A bit of an editorializing title, I know. And I’m a little drunk, I might read this tomorrow and see it form another angle and question myself into oblivion.

But I was reflecting, Is the categorization of sexuality, ideological beliefs, hobbies (I’m a cinephile, I’m a gamer, I’m ‘x’ thing that defines my whole identity), a result of the dominance of the liberal world we live in?
We are taught to think about the world from a young age in terms of good and evil, wrong and right, marvel villains vs marvel heroes… Binary, simple, childish thought, but as the contradictions of our world get more extreme, we’re forced to expand our understanding the world and form a wider perspective of what makes up our reality (or simply bury our heads into a sandpit), be it by simply creating more categories to fit onto our narrow worldview or by accepting the immortal science of dialectical materialism (based).
Thoughts?

  • amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml
    1·
    2 days ago

    I think it depends on what the label is and how it gets used. My personal experience with labels often hasn’t felt great. I will proudly call myself a nerd insofar as I’m saying “yeah, I ‘act nerdy’, so what? I’m proud of those characteristics in myself.” But I won’t go around calling myself a “gamer”, not only because of stigma attached to it but because it seems to be a label largely developed out of taking pride in being a consumerist fan of video games who craves all the latest titles, no matter how expensive, and elevates video games to a place way beyond where they are deserving of value.

    I also have just long been disengaged from the mainstream. Not in the beard-wearing hipster meaning of trying hard to avoid the mainstream so I can say I avoid it, but in the older meaning of hipster, of it being more incidental. I guess partly because of upbringing, partly because of not really having money or the right kind of friends that would drag me along/into mainstream stuff a whole lot. So in that way, labels can be weird for me because I don’t feel like there’s a lot I belong to as category in the ways that other people do. This is probably not uncommon for people who are neurodivergent though, this sense of “not quite fitting” with the mold, and I’m 99% sure I’m ADHD (that or it must be something that is virtually identical to it).

    But then, I don’t go around proudly proclaiming “I have ADHD.” It’s more just something I use to explain when it feels necessary. I guess to me labels are something to be used for a specific purpose when they are needed. There have been times I got more into self-labeling as a sense of pride, such as in years I was more into MBTI and related theory, but the end result of that was I used a label of introvert to explain away anxiety and avoidance to myself as “just me.” So sometimes a label, even when largely only used on yourself by yourself, can still be damaging.

    I will end with a quote from a character in Mostly Harmless by Douglas Adams:

    “In astrology the rules happen to be about stars and planets, but they could be about ducks and drakes for all the difference it would make. It’s just a way of thinking about a problem which lets the shape of that problem begin to emerge. The more rules, the tinier the rules, the more arbitrary they are, the better. It’s like throwing a handful of fine graphite dust on a piece of paper to see where the hidden indentations are. It lets you see the words that were written on the piece of paper above it that’s now been taken away and hidden. The graphite’s not important. It’s just the means of revealing the indentations. So you see, astrology’s nothing to do with astronomy. It’s just to do with people thinking about people.”

    I definitely believe labels can be and are misused some of the time, but they can also serve a purpose as a way to talk about a thing that is otherwise vague and difficult to communicate about. But as with any worldview that sees things as static rather than in motion, labels can cause us to stagnate in circumstances where change is needed. On the other hand, labels can deceive us into embracing change that is for the worse, believing that we are abandoning an important part of identity if we don’t. So working out material conditions beyond abstract labels is important. The reason two people can think communism sounds good in the abstract with only one supporting AES states is because the AES state supporter has information on the material successes of those states and the other is operating on false information, believing in narratives of destitution and reproduction of oppression.