If I were to address myself by my properly assigned labels, I would be a privileged working-class cisgender white man with anarcho-socialist principles who suffers from mental health problems. Quite a mouthful there, right? That’s a lot to take in, and those are just general labels.
I haven’t told you which football team or Political party I support. I spoke to an Autistic chappy the other week and he told me that he was proud of his label, it also helps him identify. Some people, like my autistic friend, need to make people aware of their condition, and in the same breath help him understand the way he is on a basic level.
I have a somewhat controversial view of labeling. I think labels are good in the sense that they can help us understand and address things with more clarity. For instance, back before I was told I was a Paranoid Schizophrenic, you could find me laying flour across my bedroom floor to catch any footsteps during the night.
Yet I feel some of us are becoming trapped in our labels. Take me for instance, after a heavy night out in the bar drinking shots and beer; when I was dancing on the bar naked, people would give me grace, because I was a schizophrenic. “Ah, it’s only Raymond, he’s mental. Take him home.”
I’m big on accountability and I feel now that I should have been treated as if it was the barman doing so. If I hadn’t eventually taken accountability for myself, I’d probably still be dancing on that bar today and flouring my bedroom – because no-one would hold me to account back then.
I also feel that by taking a Political stance or certain view, society has pigeonholed me into a Political category. I have seen YouTube video comments and Facebook groups that talk about entire swathes of people by their designated ‘left’ ideology. The loony left that I commonly hear flung around. Yet I’ve met people from both sides that are the nicest people you can ever meet. I just know they would get along swimmingly with each other but can’t see past their own ideologies.
This is enslavement, is it not? It has to be. If you categorize people by one opinion, then you are a slave to your own opinions; you limit yourself. I promise you, no matter how much you tell me in the comments section that the left is this, or the right is that, you are chaining yourself against the gates of a wondrous new world that lays before you. This is certainly how governments do it. ‘People’ are not one. We are many.
Then there’s gender and race, and I sort of feel can’t we all just get along? I’ve never seen a group of people live in the past as we do.
I see Irish people fighting over the Internet about a potato drought that happened over 300 years ago, Scottish people, bitter about the English colonization hundreds of years before my great, great, great, great granddad was born, and English people fretting over the bastardization of the English language by Americans. Who gives a damn, right? These people are all dead and our world is modern, people are different and diverse, and ‘mostly’ we all want to do well for ourselves.
I’m a staunch believer in betterment by co-operation rather than competition. I’d rather scratch my competitors back so that they can scratch mine. We both move forward then. To eliminate competition, we need to be co-operative, and to engage in that we need to work together, instead of all these labels.
I like to just be me, and you be you. It’s better is it not? We are all human.
I love asking men their favorite beer. Most of us like beer. Even me, a non-drinker, still enjoys a good range of alcohol-free beers. I keep saying we aren’t that much different at base. Get to know the person behind the label.
Stop. Smell the fresh air and get to know your local people. You’ll be surprised, I promise.
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I'm a man that's been through the pitfalls and elations of life in my ever growing quest to better my knowledge in the human condition. I've been in the game and around the Internet since 1996 and surprisingly I'm still using it today. I've definitely found myself in some wonderful places and I hope to share all of this with you lucky people. Learn more at therelationshipblogger.com.
