Deceptions: A Short Essay on Labeling

Black. White. Chinese. Arab.

All of the above are labels. They describe race, religion, nationality, gender, sexual preference, or a political viewpoint. These labels bring different images or thoughts to mind to different people, and as I was writing this series something has become woefully obvious to me, besides the fact that writing about Israel or religion is like trying to walk on eggshells without breaking any.  No matter what I write, the reader can never fully comprehend my exact thought pattern. Let me explain.

Take “Israeli” and “Palestinian” and combine them as the AP, CNN, and even Ron Paul, Cynthia McKinney and I have more or less done into the simple phrase: “The Israelis are attacking the Palestinians in Gaza.” However, speaking for myself, this is not what I really want to convey.

I really intend to convey something like: “The Israelis, mostly the government hardliners who are not supported by the secular Jews and other peaceful individuals or religious Jews, nor by the shministim (conscientious objectors), nor by an undetermined number of other assorted individuals like Rebeka, Noah, or Habib, nor even by the 550 IDF “Courage to Refuse” soldiers who have pledged their continued service but refuse to have anything to do with military actions in the occupied territories, nor the current Ministers of Education and Commerce who disagree with the Gaza attacks but keep their mouth shut, nor the Knesset (parliament) members who have spoken out against the war, are attacking the Palestinians in Gaza, whom include many Hamas insurgents, some Hamas terrorists, many other armed  individuals or factions, plenty of innocent families who both support and do not support Hamas, several Israelis and many other foreigners who believe in peace so much they are working with the many NGOs, etc.” (photo)

So you see, using any label for groups has a high chance of failing to convey the speaker’s true thoughts. Plus, my eyes would glaze over while typing such an elaboration, and any readers would  quickly fall asleep.

However, it is a necessary habit for us humans to classify whatever we seek into groups, whether it is to classify Douglas fir trees and Ponderosa pine trees all together as evergreens, or to classify both Jews and Palestinians as Semites. [Yes, Semite is a general term for both groups, so if you on the side of the Palestinians technically you cannot possibly be anti-Semite.] We need labels to make sense of the world we live in.

Now, the socialists or collectivists, have a far stronger sense of this need to classify. Indeed, they have an insatiable innate desire to divide up people and hence master them. Their intellectuals and statist leaders -  Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Bush II and many European rulers come to mind – often have very apt abilities to segregate peoples and cultivate or propagandize “Us Vs. Them” mentalities.  Liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans comes to mind.  So does the ever-present ‘terrorist.’ Unfortunately, their sheep-like followers do nothing more than excitedly parrot these leaders or intellectuals, or chew their cud peacefully content.

However, if one undergoes a paradigm shift and understands that everyone is a unique individual, not merely a boilerplate group of stereotypes; the world does a back-flip and is no longer recognizable. No longer are groups full of mindless robots all chanting the same stereotypes. No longer does racism exist.

Sure, group labels are still used for ease in human communication and debate, as ways for individuals to freely associate and describe the world we see, but when one looks through the lens as an individual, only other individuals stare back.

Hope you enjoyed reading a few of my thoughts in this series as I much as I did while writing them!