In Defense of Labels

In Defense of Labels

“I think putting labels on people is just an easy way of marketing something you don't understand.” -Adam Jones

I Respectfully disagree.

Labeling (and by labeling I mean labeling chiefly with regards to personality traits and beliefs of individuals) has been branded a problem in society. I have been told its silly for me to label people as nerds or class clowns, green libertarians, or paleoconservatives, metalheads or punk rockers. Many people make the case that humans are much to complex for use to fit into a single category. This is not an assertion it’s reasonable to disagree with, so a defense of labels is an unpopular stance.

However, the problem of pigeonholing is not innate to labeling. The argument is based on two false pretenses. First, it is wrong to discount that if you are labeled, you then can have many other labels to describe yourself. The second pretense, is a mistake in the definition of labeling, our collective amnesia to the fact that a label in this kind of context is a generalization. At the same time we also seem to have forgotten that a generalization is by definition not to be followed adamantly, but a trend to be factored in to decision making.

Now this all probably seems really abstract at the moment, but if you put yourself on the lookout, you will see yourself and others knee-jerk rejecting things because they are labels. It may be hard to visualize now because a label has so many meanings, but I am confident it will make sense.

I want to apologize for my absence, I told you in my last post you could expect my next post to be more lighthearted. I had some difficulty meeting that end.