Views: 967 Funny jokes part 3
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Let's talk about jokes. Actually, let's not talk about jokes. Let's talk about labels.
People get labeled. They get labeled by other people so that those people can prevent their brains from overheating. People get labeled by other people so that those people can classify certain characteristics relevant to certain fields. Medicine, for example, or psychology.
But this post is already getting longer than intended, and sometimes longer posts have a shorter impact. Let me summarize what happened in my head a few minutes ago, maybe it might benefit you in a way.
You know what sucks? Professional people labeling people with terms too vague to ever be accurate.
You know what sucks more? Getting labeled with such terms, for the rest of your life.
You know what absolutely sucks? People labeling people with such labels, without authority or valid reasoning. On top of that, they associate more terms with the label, terms the label was never intended to be associated with.
You know what sucks most of all? Watching people you believe to be intelligent doing exactly that, and thinking it's a funny joke too.
I like jokes. Jokes are very powerful tools and they may be the only ones actually fun to use. I think that creating jokes requires you to open your mind to everything and throwing stuff around until you find something that you think is funny. To achieve that, you need a filtering stage in which you take a look at your pseudo-randomly generated ramble and throw away the ********. Please, if you agree with the statements above, just to be sure, recheck your ******** filters. Thank you.
If you would like to discuss this post (like you would ever want to discuss my mind), please feel free to join me in the comments below. If you feel personally offended by this post, and would like to defend yourself, please take it somewhere else (a thread, your own blog, reddit, my front door, whatever). This is my opinion and my opinion only. I'm fine discussing personal matters like this by PM, but let's not clutter a discussion about ethics with discussions about you. Thanks for reading.
Now let's get back to acting like trolls don't have a moral code.
No, the location of my front door isn't and won't be publicly disclosed.
People get labeled. They get labeled by other people so that those people can prevent their brains from overheating. People get labeled by other people so that those people can classify certain characteristics relevant to certain fields. Medicine, for example, or psychology.
But this post is already getting longer than intended, and sometimes longer posts have a shorter impact. Let me summarize what happened in my head a few minutes ago, maybe it might benefit you in a way.
You know what sucks? Professional people labeling people with terms too vague to ever be accurate.
You know what sucks more? Getting labeled with such terms, for the rest of your life.
You know what absolutely sucks? People labeling people with such labels, without authority or valid reasoning. On top of that, they associate more terms with the label, terms the label was never intended to be associated with.
You know what sucks most of all? Watching people you believe to be intelligent doing exactly that, and thinking it's a funny joke too.
I like jokes. Jokes are very powerful tools and they may be the only ones actually fun to use. I think that creating jokes requires you to open your mind to everything and throwing stuff around until you find something that you think is funny. To achieve that, you need a filtering stage in which you take a look at your pseudo-randomly generated ramble and throw away the ********. Please, if you agree with the statements above, just to be sure, recheck your ******** filters. Thank you.
If you would like to discuss this post (like you would ever want to discuss my mind), please feel free to join me in the comments below. If you feel personally offended by this post, and would like to defend yourself, please take it somewhere else (a thread, your own blog, reddit, my front door, whatever). This is my opinion and my opinion only. I'm fine discussing personal matters like this by PM, but let's not clutter a discussion about ethics with discussions about you. Thanks for reading.
Now let's get back to acting like trolls don't have a moral code.
No, the location of my front door isn't and won't be publicly disclosed.
(I am using "look" at in a broad sense. You categorize things even without looking at them because you use more senses and you compare EVERYTHING to what you already know. That's why people, situations or things that are out of the ordinary catch your attention and are actually the ones people tend to try to label the hardest: you don't understand where it fits regarding everything else you already know, thus you NEED to label it, so it becomes something you know. In other words, it gives you a sense of safety, no matter how hardcore the situation/thing you're trying to categorize)
That being said, using medical terms to "label" people, as you say, isn't bad per se. Labeling someone as autistic does not mean Medicine is declaring that person the same as every other one labeled as Autistic, just like labeling someone as Diabetic doesn't put them in this box where they all have the same issue. The problem is not on the labeled, but on the person reading/perceiving it. Because that person will confront it with all their pre-made opinions about said characteristic - often times built by a mix of personal knowledge/experience + public opinion - and they'll often elate things about this person that aren't necessarily true.
In conclusion, I don't believe labels are a bad thing. I think assuming you know what the label means because you've heard of it before is the danger. But it'll always be like this, because many of us like to believe we inhabit this all mighty little personal bubble where everything is safe and unsurprising.
About the misuse of labels; As long as the boundaries for what is autistic, ******ed, ADHD or whatever are vague as they are now, people will keep misusing its term. I have seen a smart and social person that was professionally diagnosed autistic whereas another autist is incapable of normal interaction and is only really able to be an annoyance to everyone around him. There is just such a big difference between two unique people that carry the same label, it makes it very unclear what autism makes autism. Some more objective information is welcome to be shared, but the only way you really find out about it is by being an autist, by being related to an autist or doing your own research.
I have worked with and made friends with dozens of people who are autistic. Some of which are super talented and can do amazing things, while others are hard to be around, because in correct use of the word are completely ******ed because they require a constant baby sitter watching them, so that they don't harm themselves or others.
Here are a few examples, one of my friends from the past who was autistic could beat anyone at any broad game as long as chance wasn't a major factor because he could see several moves ahead; but he couldn't even tie his own shoes. While another one I worked with could paint amazing paintings but he thought a car and a candy bar had the same value, kinda like RainMan. So he could never make a living off of his work without someone telling him what to sell his art for, or scheduling him to be places, art shows, demonstrations, etc. Most of the higher functioning ones I have had the privilege of meeting only lacked a few skills that would otherwise deem them as normal.
Giving someone a label who is only slightly autistic puts them on the exact same boat as someone who is completely ******ed making it hard/impossible for them to find work, friends, or even a spouse, Forrest Gump made it work but that was a movie, whenever it happens in real life it's always a controversy. But that's a can of worms for another day.
Labeling has it's place but it can also pigeon hole someone into a dark position making it impossible for them to live out their true potential. "Frank's alright, but he's a little Autistic."
A label that I think is actually quite harmful and makes it incredibly hard to find a job you need in order to function in society is "ex-criminal". Right now if a person sat out there punishment and would come back into the normal world, then the guy has no chance for redemption because of his ex-criminal label. Even if this person would be the new Albert Einstein or something. This makes it impossible for them to get back into society, thus making them more likely to cause criminal activity once more. GJ society!
About the misuse of labels; As long as the boundaries for what is autistic, ******ed, ADHD or whatever are vague as they are now, people will keep misusing its term. I have seen a smart and social person that was professionally diagnosed autistic whereas another autist is incapable of normal interaction and is only really able to be an annoyance to everyone around him. There is just such a big difference between two unique people that carry the same label, it makes it very unclear what autism makes autism. Some more objective information is welcome to be shared, but the only way you really find out about it is by being an autist, by being related to an autist or doing your own research.
I'm specifically talking about professional labels. Labels that end up in medical records for example.
Like I tried to express in my post, I don't mind people labeling people with things like "friendly" or "Christian" because I think that's simply the only way people can deal with the huge load of people they have to deal with.
Things get ugly though, when you get to professional labels like "ADHD", or the current crowd favorite "autism". These two are linked to personality (that's obviously not always the case, e.g. "dyslexia") . They're rather vague in the sense that if you apply this to one to millions of people across the globe, there's no way all these people will show the exact same personality in the exact same intensity.
People who get these vague labels often have to deal with them for the rest of their lives. There's probably lots to discuss about this but it's not what I intended to be the main message of the blog post. But even then I suppose that professional people labeling people with vague terms is still good of those people. Those professional people probably have a bit of an idea what they're doing, at least more than I do.
What I dislike is people labeling other people with professional terms. Because they have no idea what they're talking about, and because they're attaching new terms to existing labels. Those terms then start to get associated with everyone that has been labeled (professionally) with this label.
For example, when you call someone an autist because this person doesn't understand something, you're not only calling one person stupid but everyone who is labeled an autist. Do note that this label is not something a person can do something about.
Does this clear anything up? Thanks for reading, by the way!
Are you saying labels are bad? What kind of labels? Every kind? Even the ones that are objectively true? Or especially the ones that are objectively true?
Do you think people shouldn't be differentiated between each other on any other basis than skills, personality and experience? Do you think people shouldn't be differentiated at all because people can change?
Descriptive labels such as "friendly", "hard working", "clever" are all labels that I would never consider bad. Objective labels as "black", "woman", "gay" are all labels that I would use to describe people, but I would never use these against them. What about loose labels such a take in belief like "christian", "feminist", "scientologist", "Marxist"? With those I could use the label against them if the individual proves to be very close with his beliefs and I would disagree with the thing he believes in.
In any case I shall now go back to trolling while not having a moral code.