L is for Labels

American, Canadian, gay, straight, Catholic, Jewish, Conservative, Liberal, white, black, Torontonian, Hamiltonian, Blah blah blah.

I am morbidly tired of all these words. I hear conversations based on these words, sometimes conversations that are being inflicted on me while I nod politely or simply fight to stay awake. And invariably they are conversations not bearing the slightest shred of truth. They are exercises in the softest thinking; Nonsense. I could record every sentence and craft a report that demonstrates the sad falseness of every sentence. But why would I do that?

Not everyone is a committed seeker of truth, and why should they be? They are occupied, doing what they feel they must to survive. They are raising children, raising roofs and raising their salaries. I can not complain about this. They are keeping the race alive and keeping me in coffee, wine and automobiles which I readily accept. I am no hero. I make use of their offerings, for better or worse, and I offer them the fruits of my own poetic labour, whoever may listen; whatever use they may make of it.

So why sometimes, am I inclined to slap them in the face by telling them that everything they believe is wrong? Perhaps by the time this rambling is done I will have some answer for that.

Labels. Wretched things. It is unarguable that every living thing is unique. Yet so few wish to acknowledge it. We insist on having easy peasy simple conversations full of generalized nonsense stemming from the feeling that labels are something real; that labels actually tell us something real about someone or something.

Example: Nationalism.

Masters of labour and commerce have dictated the bond between "Americans" and "Canadians" while bubble-headed politicians strut around pretending that they have something to do with it; while average "citizens" bash each other across the 49th parallel; insulting their imaginary neighbors to the south or north for whatever imaginary faults the airheads at CNN have planted in their meagre little minds this given day.

Do you want to know how the average American citizen and average Canadian citizen compare? I know plenty of each by the way.

The average Canadian citizen spends his day chasing the objectives of his greed, guarding his reputation with undiagnosed neurotic obsession and paranoia, obeying constant directives from obsolete survival instincts and mistaking the simple biochemical processes that bind him to his children as some glorious holy love while blindly orchestrating the ruination of their little lives. Then he goes home and learns nothing of his plight because he's distracted by a mob of talentless television twits, while his brain, once young and vital and curious, now grows softer and softer.

Meanwhile the average American spends his day chasing the objectives of his greed, guarding his reputation with undiagnosed neurotic obsession and paranoia, obeying constant directives from obsolete survival instincts and mistaking the simple biochemical processes that bind him to his children as some glorious holy love while blindly orchestrating the ruination of their little lives. Then he goes home and learns nothing of his plight because he's distracted by a mob of talentless television twits, while his brain, once young and vital and curious, now grows softer and softer.

How am I doing so far? Am I winning any new friends?

Just the fact that you are reading this blog is an indication that you may very well not be *average*, by the way, so please don't feel insulted.

I have a friend who graduated from a prison environment where he was well acquainted with a group of individuals who were all loud-mouthed, foul-mouthed, garishly dressed, infantile-minded gangster types and who all had black skin. Now he goes around angry at the world for calling him racist when he complains about black people.

He defends himself stating he has made honest and consistent observations.

But I suggest it is not the black part that is the problem. It's the loud-mouth part or the foul-mouth part. So perhaps he should complain about "foul-mouthed people" or "loud-mouthed people" instead of "black people." Perhaps that would be a bit more intelligent and a bit more accurate. perhaps it would also be more kind with regards to all the millions of black people who are polite and quiet and who wear their pants in the general vicinity of their waist. And perhaps it would be a lot kinder to me, given there are intelligent, kind, inspired black people who are my friends and whom I dearly cherish and respect.

But that's tribal instinct for you. As useless as it is ubiquitous.

Every person I've ever met is utterly unique in the universe, and the universe could not be what it is without them. And for all my above bitching about the general failing of the dull masses they are all in the habit of occasional feelings or acts of kindness, love, empathy and generosity, each of these incidents a small miracle given the once-necessary, but cruel, nature of life.

Beyond the propping up of our own brittle egos, we will never accomplish anything truthful or useful in conversation without recognizing the reality of uniqueness; without passing up the tyranny of labels and getting at the specific realities of specific persons or things, which usually means suppressing our own illusion of enlightenment and deconstructing our own selves. Dangerous work though that may be!

Even the label human is a generalization. We might assess it a useful label because it is 99.9999% or so reliable but it is worth understanding that it is not 100% reliable.

If you're a human does that mean that your children will be human? Does that mean that both your parents had to be human?

Yes and yes, obviously. Right? But what's the problem? The reality of evolution which we have now observed too long in action to be dismissed as theory, is the problem.

If you're a human then your mother had to be human. So her mother had to human. So her mother had to be human. And so on, infinitely? Of course we come to a problem, don't we? At some point in your great lineage, your great great great (etc, etc...) grandmother was not human but something resembling a chimp and which I know not the name for. Look further into your family tree and you will find a shrew or few! Look much further and your own personal ancestors were all sea polyps.

Even our own status as "human" is likely only temporary. Look forward in time. For how long will you and I maintain the label? Whatever unfamiliar creature our kind evolve into, assuming we survive this decadent and dangerous adolescence of the human race, may just want to keep the label human for themselves and may relegate our generation, post-mortem, to some kind of "pre-human" term.

The lesson is that all labels, to some degree are a cheat. Some much more so than others. It's worth remembering. Because at some point we will need to become smarter than our instincts. I'm pretty certain it will become necessary.


I mistrust all systemizers and avoid them. The will to a system is a lack of integrity.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

To generalize is to be an idiot. To particularize is the lone distinction of merit. General knowledge are those knowledge that idiots possess.
- William Blake

Everything popular is wrong.
- Oscar Wilde