Whose Side Are You On, Anyway?

Any person is like an onion -- you have to peel back the layers to find what is really underneath the exterior. Of course, unlike an onion, the layers are artificial where people are concerned. Those things which are used as yardsticks and signposts as to who or what you are, are hung there by others, and, sadly, we tend to believe them after a time when they have been used repeatedly to describe us. We look in the mirror and see only the layers, and not what lies beneath.

When society does this, it is only with the intent to ensure that we can differentiate "us" from "them": the famous from the average, the beautiful from the plain, the lithe from the heavy, the light from the dark. Society divides people up finely, into smaller and smaller gradations, as if trying to fit people to some Dewey Decimal System of humanity, as if attributes tell the whole story of what a person is and what they represent to the whole. When you can apply a name or a tag or an epithet to another, you can keep them at bay, avoid having to treat them as a human being with feelings, emotions, and, above all, value.