Labels

I think I know why humans are bad.

Humans are bad because we need to label things.

We cannot leave anything unnamed. If there is no word for something then we make one, or calque it from another language. If no language has a word for it then it mustn't exist at all.

We need to label each other. Each one of us is stamped at birth with a name, usually two, often three, sometimes four or more. Branded like cattle. And that name becomes our identity. I am not just named Isobelle. I am Isobelle. That is my name, that is who I am. I will carry it with me until death, when it will be carved onto my gravestone to describe me forever. It is all that will be left of me. Bleached bones and silent letters, chipped into mossy stone.

We label ourselves and we label each other. Brother, sister, mother, friend. Doctor, builder, teacher, beggar. British, Bangladeshi, Brazilian, Bulgarian. Black, White, Asian. Muslim, Christian, Jewish. Labels we're born with. Labels we are raised with. Labels we choose and labels we'd rather reject. But they stick to us, all these labels. They cover us with them, and we cover others, in their turn. We dispense them from our tongues like the hand held gadgets at corner shops. Tinned Lychees £1.65. Immigrant Construction Worker £0.87. And the labels stick to our fingers, and glue our lips and eyelids shut. We need them, they say. We need them. To classify. To mark our own kind, to unify. To separate ourselves from others. To vilify. To quantify and qualify. How much are we worth?

Not much, say the labels. 

Not much.

A day may come when we won't need these libellous labels, marring our beautiful bodies with commercial ugliness. A day may come when the only labels we'll need are our names. Silent letters, inked onto cream card. Thumbed into phone books. Chipped into mossy stone.