Another Discussion on Circumcision

Remove all ads!

Wow, I didn't know circumcision is such a big issue. Here, boys just submit themselves to a week of skirt-wearing incidents rather than be ridicule by their peers for being uncircumcised. At least that was our major concerns back then.

 

He would have been labelled regardless. Everyone in both my family and my wife's family are Catholic - most of whom are much more devout than me and my wife. He would have been labelled as "not baptised" and "not Catholic" by everyone else in the family. I just picked which label he got, and I went with the one that caused the least family strife.

Keep in mind, I don't see anything necessarily bad about being labelled "Catholic". While I am not a religious person, I was raised Catholic and did all the Catholic crap you're supposed to do when you're growing up. I got baptised, I received communion, I was confirmed, and heck, I even got married in a Catholic church. I tend to think of myself as none the worse for wear after these experiences.

The truth is, I don't spend a lot of my time thinking about God/religion, and God/religion is not a major part of my life. Perhaps I would think differently about such a label - if I thought about such things at all.

 

Much of the conflict in the world would be impossible to exist if it wasn't for labels. The Catholics couldn't fight the Protestants in Northern Ireland if people didn't have those labels. A Palestinian shot my Dad, so I'll go and shoot a Palestinian to make it even. A Muslim blew up the World Trade Centre, so I'm going to punch the next Muslim I see.

Labels like these create enemies where none really existed.

I know I'm living in cuckoo land if I think this is ever going to change, but I'm certainly going to do my little bit to try and make sure I'm not perpetuating the practice (although, being human, I know I will lapse into it at times).

 

Um... OK... The people engaging in such activities are fanatical zealots. I'm trying... hard... to see how this relates to my son being baptised, beyond a very tangental way.

 

If the automatic presumption is that labels are for prejudice, then yes they're going to be negative.

If you are labelling someone beyond how they identify themselves then that is you branding people as you see them and based on your own presumption. (Such as random image sites where the pictures of fat people usually end up being tagged 'American')

'Labels' are only effective means of identifying yourself or others if understood, whether that be race, religion, nationality or so on. They're guidelines to a collection of behaviours, beliefs and cultural distinctions when dealing with other people.

As social creatures humans will always adapt to certain common traits that suit them

 

That's a bit ridiculous, honestly. Your 'labels' might be no more than a definition of a group of people standing together. What's wrong with identifying them (see, it's even a pronoun) as 'them?' e.g. "They shot my Dad, so I'll go and shoot them." 'They' don't have to be palestinians or anything else, so removing the label doesn't make conflict "impossible."

You sound like you're reciting a conditioned rant on this label business anyway, HB, rather than speaking from the heart or your own intellect.

 

I'm just having a bit of a John Lennon "Imagine" type moment. In my mind, labels make it easier for people to be prejudiced. And there's way too much prejudice in the world. If there was no such thing as a "Jew", who would Hitler have gassed? If there was no such thing as a "Protestant", who would the Irish Catholics have fights with? If there was no such thing as an "Palestinian", who would be fighting who in the Middle East?

You guys are all intelligent people and I enjoy hearing your points of view on things. You help me understand the world that little bit better.

 

It's hardly a waste of time. Spreading such ignorance achieves the desired political results. The truth doesn't matter, only that there is political gain out of keeping people ignorant of the real facts. In the case of Obama, smearing him with whatever will appear to stick to him is the real goal of his detractors. No. it's not a waste of time, it is how politics are played here in the USA by people who are desperate to get the black Muslim guy out of office. This is what a party of bankrupt ideas resorts to when it lacks any real solutions; accusing a Christian president of being a "muslim" who "pals around with terrorists."

 

As Aldeth points out, everyone had labels. I'll go one step beyond that, though, and say that it isn't even being those things that gives you the label. It's people wanting to label you one way. He could just as easily be a non-man, a non-white, a non-second-generation-Italian-American, and a non-Democrat. Those are all labels, too, and several of them have had some very nasty things associated with them in the past.

I can just as easily label you a labeler, because you brought the topic up, or an anti-labeler, because you oppose labels. The issue isn't that you are something, it's that people choose to label you as such.

Trust me, if these labels weren't there, people would find other reasons to hate and kill each other. It's been proven throughout history.

I'm sorry, but John Lennon was wrong.

As for who Hitler would have gassed: the Polls, the retarded, the homosexual, the opposition, and generally anyone he and his guards didn't like. Only one of those is really a label. The rest are states of being.

 

I disagree with that logic. You're saying we might as well group people under arbitrary headings because someone bad is going to do it anyway, so there's nothing we can do about it. And labels like "Democrat" or "White" lead to just as many erroneous generalisations as religious labels.

See Ragusa's "Einstein" thread for yet another classic example, where he makes generalisations about so-called "Conservatives", which other people have rushed in to say don't apply to all "Conservatives".

I should probably balance things out by saying that some descriptions for groups are valid, like "female" or "diabetics" because there is a definite definition and a reason for the name. But others seem to create more problems than they solve.

It doesn't look like we are going to agree on this (or that anyone is going to agree with me) so I'll chalk this up as yet another way that I can't change the world.

 

I agree with this.

What you said is just one side of it. You have a point that when you say that we'll simply make some arbitrary headings as someone would eventually do. But you forgot that people actually group themselves together according what they feel is right or comfortable with. Think about it, labels are actually slap on others simply because there are precedent groups who grouped themselves as such. And the actions or ideals of these groups are what prompted others to label people who are in essence similar to these groups. In another way of looking at it, people grouped together and label themselves. So labeling is not just something about others branding others but simply people labeling themselves. And finally, we do have to consider that when people starts to group, it also means exclusion. Whoever doesn't share the same perspective or qualifies in the group are considered to be not part of the group. So here's a group and there's the excluded, you can certainly expect some conflict will have to take place in one way or another.