Labels: A Way to Stop Dialog?

What is really the point?

It is fascinating to watch how people use labels. People aren’t our neighbors, our classmates, or our colleagues. They are closed-minded, conspiracy theorists, hate speakers, cultural appropriationists,.... And the list goes ON and ON.

What is each of these labels supposed to mean and what might be the real purpose of the designations?

A Close-minded Person is someone who is not willing to consider different ideas or opinions. Today this label is used to call attention to people who have firm thoughts about social matters. One of the most interesting uses of the label is for a person who believes there are two genders and that there are genetic differences between males and females. Why should a person be close-minded for making statements that are inline with basic biology? Is someone trying to change the definition of gender? If so, why? Have people been chemically harmed somehow and they want people to think the harm is normal? Something else?

A Hate Speaker is someone involved in offensive discourse targeting a group or an individual based on inherent characteristics (such as race, religion or gender) that may threaten social peace. What does that really mean? What is social peace? What moves something from acceptable discourse to something that is unacceptable? Who determines what is acceptable and unacceptable? Is the real point to keep people from calling attention to poor behavior? poor performance? to keep people from noticing differences? Why might people in power want to keep people from discussing these things?

A Conspiracy Theorist is a person who believes something that is counter to popular thinking. For example, some people do not believe we landed on the moon in 1969. Others assert the Covid-19 vaccines were harmful. And another group argues that the elections in this country have been fraudulent for many years. Sometimes conspiracy theories are inconvenient truths that people in power don’t want the populace to know. Interestingly, conspiracy theories are often proved true many years later.

A Cultural Appropriationist is a person that adopts aspects of a culture that is not their own, often without acknowledging the original culture or its significance. We all take cultural elements from each other all the time. People of Scandinavian descent take on cultural elements from people of African cultures and people of Latin American descent take on cultural elements from people in Asia. Honestly, in the age of the Internet it’s impossible not to incorporate elements of many cultures into our lives. Why is it so bad for someone to be educated enough to talk intelligently about someone else’s background? Why do they want to prevent discussion? Is there something to hide?

Perhaps the labels have nothing to do with making people nicer, but everything to do with control and hiding inconvenient realities. If that is the case, we may need a lot more close-minded people, hate speakers, conspiracy theorists, and cultural appropriationists. If we did have them, our conversations would be a lot more interesting and we would be able to focus less on differences and more on solutions.