“In order to change an existing paradigm you do not struggle to try and change the problematic model. You create a new model and make the old one obsolete.”
― Buckminster R. Fuller
The need for labelling and categorising everything we encounter with the intent of finding the truth behind it, has deeply impacted our world view and consequently the truth we believe in. I am not implying that everything we believe is not true, I am just stating the fact that the truth is based on what we find and what we find depends on what we are looking for and how.
The problem with the labelling is mostly due to the fact that there are only few things that are a 100% what they are or seem to be and even so, there still is the time factor. Everything we label is just a photograph of that particular thing in that particular moment. The label does not describe the process, the spectrum of how that thing came to be and why.
If you have ever worked with networks or data, you are already familiar with the challenges one is presented with when organizing a system; there are always bits and parts which can be put in more than one category, creating chaos in the system we see. Chaos in the system we see because a system appears chaotic when we cannot find the structure underneath it and therefore, we are unable to explain or understand what we see.
This behaviour has deeply impacted our way of thinking and the way our society works. This broken engine we are slowly trying to fix is slowly falling apart before our eyes, forcing us to adapt new strategies. Which brings me to the emerging use of the word spectrum. Even though we are not even close to understand what we are saying with it, we are on the right path to shifting the way we think and act.
For example if we take autism disorder we are raised with the believe either you have it or you don’t when in fact, if you talk to people confronted with it, it is a spectrum. Still we have a label for it as if it were something bad instead of looking at it as a combination of different characteristics of individuals. Each one of which must cope with different symptoms with divergent intensities. That is why, people who present only few or light symptoms are called as strange because they are different from the big mass but not different enough to fall into the other category. They do not fit under a specific label and are therefore not really taken care of, so it is easy to overlook if someone needs help with something. Let us take autistic girls for example. Most of them are overlooked because they are taught over and over again how important it is to look people in the eyes when talking to them. Which is one of the most distinctive signs for autism. Now if one of those girls displays just few autistic signs it can be easily overlooked, and she learns to live with her quirks hiding them from others but also avoiding the help she might have needed. The result are grown women, who have to remind themselves to look people in the eyes when talking to them but forgetting every once in a while to do so. Smaller compulsive tendencies like checking if the door is properly closed every time one passes it, or always using the same bathroom stall at work; maintaining a specific order in the dishwasher or in the closet or whatever, or even starting to count group of things every time they get nervous, are easy to hide if one is not actively looking for them. And even if all this sounds good enough because nobody is noticing anything, the person afflicted with it might have a different opinion on the matter.
The same problem with this “all or nothing” view of the universe is becoming even clearer looking at the LGBTQ+ movement, who is trying to show us that love is a spectrum. Meaning we can all love each other – and I cannot believe that this is still a problem for some people. And with some people I am not only talking about straight people. Because here too, we have people who are not queer and not straight but pansexual and these people also do not fit the label we are trying to put on everything and everyone. They do not fit in the boxes and are therefore discriminated against for loving people?!
So let us take them as example, let us throw away the label makers and just love everyone no matter what because ultimately we are all sitting on the same planet with nowhere else to go.
Peace out.
Aromatic deception 