No labels

Yet, is anyone label free?

Prompted by an observation on Islam in an online forum, I was moved to say:

Fundamentalism is problem #1. That crosses religious lines (and frankly politics). It’s not just Islam. Fundamentalists exist in all belief systems and they are a danger to all non-believers.

Tribalism is problem #2, when folks cave on objective reality to show "care" and conflate good intent with dubious action that guarantees division. As Irshad Manji notes, "labels keep us in our designated places”¹ even when the illusion is progressive.

Othering is core to both problems, and the unspoken challenge in bringing about a better world is to understand that our selves overlap, none of us is defined by any one labelled identity.

Assume a label and carry on harms done through millennia. If you are defined by a label, fight back. If you self-identity as a label, well, I’d suggest counselling but little hope lies that way at present.

Don’t bother defending need for labels in the abstract. I’m a taxonomist and ontologist and know well the utility of categorization. As a periodic educator, I know the importance of being informed by aggregate data—and the importance of not elevating abstracts beyond their value. As a participant, often leader, in three sectors, I also know that context is all.

There is no “one size fits all” that is functional for individuals in their myriad contexts.

On a related note, many think it unreasonable to expect governance models to reflect actual reality in practice. They think it too costly in terms of resources and too “complicated.” Complex it may be, but it is the denial of the need that makes reality complicated.

Somehow, actual costs to “the system” and those whose lives are directly affected is not factored. Neither is there a general awareness that it is not only possible, but important, to work toward defining agreed outcomes before settling on the systems and procedures that demand compliance on the promise of effectiveness, only to fail over and over again in lived reality. Easy examples come from “do not harm” strictures in health care that are confounded by policies enabling some hospital patients to smoke crack while forbidding other patients to smoke tobacco. (I appreciate that not all readers will live in a jurisdiction where this applies, but here in British Columbia, we’ve had that experience.

A benefit of our time is that hypocrisy on many levels is rendered obvious. A challenge for us all is to find the language that moves us from tribalism and othering to dialogue and understanding. Our universities are failing us by encouraging performative compliance, that is, training over building capacity to think and grow knowledge through continuous, life-long learning.

I’ve strayed in this post, perhaps. I suppose that comes from finding the parsing of issues for new labels to be reductive, divisive and the very opposite of what is supposedly sought. And here, I self sensor. Maybe that’s a matter of no time to write further. Maybe not. Remains to be seen.

1. Manji, I. (2019) Don’t Label Me. St. Martin’s Griffin.