BRANDED – How A Person Becomes A Cipher.
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| Duck. |
A scientific classifier makes an arbitrary judgement as to
which individuals with what degree of difference or similarity, become
‘species’, ‘family’, ‘phylum’, or whatever. An
individual instantly becomes not a thing of value in itself, but a
symbol or representative of all members of its imposed brand.
A solitary family sheep, pig or chicken clearly has its own
personality, its own intelligence, its own aspirations and sense of pain and
loss.
A mass of such animals are ‘de-personalised’, not in fact,
but in the perception of the onlooker.
Individuals are viewed up close – their complicated
concatenations of ideas, beliefs, purposes and so forth. Lump a few of them
together and the apparency is that they are easier to understand – peasants, conservatives,
Muslims, Chinese, lepers, immigrants, hippies, goths, doctors, journalists,
gays, anorexics, scientists, single mothers, politicians, diabetics.
Even – or especially – if enshrined by ‘authority’ or
‘officialdom’, such labels are never more than lazy shorthand designed to
dismiss annoying, time-consuming
complications.
The material universe is not there to make sense. It neither
conceives nor cares for such niceties.
Sense is applied to it by that which
does have an interest in so doing – the intellect and consciousness of life.
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| Not a Duck. |
Someone who sees a duck as a representative of all ducks is
applying a useful and lazy shorthand to bring order to his or her own life.
Anyone who sees another person merely as a representative of
one of the above labelled groups does not see that person at all, but merely
categorises him or her to avoid so doing.
Only when you recognise that individuals are not
representatives of others – not samples of some mass – can you begin upon the path of perception and so-called
intelligence.
Classification is order imposed by an observer. It does not
have an existence in the absence of the intelligence that classified it. The
business of understanding derives little benefit from it in the long run. Its
convenience falls away as it passes into science or common usage.
The original classifier was observing reality and seeking
for a ‘handle’ on it – a starting or entry point to understanding. The student
or successor uses it as an axiom upon which to build a science based, regrettably,
upon data which, for the purposes of expediency, at best averaged and at worst
ignored most of the observable variables to arrive at a conformity convenient
to, and personal to, the initial classifier.
From BLINDED WITH SCIENCE available from The Book Depository
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