You’ll often hear in popular media/culture that “labels” are bad because they oversimplify and stereotype groups of people according to loosely established or fictional correlations. This form of labeling is often a negative thing. But really the problem, I think, has been misconstrued. The problem is not that people are being categorized but the way they are being categorized. I think intuitively people recognize this, because we still objectively classify people according to their various attributes and characteristics that are obviously common such as; “tall people” “french speaking people” or “people who can play a musical instrument”. These sorts of “labels” are unobjectionable and are so because they are obvious. This sort of categorization is inevitable as soon as we concede that people in fact have various properties and characteristics, regardless of how unique they might be. However, it there does seem to be much truth to the claim that labeling can be harmful. The tool of categorization is only as effective as the skill of the user. Peoples emotions and biases get in the way and the inevitable result is negative stereotypes and caricatures of what people are actually like. I’m really not sure if this is a problem that can be solved, or if it is even worth solving. Nevertheless, we can be sure that the solution to the problem is to cease labeling people altogether. I can only conclude that what has been termed “labeling” as well as the origin of the term itself are a result of intellectual laziness and group thinking. The real problem is peoples tendency to make hasty generalizations of the people around them.
Aside from this, I’ve also noticed a peculiar pattern among many of my peers to reject religious and philosophical labels/categories. So for instance, I’ve been told on more than a few occasions that my attempts to understand other peoples viewpoints by figuring out where they “fit” on the landscape of ideas and concepts is narrow minded and simplistic. Surprisingly, I’ve heard this equally from both Christians and non-Christians. Unfortunately, it seems people are making a decisive error in their reasoning. They seem to be equivocating categories with ideas, supposing that there is an infinite number of categories. The thing about categories, however, is that they are always reducible. So for instance in number sets you can have an infinite number of sets, say sets of random numbers in a consecutive series, but all of these sets will both be in the category of “consecutive numbers” and broader sets such as natural or real numbers. This is because all sets have something in common, no matter how unique, that being they are sets or categories! In fact the basis for this axiom is that ideas and concepts can have definitions to begin with. To give something a definition is to give it a semantic range of meaning. In other words to “fit” it on the landscape of ideas. Thus, perhaps without knowing it, people who claim you cannot put a label on their ideas are really denying that their ideas can be defined, which makes it difficult to see how such ideas could have any meaning to begin with.
I don’t think that this means people who accept this view somehow reject the objectivity of truth or any of that nonsense. Rather, these people could be labelled as skeptics (oh the irony) because they are primarily skeptical that their ideas can be understood by those around them or that others can truly grasp their perspective, but they don’t deny that people have objective ideas or perspectives. Even still, I think this position is still far too strong to be adequately justified, for if we cannot understand where another person is coming from, how on earth do we communicate at all? Its a miracle you can even understand what I am writing at all if this is true! As such I think we must reject this popular form of perennial skepticism despite any comfort or security it might bring to us.
