It's been a long time since I've posted anything out in the blog space, but I've had variations on this conversation several times in the last couple of weeks, and it feels like I should put this out there.
We experience this existence through the filters of both our physical bodies, and through the manifold emotional, social and experiential filters which we've picked up along the way, the mood which we are in, the motivations of the moment.
Because our brains are finite, their ability to sense, and make sense, to figure out what box to put something in allows us to determine what to do with it, how to respond to it, and easily file it into memory, if it's deemed important enough to do so. Is it important? Does it represent a threat? Can we eat it? Will it help me?
From the earliest moments of consciousness, we take the data which are senses provide, and create connections between those external events, and our internal state. When it is hot, my body feels uncomfortable in this particular way. When there is an unexpected loud noise, a whole cascade of things happen, adrenals, increasing pulse, breath rate, pupil dilation - one of the many triggers that put us into a "fight or flight" mode. Some of the responses we can learn to control with time and training. Someone who works in construction, for instance, get used to unexpected loud noises.
As we grow, and gain experiences, we make more connections. We decide ways that things are "like" other things, and "unlike" yet other ones. We categorize. We discriminate. That word - the "d" word - has a negative connotation now days. But it means to recognize a distinction - to be able to select one thing from another. It is actually how we work. You need to be able to discriminate between edible and inedible things, or you will get very sick, very quickly. Adding more experiences gives us the ability to further group things into larger classes, onto which we apply labels.
Labels are ways to compress an experience - we have the compressed song in our head, under the label of "The Happy Birthday Song", which we are able to reproduce on a moment notice, including the modification of the "name tag" in the song to the appropriate recipient. But something like our compressed mental image of "The Mona Lisa" is, for most people, much more abstract. There is a woman with an almost smile. Is she facing left or right? Is she holding anything? Is there anything in the background? This is a "lossy compression" - we discard bits and pieces of the details which at the time the memory was stored, the brain didn't think was important.
The trick here is that the labels are our own creation, as is the definition of what belongs in the box which we have applied that label to, and the metric for compression. When we apply a label to something, so many things happen - we of course assume that we have applied the correct label, and that allows us to think that we "know" that thing, because we have given it a name. Interestingly, this also shapes how we can see the thing - because we have applied a label, our expectations are that this thing will behave like other members of that label class.
One of the signs of an "open" mind, is the ability to allow for the possibility that we there is something wrong with any label that has been applied. It is easier to lump more things into less labels, than create new labels. Perhaps this thing is similar to other things in a lot of ways, but is fundamentally different in some other crucial way. If it is a bowl, that has holes in it, we call it a strainer or colendar. Is it still a bowl? Well, if you are carrying large things, sure. But if you want to eat cereal in it, no. So perhaps we need a new label altogether. But that makes us think - what other things should be in that label - is a window screen a colendar?
Someone who is "discriminatory" (with today's negative "d" word connotation) is someone who doesn't allow for flexibility in the definition or membership in their labels. Interestingly, in my experience, people who are discriminatory, tend to not only stereotype people, but also, their label definition often has a primarily negative trait bias to it...
So, labels are both powerful and useful things, and also can be things that take away power, and disregard the utility of things in their application. They can empower, by allowing people to quickly communicate concepts through generalities, but they can also lead to assumptions that may be different from intention - and thus dis-empowering. When I say "I live in a house in the city", different people will have different pictures for what a "house" is, and what the "city" looks like. Depending on what I am trying to get across, the images created in someones mind whom lives in a a ramshackle hut in an over run urban core, vs. someone living in a gentrified area will be very different. Yet, both images are compatible with their individual, contextual labels.
If labels are so problematic, can we work without them?
Since we think by association, we are wired for labels. I think the best we can do is to KNOW that is how we work, and make efforts, where appropriate, to atomize the labels as widely as possible - while having the upper level ideas connect back to as many other labels as reasonable. Doing so, allows one to work from both the space of unique qualities, and shared ones.
Labels let us work with things on different scales. If we try to find a metaphoric label for stories in our lives, we can use that compression to great value. If we imagine that a relationship that didn't work out is like a dead rose, we can mentally interact with that rose - which contains a compressed copy of the entire history of the relationship - from a different level. We can, for instance, realize that a dead rose is beyond hope, beyond repair, and decide to just "throw it out", much more easily then we might be able to disconnect from the specific details of a long term human relationship.
Ok, rambling a bit here, but I felt compelled...
And if you've made it this far, thanks for listening. You have been added to the "good egg" label :)
