Why Must We Label Everything and Everybody?

Last night, as I watched the news, I heard a young man from Cornell University state what I have been saying for several years, “Why must we label everything…and everybody?”

I pause to let you think about that for a moment. What do we label? We label the obvious things like food, merchandise, illnesses, etc. But I’m not writing about those types of labels. I’m writing about ones that relate to social, moral, and political entities.

I don’t know when our world became so obsessed with labeling everything and everybody. It could have happened a long time ago, and now that there are so many people out there, it has exploded out of control. I have discovered that the greatest downfall of our world will come from over-labeling things and especially, people.

What is your love language? What is your sexual orientation? What part of the city are you from? What God, if any, do you believe in? What are your thoughts on abortion, life, or death? If you think about all these questions that have found their way into everyday life, you will find there is a LABEL hiding out in the answer. Acts of Service, Gay, Southside, you get the idea.

If I tell someone that I am from the “other side of the tracks” (I just labeled myself), the person I am talking to will automatically associate the label or term historically with, I’m from the poor side of town… therefore, I’m poor. Why does it matter, first, what part of town I’m from, and secondly, why does this make me poor? The answer is simple, because today’s labels like “Poor” separate a person from another. AND THERE IT IS… the label is there to separate each of us in this great big world, making us stand out, whether for good or bad.

This takes me back to the Cornell student who wanted to know why we had to label everything and everyone. After reading Lulu Miller’s Why Fish Don’t Exist, I have an answer. We label everything in our world to make sense of the chaos around us. (Miller’s point) Think about it. If we label everyone into nice little groups, and then into subgroups, and then we group things in our lives too, pretty soon, our world will be these neat little groups of organization, and the chaos becomes eliminated. Thus, we should be better prepared to live in this world we call our own.

But the problem with this theory, or way of thinking, has only caused our world to become more chaotic! Socially, we have separated ourselves from others who once were part of our more extensive group. We have found that by distancing ourselves from these groups, we have caused hate and discontent in our world. For example, turn on the nightly news, and you will see all kinds of labels causing much havoc in our world, i.e., Hamas, Jews, republicans, democrats, dictator, democracy, mentally unstable, NRA, free choice, pro-life, hero, bully. I’m sure you get the big picture. It’s enough to make you crazy and very, very sad.

In this year of discovery, let’s say, Enough to Labels! Discover in yourself the need to accept what you see and those you meet as nothing but what they are … people, amazing, unique, creative people with different thoughts and experiences that are a part of our world… a world that can only become peaceful when we chose to be open-minded and accepting. There should be no room for labels in your vocabulary, nor should there be in mine. Let’s discover together a way forward to make this a better world.