I recently had a coversation with a friend about relationships, to which my friend discussed his disinclination of labels, which made me think about labels as it relates to language. Today, describing gender in our society has evolved in our language. We now have blanket terms like non-binary, which pretty much describes what I have been telling people in the 90s, that there are other genders that fall outside existing genders we knew back then. Is this progressive or are these labels placing people more in a box? I understand why people are anti-labels, but labels are tied into language and if we lose that faculty then we are not able to communicate. Language, in my opinion, is the most valuable faculty we possess. Language is tied to culture and shapes the way we view the world. So, although there are people who, like my friend, have a disinclination of having labels, those labels hold the power of creating a more inclusive world. Here’s a link to one of my favorite studies and how the Kuuk people view time.

It’s interesting that in our culture time correlates to the direction we read, from left to right, and in this sense we place ourselves in the center so that no matter what direction we face, time is still oriented against our body. The Kuuk people view time using cardinal directions and their relationship with the sun, so in a sense they are not viewing themselves as the center, and in that respects, their view is less biased, more objective, and focuses more on their relationship to their environment.