Labeling People

was only 16 when I wrote this, and while I still think the thesis is correct, I would word it slightly differently now. But perhaps it has more value (at least to me) as a record of how I thought and wrote at that age.

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When you label somebody you are setting up a schema with which you will try to process (and understand) their actions. This can be a very useful tool, letting you make decisions about somebody quicker, and with less info. Consider judging advice on a subject that you know little about. If you have labeled a person as generally knowing what they are talking about, you would pay more attention to what they say. You would most likely pay less attention to somebody whom you have decided always claims to have some sort of answer, whether they know what they are talking about or not. Labels are also easier to store in your memory than a copy of somebody's complete personality. Once you have labeled them, you can store that label for future use, and probably be able to recall that label with ease next time you meet them.

Like all useful tools of the mind, labels can be over used. The biggest danger with labels arises when you incorrectly label somebody. Whether the label is incorrect from the start, or if the person changes, making your label incorrect, you will most likely make more wrong decisions regarding that person than if you had never labeled them. This is a bad thing, but it isn't so bad if you have no power over the person that you are labeling, and are only hurting yourself. The real problem arises when you have any level of control over these peoples' lives. Slavery was a good example, and to a lesser extent, racism is a continuation of this.

Labeling has another downfall. Because labels make it easier to make decisions with less info, when you don't understand somebody/something, there is a strong need to label them, so that the little information that you do have will seem to be sufficient.

A person can be labeled in many ways, ways that we don't automatically think about, such as man/woman, boy/girl, old/young, strong/weak, and so on. Most of the time labels such as these are applied correctly, but not always. I have an example of this based upon myself.

When I was a middle-school aged kid, I was labeled as a kid that went to middle school by many people when they first saw me. They would see me in the supermarket and other places, during times that school should have been in session, label me as a truant, and would ask me why I wasn't in school. The answer was that I was home schooled, so, in a way, the whole world was my school. This really wasn't a problem for me most of the time, because none of these people had any real power over me.

I can remember one time someone did have power over me, and was able to cause some trouble. I was running, for exercise, with my parents one day, and since I was young, I couldn't keep up with them near the end, and was alone on the road when a police car came along. The policeman pulled over and started asking me questions about why I wasn't in school. I don't know if he believed my answer, but he slowed me down for such a long period asking me questions that my parents finished running, became worried, and came back looking for me.

Labeling can be useful, but its downfall is when the label is attached to somebody incorrectly. Because of this we should try not to permanently label anybody until we really know them, and even then we should review our labels every now and then.