwich, (if I didn't know to look past the label) I would immediately think that the corporate fatcats were trying to put more money in their pockets by cutting back on the most expensive part of the sandwich, rather than consider that maybe the server was lazy or having a bad day.

Before I move on to the next part, I would like to add that, in my experience, places like Subway do vary greatly in quality based on which branch you visit. I have had awesome servers in one town who would give me extra at no charge, and crappy servers in another town who think when you ask for pickles/olives it means you only want 3 or 4 of them on the entire sandwich. And I was an equally polite and friendly customer to all of them.

So there's one example of how labeling something can be destructive. By sticking to the concept that a label means one thing, you could be making yourself blind to the fact that in reality it is actually something else.

By labeling a person as "gay," you are limiting your comprehension to only what you grew up understanding from that label. For example: If your parents thought being gay was a bad thing, you could grow up associating that particular label with the same negativity. Though that example might not even need a label to be true.

We need to understand or explain things that we aren't familiar with in order to feel comfortable with them, because we're uncomfortable with the unknown. But in some cases, it really is best to simply let something go. Let it remain unknown. Come up with your own brand new concept to explain it in your own head, without the outside interference. Add a new node to the center of your web.


The following is the thought that triggered this rant:

When people ask me about my sexual preference or gender, I don't like to answer with labels like boy, girl, transsexual, transgender, transvestite, straight, gay, bi, or whatever. I just am. I am whatever I am. I be how I feel most comfortable, and slapping a label on it just make things more complicated because it makes me feel like whatever I am has to conform to the available labels. I am me.

Life is less complicated when you just let yourself be who you are. It's learning to stop being someone else that's the hard part.

If you read this all the way through, I thank you for indulging me in my thoughts. It turned out much longer than I intended, and I didn't proof read it to condense its size.