In Continuum.

It serves its purpose of course, labels were created for a reason. I am sure at the beginning of time, mankind wanted a currency to trade their dead deers with, but they hadn't a specific system in things just yet. So they probably engaged in barter trade back then. You know, trading something of others with something that you already have. Maybe you want a dead deer for dinner tonight, and you came across a wild boar and shot it with your makeshift bow and arrow. Incidentally, your neighbor from the cave above feels like he wants to have wild boar for dinner too, so you guys switch around and everybody is happy. However, such situations don't come by often enough, not everybody wants what you have and vice versa. So a group of humans probably went out to collect a bunch of rocks to use as currency, or maybe seashells, or circumcised foreskin, who cares what they traded with back then. They probably got a whole bunch of seashells and thought, well we need some kind of system to this. So they labeled the smaller pebbles as ten cents, the rocks as one dollar, and the nicer seashells at ten dollars, so on and so forth. So, they have successfully created the world's labeling system, at least according to me. 

Everything needs to be something, which is why we have labels. You know, everything needs to have a name right? There probably isn't something in this world that isn't anything, everything has a name now, even if it still has a long scientific name that nobody can pronounce. I don't suppose there is a 'something' in this world that isn't already 'something'. Like, humans have probably explored every single corner of this planet that they have already named every single animal, every single plant, every single type of rock and sand. Of course, you may argue about the deep ocean and that there are probably a bunch of species down there that we don't know of yet. But even the rarest creatures are named on sight these days the moment that they are being discovered. It is like a rat race when you find a new species of fish, you are just so afraid that somebody else might name the fish after himself. So you debate with yourself, should I name the fish after myself or my mother? I mean, I love my mother, but she isn't here now is she? I should name it after myself, I found it. But what about Bob? Bob is here with me now, should I name it after him too? It's all so confusing. 

In fact, there are so many names - or labels - now that we have ran out of names for certain things in the universe. We are calling the part of our central nervous system "grey matter" now, because they kind of look grey and we haven't a better name for it. Then there are those matter that doesn't interact with the electromagnetic fields, and we conveniently call them "dark matter", as if it is some important ingredient for some magical potion from a Harry Potter novel. Yeah, we have all these troubling matters in this world, and we are naming them after shades of colors because, well, everything needs a label, everything needs to be named! Nothing can go unnamed even if they shall be known as unnamed! Even random corpses found in the river or that of a beggar has a label in the morgue or in the cemeteries. They have numbers or alphabets tagged to the end of their toes, and then are buried with the fancy robotic name of "Anonymous #3904G" or something like that. Even dead corpses have labels now, why not everything else? 

In fact, we were labeled the moment we entered kindergarten and primary school, and the same thing is probably going to happen to our children too. In the earlier years, they force you to put on those giant name tags with your name and class on it, just so that everybody knows that you are called "Elizabeth Ang", for example. It isn't enough nowadays that you have a name tag to your school uniform, they are forcing you to sew them onto the fabric too. I found a couple of name tags lying by the side of the road on my way to school a couple of days ago, just lying there in a puddle of rainwater like the epitome of defiance against the authority, a cry out to the ones in charge that they shall not be labeled any longer, not any more. It all sounds very romantic, but at least that is what I'd like to think Elizabeth Ang did. She stood up against her fate and tore her name tag away - I like the sound of that. It sounds like the beginning of some kind of revolution, at least that is how revolutions usually begin anyway, little acts of defiance. Anyway, we were all labeled when we got to school, and we were even labeled by the type of school we were in. That is why parents are fighting over primary school entry these days, going at each others' throats just so that their children can get into prestigious primary schools. It's really because they don't want their children to be labeled as being "a part of a neighborhood school", or "not smart enough to be in a better school". 

It's perfectly fine parents, humans have created euphemisms for that kind of things. George Carlin mentioned about euphemisms in his book, and your children can no longer be stupid or slow anymore, they are merely minimally exceptional. Even that is a label somehow, being minimally exceptional, don't you think? We can no longer exist without our name tags in school, we need everybody to know that we are "Ian Lim" from class 1F, or else nobody would take us seriously. That is the same as our identification cards, or passports, or anything that puts you on the map. You lose your passport and your identifications, then you are as good as being nobody in this world, at least that is what the government wants you to think. They want you to swear your allegiance to a country, to swear your loyalty to a nation. "That makes you a good Singaporean!" they would tell you, and it is supposed to make you feel good to be labeled as a Singaporean. Why do we need to be Singaporeans, or Taiwanese, or Indonesians, or Malaysians, or Americans anyway. Why can't we be labeled as a "human", that is a label that I can live with. It is not segregational, it unifies. It is not judgmental, it is fair. It feels like a word that encompasses all justice in this world - being human, I like that. 

I think labeling is the root of all prejudices and discriminations. You know, all the deal about racism and genocides, or what the euphemism they use nowadays as ethnic cleansing. It makes killing a bunch of people from another race - if there really is another race - like cleaning your stove or something. If there are no blacks or whites, no yellows or browns, if we can live in a world without any of such labels, then we'd never be able to discriminate against one another. Think about how the Americans, throughout the years, have always been the one bombing countries where people have a darker skin than them. It has been the case with Hiroshima, it has been the case with Vietnam, and it is certainly the case with Iraq. Well, Germany is a little different, because Hitler was a bastard. Other than that, the equation has worked out, and they have also been the one that bullied the native americans out of their homelands when they first arrived. If all men are born equal, then what is with all these labeling of race and of nationality anyway. Why does it take a disaster or a catastrophe for people to say "We shall stand as one" ?

Labels, we see them everywhere. That irritating price tag at the back of your book that you can never tear away, or the sticker on your hamburger that warns you that it is very hot and you shouldn't touch it until a minute or two later. Or, that label plastered outside shops that tell you that the sale is on for a limited time only, and then those labels on CDs that are supposed to promote anti-piracy. These are just the first level labeling, and then it stems out from here to encompass something like the Jews wearing the Star of David on their sleeves, homosexual men wearing a pink triangle on their sleeves in Nazi concentration camps, signs in the past that divided the white urinals from the black. They are all related, I tell you, and it should all begin with what young Elizabeth Ang did - we should rid ourselves of these names and labels. We don't need them, we can just be humans, it's clean and simple. We can be humans if we want to, and we don't need to be bound by color, by language, by geography, or anything that the authority wants us to believe. We are just humans, and if we are all labeled as being humans, the only option for discrimination is to discriminate a species. Now, that's going to be pretty tough.