Backpedalling (Or: The Trouble with Labels)

I've come to realize lately how problematic (and yet how easy it is) to label people. And that sort of thing is something you'd think would be terribly self-evident, and yet it's something so patently obvious that you never really see or understand it even though it frequently stares you right in the face. It's embarassing that way, but doubly so because to face it means that you have to face a very unpleasant reality evident not only in other people, but in yourself as well.


When Stereotypes Attack

What better example to draw from but the Evolution/Creationism issue? Here you see labels tossed at people from both sides. "Darwinians" and "Materialists" and "Atheists" versus the "Fundies", et al. All in all, it's a lot of polemics being flung about. An awful lot of rhetoric and ego. So much so that it's easy to lose sight of the fact that at the end of the day, there actually is someone over there on the other side, an actual human being, not some sort of amorphous persona manifested on a website, or a caricaturized incarnation of evil.

In my travels in life, I've made some good friends who've held a lot of differing ideas from me whenever it came to social issues, religion, philosophy, politics, or science, and in talking to all of them I've all come to invariably realize that there's a great deal more to their attitudes and beliefs beyond what a simple label could ever convey. Like, take for example, the term "Creationist". Are all people who don't accept modern biology "Creationists"? Hardly: a lot of times, they reflect a lack of understanding or comprehension of biology, which isn't surprising - as I've said before, this stuff really is rocket science. It's not something you can easily compress into 15 minute sound bites.

But the point I'm trying to make is that not all "Creationists" are actually Creationists. Not all of them actually subscribe to the general mindset and belief system commonly associated with actual Creationists (and I'll leave it to you to decide for yourself what that mindset and belief system are). Some of them actually have...well, good intentions. Some may even be well meaning people, and it does them a tremendous disservice to slap a label on them for disagreeing with what you have to say. For some people it's well deserved, sure, but surely everyone you meet who won't agree with you can't be the evil inhumane monster that's only well represented by the minority.

"Conservative". There's another one. It's easy to correlate it with people like Fred Phelps, or Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson, but it personally stretches my sense of credulity that all "Conservatively-minded" people could be like that. I'm sure that Conservatism, much like Liberalism, is in fact a broad spectrum of idealologies leading to a stunning array of diversity. I'm willing to bet in fact that there are more than a few "Conservatives" out there with views not that far removed from people of more left-leaning ideals.

Doing away with labels is the first step, (and by extension the most hardest and crucial step) for any kind of meaningful dialogue and resolution of conflict between both sides of any issue.

The trouble now is, how do we deal with those for whom the labels (as we have now come to define them) are well deserved?