I look at all of these labels that myself and others apply to ourselves and wonder. I think we are looking for our own tribe, our group and in some sense we are trying to define ourselves. And it's good to try to find where we fit in. But a darker side comes when we can only find our meaning in terms of others, what they think and what they think of us. The other darker component is that this identification creates a division, segregation, a partition if you will. As soon as there is our group, there is every one that is not in our group.
Attitudes can them become adversarial, patronizing or hubristic. When 'we' is born, 'they' is born also. They may be against us. It's too bad 'they' aren't 'us' or worse, 'they' need to be 'us', we need to convert 'them' to 'our' way of thinking. Or even worse still, 'they' are just too stupid to get what it means to be 'us. It's good to belong somewhere, anywhere. But some of it is chance, some personal taste and some attitude. These 'labels' should be like preferences for the colors of the rainbow, I like red, Bob likes blue, and that's okay. Not black vs white, Christian vs Muslim, north vs south, young vs old. Applying a hierarchy here, that one of these labels is better than another, is like saying that one state of matter is superior to another. Solid, gas , liquid are all part of a continuum as are we.
