Post Definitions
Premature and ungrounded understandings of groups of people set the foundation for racism, sexism, classism, and more and therefor much of inequality and a general lack of empathy and open-minded understanding. These constructed false understandings spread like wildfire through the psyches of people in society. They even affect how we understand ourselves and the people we know well and therefore how we live our lives.
Social Categorisation
So, what exactly do I mean when I say ‘understandings of groups of people’? The process of understanding groups of people by labelling and defining those labels is commonly referred to as social categorization.
Social categorization is the process through which we group individuals based upon social information.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/social-categorization
For example, we might label someone as a female data scientist named Ingrid. When speaking about her, we might use other surface level identifiers such as her race, nationality, profession, the university she studied at, etc.
Of course, defined labels serve a purpose. They help us to not need to ‘reinvent the wheel’ every time that we meet someone new. They help us to communicate about entire groups of people and individuals. Still, I will argue that our tendency to define groups and individuals has gone too far, and the results are disastrous.
The Problem
- Ambiguity: Miscommunication, False Narratives and Objectification
One problem that arises is that labels paint slightly (or hugely) different pictures of Ingrid in each of our minds, based on our experiences and adopted stereotypes. To some, for instance, data scientist is a fancy term for a nerd, while to others data scientists are cutting-edge problem solvers.
Ambiguous labels can be used as tools for reaching the more complete and accurate truth, but too often they accomplish just the opposite.
Take the following highly plausible dialogue between fictional Eric and Louisa, for instance.
Eric: “I came here to start a business, because my home country’s economy is failing.”
Louisa: “Oh, so you’re a refugee?”
Eric: “Well, kind of.” Feeling like Louisa has taken away from the true sentiment of the situation.
Here, you can see a label used to make an accurate fact about a person more ambiguous than it needs to be. Rather, labels should be used as stepping stones to the truth. For instance, it might be fair to initiate a conversation as follows, in order to move past the surface level label.
Louisa: “Your friend tells me that you are a refugee. Will you elaborate on what that means for you?”
Even after learning a person’s story, the true essence of that person has still most likely not been revealed. While generic labels are no longer being so heavily relied upon, words are still being used to define a person. One can get closer to understanding their humanity by feeling their presence, hearing their voice, observing their body language and how they react to situations, etc. If we have never met, no matter how long one of my close friends or family members tries to describe me to you, you will always develop an incomplete and somewhat inaccurate picture of me in your mind.
20th century German philosopher Martin Heidegger suggests that this kind of deep understanding of humans is often found in death. That is, it is rare that simplistic labels are used to describe a person near to or after their death. It is memories of who that person was in life which become important. We could all benefit from striving to understand ourselves and others in this sense while we are alive and not just after death.
2. Lost empathy
To let the extent of the problem sink in further, consider the headlines “Syrian Refugees are Starving”, “French Citizens are Starving”, and “Humans are starving.” Notice that your empathetic reaction differs from one heading to the next, but each of these groups are composed of humans and should deserve the same standard of basic human rights including food security.
3. Inauthenticity
Despite being so obviously overly-simplistic and surface-level, Ingrid probably uses labels to speak about herself as well. These could go so deep that she even uses them to understand herself.
For 19th century philosophy Soren Kierkegaard, becoming one’s authentic self is the only way to avoid despair. While he did not state it as explicitly, it can be inferred that Heidegger mirrored this sentiment.
Ingrid may like to play the guitar, for instance, but because she identifies as a data scientist, she might unfairly discredit herself as a serious artist. Society pushes not only labelling but also that individuals adopt simplistic and limited sets of labels. There exist countless more detrimental examples, such as minority groups viewing themselves as limited or lesser. We start to see how labels can sink so deep that they prevent us from living authentically and, as Kierkegaard claims, leave us in despair.
Defining groups and individuals by how they were in the past can subtract from their humanity in a similar way. In his work Self Reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson notes that society expects people to remain the same over time. When they change, they are judged by the public as weak or even liars.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divine.
Like Kierkegaard, Emerson pushes us to change and consistently move closer to our authentic selves. Definitions do not leave much room for this kind of growth.
4. Authentic understanding does not come easily
Hopefully we are starting to agree that we should strive to understand people by their humanity, but at what cost? It undoubtedly takes a lot of time and energy. Most of us have only dedicated this necessary effort to a small subset of people, quite often those with similar backgrounds and perspectives to us. That means we all have a lot of work to do.
Even after taking this major step towards realising this and trying to connect to a wider range of perspectives, we are all restricted to some extent by physical, social, political and mental boundaries. For example, living in a city, you are generally restricting to the population of that city. Worse than that, most of us isolate ourselves to our socio-economic class and quite possibly country of origin, race, and countless other limiting factors.
The Solution
Our ignorance can be divided into problems and mysteries. When we face a problem, we may not know its solution, but we have insight, increasing knowledge, and an inkling of what we are looking for. When we face a mystery, however, we can only stare in wonder and bewilderment, not knowing what an explanation would even look like.
-Noam Chomsky
Not only do we not know ourselves and others well, but we know people who can be identified by a different set of labels than us even less, leaving us polarized and divided.
Investing the time to understand individuals and actively resisting the urge to make generalisations about people, however innocent they may seem, is a crucial step towards building a better world.
We should therefore look to others and to technology for help gaining a more wholistic picture of people and their unique perspectives, experiences, personalities, and lifestyles. These become tools for crafting a more complete and accurate understanding of reality, a necessary starting point for solving world problems.
At the very least, we are looking at a problem which we are starting to understand, and I hope to offer steps in the right direction, so that we no longer need to fear a great mystery.
Over the past year, I have pondered deeply on these topics as I worked as a data scientist for Hunome, a platform for understanding humanity through a wide range of perspectives, and traveled across Western Europe and The Balkans. My own perspective is continuously challenged and evolving as I speak to humans from an increasingly wider range of backgrounds in an increasingly wider range of contexts.
It is in this spirit of building a Post Definitions World that I want to provide you with new opportunities to learn about humans from humans. Whether you are in your hometown, a large city rich with diversity, or are traveling the world, we could all use more slow and mindful contact with people from a wider range of backgrounds and perspectives.
As I continue to live a nomadic and social lifestyle, I will be interviewing some of the people I meet about their perspectives on and experience with identities and understanding humanity. Of course, the groups of individuals I interview will be biased by a number of factors related to where and how I travel as well as my personality which will match with a certain unique subgroup of people. Still, by tuning in you will have the unique opportunity to learn about the individuals from that specific subgroup, which is almost guaranteed to be different than the people whom you would match with.
Conclusion
As the world’s mindset becomes increasingly global, remote, and on a larger scale, we are more than ever at risk of losing touch with understanding individuals on a truly human level. The results of can be seen through peaking polarization of beliefs, lack of understanding between groups of people, and countless subsequent world problems. We need to take time to slow down and listen to ourselves and each other on an individual, human level.
This is a huge task, so let’s get to work.
Check out the first episodes of The Post Definitions Podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or Anchor.
It’s time to step into a Post Definitions World.
