Today a Kossak listed the results of a poll asking for people to define themselves and their outlook based on single words or simplistic phrases. This got me thinking about the famous quote attributed to Soren Kierkegaard- "Once you label me you negate me"
Why does our society feel the need to be perpetually labeling people and therby negating what makes humanity fascinating our intrinsic complexity and contradictions. The need to parse things down to one or two words really does not do anything to help us understand each other in fact in plays in to the hands of people like Karl Rove who would like to keep people in a divide and destroy state.
There is more below...
The tendency I think is in some part driven my our short attention span MTV news in a blurb - sound bite culture. Not that people did not use labels in the past but they seem to have taken on a new and unhealthy life in this day and age.
We seem to want to do this with everything music, literature, theater film and of course people.
I would really love to hear the thoughts of others on why we need to label?
I think it really limits our thinking and experience of the world and of other people.
Linked to this is the whole concept of good and evil - which in themselves are labels. There is a fascinating article in Tikkun magazine about this topic.
New Holy War Between Good and Evil
Here is a taste of the article:
Three days after the 9/11 attacks, President Bush declared that the United States had been called to a new worldwide mission "to rid the world of evil," and two days later he re-affirmed that the U.S. government is determined to "rid the world of evil-doers."
The article goes on to say....
If anything is evil, the 9/11 attacks were evil. Nevertheless, such rhetoric is dangerous, because ridding the world of evil is also what Hitler and Stalin were trying to do.
Bush is labeling the world by using black and white terms - in the same way Osama Bin Laden does and the article is showing how such thinking can lead to great harm. Who else saw the world is such simple terms:
What was the problem with Jews that required a "final solution"? The earth could be made pure for the Aryan race only by exterminating the Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, etc.—all the vermin who contaminated it. Stalin needed to eliminate many Russian peasants in order to establish a society of collective farms. Both of them were trying to perfect the world by getting rid of its evil elements.
In other words, one of the main causes of evil has been human attempts to eradicate evil. In more Buddhist terms, much of the world’s suffering has been a result of our way of thinking about good and evil.
Another way of looking at things is rather thank label look at the root causes - it takes more time and energy but I think its worth it.
Buddhism sees the world differently. Evil, like everything else, has no essence or substance of its own, being a product of impermanent conditions. Instead, Buddhism emphasizes the three roots of evil, also known as the three poisons: greed, ill will, and delusion. Karma means that actions motivated by these poisons not only hurt others but rebound upon us ("blowback").
Such simplistic thinking leads us very often down the path to war:
That helps us understand why war can be so attractive. Wars cut through the petty problems of daily life and unite us good guys here against the bad guys over there......
Think of the plot of every James Bond film, not to mention thousands of other movies. The bad guys are caricatures: being ruthless and without remorse, they must be stopped by any means necessary. Because the villains like to hurt people, it’s okay to hurt them. Because they like to kill people, it’s okay to kill them. But what is this kind of story really teaching us? That if you want to hurt someone, it’s important to demonize him or her first: to fit him or her into your good-versus-evil script. n
Labeling and naming of someone else as an other can lead thought systems where we detach from and blame the other - the conservative the liberal the socialist etc etc.
This makes us susceptible to things that (we think) can provide the secure identity we crave, including belief systems that unify us into a group self. But a group self gains its own identity by distinguishing itself from an other, and it’s all the better if that other is a threat, or inferior to one’s own group, or (best of all!) both. That’s why we love scapegoats, onto which we can project our own basic lack: "The problem with my life is him ... the problem with our society is them."
To end with a great passage from the article:
Reconciliation is to understand both sides, to go to one side and describe the suffering being endured by the other side, and then to go to the other side and describe the suffering being endured by the first side. Doing only that will be a great help for peace."
and
Buddhist peace-making, to be effective, must flow out of our interconnectedness, even with people whose actions we must oppose. To label them evil is to take sides against them, which cuts off connectedness—and thereby the possibility of understanding and feeling compassion for them too. Once you do that, there’s little chance for either peace or justice. Self-righteousness is self-defeating.
PEACE!!!!!