Labels.

Labels.

Think about it…at first, labels were mainly industrial machinations – designer clothing, furniture, whatever…it donned the ‘label’.

Then the labels expanded to define what had ‘power and influence ‘: the neighborhood one lives in, the car one drives, the school one attends, the degree one receives, our political views, the political party we support, the stores we choose, the job we have, the employer, the vacation spots we display on social media, the restaurants frequented, the friends one has, the connections one has….Those all became weaponized labels that we wear.

Then we took labels too far (thank you, social engineers) and started to label our sexual preferences and our self-perception.

(Why did we ever need to ‘label’ our self-perception? I can’t understand that. We are who we are – in all our unique beauty.

There is no need to have to explain or defend who we are. We are beautiful humans – unique and sovereign beings. There are no such things in reality as flaws, imperfections, and all that. These notions are engineered because society slapped a few benchmarks and traits they labeled as ‘norms’ – and anything other than that is viewed as flawed. And society dances to that tune.

For example, many women feel the need to go in droves to get their lips routinely botulized and swollen until their mouth resembles that of a trout, even though so many have been injured or permanently disfigured as a result. Well, one can say that it’s their choice.

It’s not wrong to choose to do something. Choosing to do something for yourself is a good thing.

But it’s wrong to become conditioned or ‘tweaked’ to feel that you have to do or believe something in order to be accepted by your social environment. After all, a puppet is what a puppet master does, right?)

If we go with the flow, we eventually feel the need to become what society expects us to be. We think within the set parameters, dress within the set parameters, and behave within the set parameters. The parameters are set – everything is prefab – dictated, defined, and in action.

But we are more than that.

And that truth gets lost in society because there is more emphasis on the ‘label’ we choose as an identity rather than bringing out the whole individual – the beautiful facets of a personality that are hidden behind mass identifiers.

In other words, society has driven the herd to pick a sign and wear it as an identifier in the crowd. Be it your profession, your skill, your sexual preferences, your political views, et cetera.

The others, then, see you as ‘that’ – never getting a chance to see who someone really is. Because we are much more than an opinion or a sexual preference. We are so much more than gender or talent.

Our society has become obsessed with defining everything – stuffing everyone and everything behind a ‘word,’ a label, a category.

At first, labels are presented as a good thing – a sign of strength and inclusivity – associated with ‘choice’, pride, and sort of an honorary subgroup of the herd. That drives people to grab a label and flaunt it.

But eventually labels became divisive. That was the engineered intention: divisiveness.

Label war.

Divide and Conquer, sweethearts. That’s the name of someone’s game out there.

The labels became ‘weaponized’ – becoming criteria for acceptance or exclusion – for hate or support.

How can society survive unscathed when labels cause division and strife?

For crying out loud, the social engineers got that note of demolition right.
It’s bad enough society is but a herd, divided.

Herds need to be fed.

The feed strewn to the divided, warring herd? What was food ages ago has now become: Refined. Processed. Modified. ‘Printed.’ Lab-grown. Artificial. Questionable. Damaging. Dystopian. Horrifying.

Nourishing the mind of the herd? An intelligence-poor diet with minimal thought. With added nutrients such as memes and weaponized tropes to support the diminishing ability to think.

And with the average attention span being that of a gnat? We are doomed.

How is that for gloom and doom? Honestly? I didn’t intend to go there, but it flowed like a stream…

There is so much beauty in life…and there is so much toxicity around us, in our lifestyles, in society.

The toxicity? We can’t avoid seeing it, experiencing it, or stepping into it. But we can protect ourselves by watching our thoughts so that the social and lifestyle toxicities, illusions, hypocrisies, and side effects (iykyk) don’t affect our minds.