…and the last person you should apply them to is yourself.  Labels are convenient, but they rarely inform alone.  It’s impossible to create one, use one, or hear one without projecting onto it all your personal, cultural and tribal perspectives.  And the sum of these is you alone, and no one else.  So how useful are they?

We can’t be responsible for others, but how about ourselves?  Instead of labeling myself, why not just say in the first place what I believe or don’t believe, or what I do or don’t stand for?  But to do that, I have to know–deeply and clearly and incontrovertibly–what that is.  That’s much harder that grabbing a label and pasting it on.  Learning that, and learning to articulate it both to myself and to others, that’s work.  And, it takes a committed listener to absorb it and try to understand.

No wonder we fall back on labels…