But Why? A Debate on Society, Hierarchies, and Control.

[.Sodomy.On.A.Stick.]

I know there's been a label problem of late, so I feel the need for this little prologue.

I am not here to argue about labels, and even at that rate debate about them.

((I'm tired of dealing with that problem too. xP ))

I am here to debate about society and it's frail structure based on a need for control.

Unfortunately, labels fit there D :

Anyway, let's begin shall we.



Humans always label each other. It's a fact that has been tirelessly debated, and now I'm tired of it too.

However, there are more labels than we've debated.

"Gay" is a label too. It defines someone who has physical attraction and/or romatic feelings for someone of the same sex. As bland of a label as it is, it is a label.

So is "Christian". It denotes a person of the Christian faith. It makes one a part of a large group of people around the world.

Yet labels aren't the point of this debate, are they? Nope :]

I want to know why.

Why do we label each other, even like that?

The most obvious answer is to classify them and to associate them with a group of people with common traits.

Yet still, why?

Why do we feel the need to associate people with others?

Do we feel a need to have some kind of control over them and how they're viewed by making them a part of a larger group that may not represent fully the individual's morals/ideas/values/etc.?

Most likely, we are not that malicious.

Still, I feel it is a ploy for control.

The fabric of society relies on a hierarchy of people organised by profession, religion, and income, among others. Should any or all of these criteria vanish and the people be unorganised, would society implode on itself? I suppose that would be anarchy, wouldn't it.

As long as humans have existed, so has this hierarchy. It has not always been as advanced ((Ugg is leader 'cause Ugg stronger than Grugg)) but it has still existed.

Do we really need to control the world we live in to the point of having the people organised into a hierarchy that governs our basic society?

I guess what I'm asking is, why do we need to organise everything and rely on a society built on a hierarchy? Subsequently, if the hierarchy should vanish, what would the people in that society do?

Thoughts?

((Lol I've been on a control jag lately, so excuse the exclusive focus on it. And excuse if I don't quite go the whole nine yards with my points, it's five in the morning. My thoughts aren't quite as organised as I'd like.))

EDIT:: Is the control a ploy for power? By exploiting the people labelled as certain things, do humans take advantage of said labels and gain power through them? Lol stupid question, I know. But why do they use such underhanded schemes to gain power in the frail society? Is their drive to be on top so strong they must take the easy way out?

If so, they are the reason we cannot have utopias. Their drive for power in our corrupt world only serves to corrupt it more, no?



Lol lots of questions hunh. Just debate the general idea at hand please :] I just want your ideas and thoughts on what I've said and asked. And don't be too harsh with me, for as I said it is very late in Sodomy time and my thoughts are not organised enough or sharp enough to drive home exactly what I mean. Later I'll come back and make this better X:



Ohhh and mods, this should probably go in Extended Discussion hunh. My bad Dx

 

[Androgynous Mind]

The reason?
Basic survival. You find traits in other people to identify their likeness to you, or what you perceive as being their strenghts, weaknesses, and whether they're a threat to you, based on previous experiences. If we could not "label," we could not learn, and we could not survive: it's a form of control, yes, but more an appraisal of the possible incomes of a situation, not control over the actual person.

As for why we need a hierarchy, it's so that we have some food, power, and means to live, a sense of safety. It's a lot like the food chain, in some ways, or sometimes, it's more like the mating rituals in animals- mating with the strongest so your group stays strong, or yeah, the tribe dynamic, you want to be with strong people for survival reasons. Identifying the strong people in the crowd and picking up clues becomes vital, and that's a lot of what labels are in the first place.

 

[lysseee]

'gay' and 'christian' is as much a label as 'brown eyed' or 'female' or 'asian'.
human perception can not --unfortunately and fortunately-- work on more than a certain amount of data at any given time. so we classify the objects into groups to help ease the amount of data we have to go through everytime we come into contact with the world. it's not about controlling them, but rather controlling the information we get so we won't be overwhelmed by the seemingly infinite amount of data raining down on us and rendering us unable to function.

hierarchies are partially caused by this and partially because human society is an organism, and as an organism it needs a structure. the bigger it gets the harder it is to remain homogeneous. so as it grows it develops little sub-organisms who interact with each other.