The study of bias tells us that we tend to be quick to label others. Therefore, the people who are creating impasse are often seen as “difficult”, “unreasonable, “stubborn” or even an “a**hole”. And this is not just a common response but an understandable one. After all, we are never the unreasonable one, it’s always the other person who is the idiot that refuses to be reasonable. It should not be surprising that the same thoughts are running through the other person’s mind about us!

Attributing labels to others is our brain’s way of coping with a complex world. Labeling or naming something allows us to generalize and therefore function more quickly in the world. Positive examples of this are when we learn. For example, as a child, when we learn that a particular structure is a door or an animal is a cat, we quickly generalize that to all other structures or animals. Put another way, we save time by not having to relearn every time we see that structure or animal. Labels however, can be limiting as well. When we label something, we often are no longer able to conceive what it is not. Training in creativity often involves getting taking something familiar and thinking of a use for it that is entirely unconnected with what we would normally associate with it. This is commonly expressed as “thinking outside the box”.

As with nominalizations, labels about people concretize them. It is said that Gregory Bateson once asked the question “What is the biggest nominalization in the English language?” His answer? “I”. Whenever we label (others or ourselves), we essentially take the process of human-ing and nominalize it. It takes away from us the responsibility we have in creating ourselves as well as the power to change or re-create ourselves.

Therefore, to create movement here one has to think outside the label or identification box that we have put ourselves in. This is perhaps expressed by the phrase “Whatever you think you are, you are all ways more than that” (for the eagle-eyed readers out there, this sentence is correct and constructed deliberately). We are essentially far more complex than the identity labels we have either given ourselves or have been given to us. The Danish ad “All That We Share” is a beautiful illustration of this.

Read original article


Tags: