The world is overwhelming and to make sense we’ve evolved to simplify. That’s useful but also dangerous.
We slice up the world with our brains, and imagine it as a collection of distinct individual parts. Or as groups of things.That’s a very useful way to look at the world. We need nouns, so we can identify and think about and discuss both specific things and categories of things.
To be sure, the world is much more complicated than that, and our way of looking at it is a distortion. But a useful and probably necessary distortion.
We talk about countries, about generations, about self-identifying groups, and about groups that we ourselves identify. The world, a complex and seemingly chaotic place, is tamed by a net of groupings, of nouns, that make it all seem manageable.
The Effects of Categorization
Nouns are powerful words. And they often have connotations, emotional impact either built into them, or that exist within the content of a culture.
Refugees and illegal immigrants are terms used for groups of people — often the same group of people. But the former is somewhat positive or at least neutral, and the latter is usually negative. In any case, this group is a subset of a bigger group — human beings.
Any label for any group of people is a subset — often useful for communication and thinking — but it also contains the possibility of dehumanization. Sometimes, this is intended by the speaker or writer.
That’s a very bad thing.
Multiple Categories Requires Making Choices
Of course nearly anyone and anything fits into multiple categories. A person can be a spouse, a sibling, a parent and — of course — a human being. A bird can be a sparrow, or even — suprisingly — a dinosaur. (Yep. Look it up!)
Categorizing simplifies but also takes away the uniqueness of experience. When we start seeing “birds” we stop seeing a jittery feathered and winged creature with a worm hanging from its beak. That’s a loss. However, it gets worse. When we start seeing illegal immigrants, we stop seeing human beings.
And which categories we choose says a lot about us. Now, it would be counter-productive and a bit ridiculous to stop using categories because they can be used negatively. For example, even if race is simply a human invention, we still need to address it because — “real” or not — it presents us with unavoidable issues. BUT, we should be working against de-humanization with regard to race, to citizenship status, and with regard to every category that’s used to denigrate human beings as “the other.”
The Implication of Thinking In Categories
Humans are not, by their nature, bad. That’s a popular lie used by cruel systems and abusive people (or just mistaken people) to justify cruelty. However, the way we think always carries the danger of dehumanizing others. In fact, nearly every group has an insulting term to refer to people who are not members of that group.
Using categories should be seen for what it is — a way of expressing hypothetical probabilities. For example, we say that Republicans want very strong restrictions on abortion. But that’s not strictly true. As it turns out, a fairly large number of Republicans want abortion to be available with fewer restrictions. However, on average, when you meet a Republican, that person is more likely than not to want strong restrictions on abortion. Furthermore, the official GOP platforms at all levels usually promote strong abortion restrictions — or outright bans.
The way to find out what a person believes is to ask the person. Knowing their party affiliation gives you a good guess, but not necessarily the correct answer.
And yet we can’t really discuss things, or even think clearly, without using categories. That’s the promise and the hazards of the way language works and the only way people can actually think.
Looking for food for thought? Please follow me on Medium. Also, see the website WeAreSaners.org — the movement to save the planet from climate collapse and to humanize everyone.
