99. Dangerous Distinctions

To use language is to create distinctions. We notice a group of objects that are alike and we create a category to hold them. We label our new category with a name that distinguishes it from other categories. We might then notice a pattern of change or repeated action and we create another category. Or we see a feature that is similar across many different objects and again we create a category. This process of endless categorization is how language develops and expands.

As our categories become finer and more precise, we gain the ability to refer to more and more specific parts of the world. Sometimes we create categories and then later realize our distinctions do not work. For whatever reason, they do not accurately reflect the world, and so we modify our schema, adding new words or redefining old ones in order to fix the problem.

Most of the changes we make are practical ones because language is primarily a practical tool for communicating with others. But sometimes our categories become problematic for reasons that go beyond the practical. Sometimes we discover our categories are harmful or even violent. Such categories actively limit us. In addition to the harm they directly cause, they confine us to ways of seeing the world that are detrimental to our potential growth. They do this because language itself is normative.

Through the regular use of language, we impose and enforce norms on other language users. We expect them to use language in the ways it is commonly used and we correct them when they do not. This is problematic because our language norms can also be used to reinforce extra-linguistic norms, including moral norms. From nothing more than an innocent desire to maintain the existing rules of language, we can end up policing how people appear and act.

When we take our language norms to be permanent and unalterable we produce stagnation and suffering, just like any other kind of attachment. To use language in a way that does not produce suffering, we must always be skeptical of our distinctions. We have to be willing to abandon categories and norms that are found to be limiting or oppressive. We must see life as a fluid being and language as a fluid creation that changes and grows along with it.