I have blogged about the dangers of labels before, but it bears repeating. Yes, labeling people and things IS a way to keep the human mind (and thus human beings and all their stuff) "organized" -- the problems arise when we start to see the label as a singular reality. One example comes from the world of psychiatry (as seen in the quote below), but the list is seemingly infinite. Remember my friends...sol lucet omnibus (the sun shines for everyone), so question, question, question what you see, hear and believe to be true. Don't let labels bind you!
"People say, 'I have heart disease,' not 'I am heart disease'. Somehow the presumption of a person's individuality is not compromised by those diagnostic labels. All the labels tell us is that the person has a specific challenge with which he or she struggles in a highly diverse life. But call someone 'a schizophrenic' or 'a borderline' and the shorthand has a way of closing the chapter on the person. It reduces a multifaceted human being to a diagnosis and lulls us into a false sense that those words tell us who the person is, rather than only telling us how the person suffers".
~ Martha Manning
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Photo: "Bound" by J. David Zacko-Smith, Lausanne, Switzerland, July 2007.
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