Friday, July 24, 2009

#41

If a redneck lives in a red state, what is he called if he lives in a blue state, a blueneck? Red state, blue state, yuppie, Millenial, Baby Boomer, fundamentalist, metrosexual, and many other labels and categories exist in this American life, the Universe, and everything. Is it a safety mechanism to apply these labels? Is labelling good, bad, or indifferent? Here are some perspectives on labels and categories:
  • The Millenial Generation is also called Gen Y. Now there's talk of the next Generation being named Gen Z. Since Z is the last letter in the English alphabet there may be a problem for the following generation. Yeah, it's called global warming.
  • Metrosexual was coined for the man who wanted to be more fashionable and also concerned with his image regardless of his sexual orientation. Some marketing types thought they'd coin "ubersexual" to "straighten out" the metrosexual and hearken back to the "traditional male" prototype while still tapping into the consumerism piece. Seems all a bit too confusing. There are no straight answers here.
  • Religion doesn't have the corner on the market of fundamentalism. According to dictionary.com another meaning of the word is "strict adherence to any set of basic ideas or principles". So scientists, politicos, businesses, and each one of us individually can be a fundamentalist either in our global world view or one or more areas of our existence. "Strict" reminds of "stricture". Both words are based on the Latin strictus, past participle of stringere, which means to "draw tight". One of the meanings of stricture is "an abnormal contraction of any passage or duct of the body". The alimentary canal, "a tubular passage functioning in the digestion and absorption of food and the elimination of food residue, beginning at the mouth and terminating at the anus" is one such passage. What happens if this passage were to "draw tight" all along its passageway? Yeah, a bunch of tight asses who are full of it!

So it seems possibly irrelevant, confusing, and against the flow if humans get too caught up in using and living labels. Just as the human body works to maintain homestasis, a state of balance, it behooves the human outlook to engage thus as well. So let's keep what works and throw the garbage out.

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