How would you finish this sentence?

...actually a waste of time. If someone can please tell me who it was that said this (approximate) quote:

"When you label me, you negate me."

Labels are useful for organizing storage boxes and drawers - ie, things you really just don't want to look at for a while.

Labels are a problem when they become prescriptive rather than descriptive.

Labels are a fascinating study in dismissal.

Labels are useful as broad descriptive catagories because they allow greater speed in decision making. They become counter productive when we confuse the label with the thing labeled.

Labels are...

a great way to segregate things (people)

Labels are...better left in the medicine cabinet.

Peace, Bo

Labels are...

something others give to us that we don't own.

Labels are necessary and only marginally informative.

... which is my way of agreeing with the first two of your descriptions...

"the map is not the territory" ... but... without the map it's difficult or sometimes impossible to navigate the territory... Good example: you would never use a forum, like the tribe forums, unless it offered labels in the form of subject lines. If the forum just splattered you with all of the content of the individual messages, it would become too impractical to read and you'd give up and go do something else, like crochet.

labels are.. of sentient beings. You, me, same, different. Categories of organization, chaos in transitional definitions, bridges and gaps, contradictions in the belief that one size fits all. Labels are awareness. The star on your belly, the genitals between my legs. shape, shades, sizes, surface, depth... shallow alignment in the cause of us vs them, yet the familiar bond that brings us closer together. Lines cross and form maps that align me with both sinners and saints; the establishment and all those who ain't.

Kinsey Quote:

"Only the human mind invents categories and tries to force facts into separated pigeon-holes. The living world is a continuum."

Peace, Bo

Labels are...

...used for two, often mutually-exclusive, purposes:

1. To try to encapsulate in a few words an entire lifetime's experiences, preferences, and orientations - a vague approximation at best.

2. To associate onesself with a broad class of people with whom you share something in common.

I think most people in this tribe are objecting to #1. However, I think #2 is useful and shouldn't be disregarded without due consideration.

Labels are...one of the cognitive tools available to conscious, self-aware beings. Like most tools there are situations where they are appropriate and there are situations where they are not the optimal tool to use.

I think an interesting gauge of a person is the range of communication tools they have at their disposal, and the appropriateness of the one they choose to use in a given situation.

A quote:

One of the unpardonable sins, in the eyes of most people, is for a man to go about unlabelled. The world regards such a person as the police do an unmuzzled dog, not under proper control. - T.H. Huxley

Peace, Bo

...not important.

i agree with the "tools" analogy and that there are appropriate cases for using a label to deffine or distinguish someone or something.

however, like all words, Labels are... limited. it is our unique challenge to transcend those limitations.

it's like in music, we can label it under a genra and so on, but each composition has a unique character and sound. we can only grasp it by listening or experiencing it directly. i like classical music but i don't like all classical music.

i hope this made sence to someone .... it's one thing to judge a quality and another to put a label or name on it, they are not the same thing.

for instance, the word Love in 'I Love you' can represent a whole spectrum of ways to feel about someone, but society has put a very limited and narrow meaning for it, which we have learned to expect.

i would preffer not relying on words for such things.

labels are never encompassing and often misleading

Labels are for mindless fools who use the insignificance of a label to make themselves appear somehow enlightened, and to perpetuate the delusion that they are somehow superior...
but that's just my oppinion.

False ... they don't show the real person inside.