How can we think out of the box when you're destroying the box?

This is something that Aybala50 said as we popped outside English House for a quick breath of fresh air. We think of things in boxes, or categories. It's difficult to imagine a world without them.

But what is it about categorizing that provokes such negative responses? I feel that it's the connotations that we associate with the categories. I honestly don't believe that we can live in a world that has no categories - it takes away from who and what we are individually. If there is no way to describe in words what we are, then who are we?

However, is the category system flawed? Sure. We've seen various examples of this. Our modern day definitions of categories in terms of race, gender and religion have evolved over time. What may have been something at one point in history is now something else. Those that may "cross barriers" at this point in time may find a specific category to fill in the future.

But it categorization necessarily bad? I don't think so. I feel we dislike categorizing people because of the connotations that each category holds. To say that we should eradicate all categories for the sake of social justice and equality  seems to be a little extreme. What we should be working on instead is to make these categories seem less negative.

Going back to Aybala50's quote about destroying the box, I feel as though she makes a very good point. To attempt to live in a label-less world is a foreign and weird idea but that's only because we come from a society relies so heavily on putting people 'into boxes'. It's weird because we're coming at this with our own personal experience. Should we have started life in a world with no categories, this would not have been an issue. However, these categories are here, have been here and will be here for a while. But that is not to say that they will not change and that there will not be a point where everyone is treated equally.

I rambled on a little bit here but what I'm trying to say is that we should look at labels in a more positive sense. Instead of trying to fight them and get rid of them completely, we should try to make the system work better instead.