Don't be fooled by labels

Title

Creator

Fletcher, R.

Language

English

Source

Panorama Volume XV (No.9) September 1963

Year

1963

Rights

In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted

Fulltext

■ It is astonishing the way people today allow them selves to be misled by brands, labels, and marks, including diplomas. DON'T BE FOOLED BY LABELS What’s in a name? The answer, of course, is — a loti We know what Shakespeare thought: “A rose, by any other name, would smell as sweet.” The label was not important; the real ity was what mattered. But today a rose by any other name would fetch a different price. It would be a differ ent commodity. The reality matters little: it is the label that sells. When I was a boy in the nineteen-twenties and thir ties, I used to be sent to a shop across the street. It sold everything: mustard, starch, boot-polish, cough mixture, mops, string, seal ing-wax, pit-socks, and thick pink bloomers which dan gled down from a criss-cross of lines over the counter. I would ask for a loaf of bread, a pound of butter, a bar of soap — just that. Nowadays, the shiny chronium super market deals with all this. The shelves carry dozens of differently packaged kinds of bread: all sort of butters and margarines — all of which taste different, in spite of the fact that most of us can not tell one from the other. Manufacturers brand their products: it is a monopolist's trick: cornering a market, giving a commodity a brand image, a label, so impressive as to make it seem unique. “Don’t ask for soap — ask for Joe Soap: the softest sdap on the market!” This cult of being wedded to the label rather than the reality has spread from pro ducts to people. Montaigne said long ago that we ought not to judge men by the kinds of shirts they wear. But we are more sophisticat ed than that. Not by shirts only, but by accents, educa tional backgrounds, examin ation qualifications, income brackets, occupations, do we separate man from man. Of course- we all believe that at bottcJTh — wherever that may Panorama be — a man’s a man for a that: that is, so long as he is well-labelled about where he has come from and where he is going; so long as he has his credencials. We cannot feel really happy until we have everything labelled. We all come into the world the same way, and in our first naked, crying hu manity there is not much to distiguish us. My elder son was born in hospital, and I remember when I first went to see him I was taken into a room full of shelves of babies in aluminium baskets. They were all so much alike they had to have little labels of tape tied round -their wrists to identify them. The first label — the family name: and it decides so much. Borneo and Juliet, for example, died because of the family labels they wore. After this, the process of ticketing really goes to work. Human infants, innocent of what is happening, are label led for their roles in society. They are “male”. They are “Negroes”, "Jews”, “Europ eans” and think what limit ations, humiliations, and tra gedies may stem from these labels. They are “working class”, "middle class” or “aristocracy”, and the whole of their personal lives will be profoundly affected by whichever label is stuck upon their “I.Q.”, by some examination, by some school, and this will largely deter mine their warnings, their security, their opportunities for happiness and fulfillment for the rest of their lives. What is frightening is that these labels are so inade quate. “Male and female created He them.” But this is a gross over-simplification. It should properly read: “Male and female, and the longserie s-o f-graduations-i nbetween, created He them.” It is the same, in this con nection, with labels “natur al” and “normal” and “un natural” and “abnormal”. Sexual attributes called “na tural” and “abnormal” are those with which nature has endowed the minority. Mak ing the unnatural natural, and the abnormal normal, really boils down, unless we exercise great care, to forcing the minority to fit in with the majority — a repugnant and indefensible ethical princi ple. September 1963 45 But we do not only label children. We label adults, too — and our label is more often than not a judgement When we call people “wild cat strikers”, “employers”, “Roman Catholics", “homo sexual s”, “criminals,” we think we are saying some thing about them as persons, but we are really judging categories. Society could not go on without some labelling; but in our more complicated and wealthier society, falseness is not only more possible — it also pays. We are nearer to having equal opportunity to be unequal, and we are set at one another’s throats by those who stand to gain from our snobbishness. We are so stuck up with false labels as to miss real quali ties of living, like one of those touring motorists whose windows and wind screens are so gummed up with ostention that he can not see where he is going. It is even old-fashioned now to speak of “keeping up with the Joneses” which has been defined as spending money you don’t have on things you don’t want, to impress people you don’t like. Now, we have to do all we can to be superior to them. If they get a 1961 car, we must exchange our 1959 for a 1962. If Mr. Jones is a “chief clerk”, I must call myself an “office manager.” In our highly specialized so ciety, our occupation is a very important label. We love to try and corner a ca reer. We love “differentials.” In the social sciences,, for example, I may stand little chance of promotion unless I stake out a particular spe cialism — a “field” — for my self. I may be interested in sociology, but that is not enough: I must specialize in educational sociology, or in dustrial sociology, some field. I may study the social life of Biggleswater, a tillage with fifty peasants, five pigs, a pub-cum-post office. I “do research” on it. Then I publish my thesis and a few articles, and I can claim to be a “rural siociologist.” Since there may be only two other "rural sociologists” in the country, I may become an “authority”, an “expert.” And if I am sufficiently nar row-minded to persist in all this, I may become one of the ‘names’ in my field. My 45 Panorama own "name," even may be come a "label.” I have ar rived. My future is secure. But since many people are competing for ‘fields’ they are sensitive to boundaries. Chaps with SOCIOLOGY written across their chests and chaps with PSYCHO LOGY written across theirs are continually abusing each other, each claiming that the other’s field is bogus. We must preserve our own pro fessional distinctiveness, and so other people must be li mited to their labels. But this is not peculiar to social scientists. It is the same everywhere. We fit in with labels so much that we come to be lieve them. We really believe that if we are solicitors or executives in bowler hats and umbrellas we are superior to manual workers with shirt sleeves and overalls. We really believe if we are mid dle-class housewives who drive round to the shops in cars and get our goods on account, that we are superior to the working class house wives from the council e$ tate who walk — and pay cash. We become the labels we wear. If we are not care ful, we shall end up like a real and pathetic member of the Jones family whose plight is recorded on his grave stone: Sacred to the memory of Tammas Jones, Who was born a man, and died a grocer. Between cradle and grave, Tammas had lost his hu manity. Born an unspoiled human being, he died a bit of social machinery, a mere device for weighing sugar and tea. He had lost himself in fulfilling a social role. Just as we come into the world by the same entrance, we leave it by the same exit. Equal in our way of birth, we are equal also in death. We cannot take our labels with us. The pity is that we have to spoil our lives be tween these two great level lers with so much that is bogus, unpleasant, and un just. What can we do about it? I was much impressed, in a recent programme on open prisons, by a prison governor, who, when speak ing of the people in her prison, would use the word "inmates," or indeed any 47 word other than "prisoners.’’ She refused, as she said, "to put a prisoner label on wo men who come to this place." And why? Because it stood in the way of their regarding themselves as human beings; and stood in the way of other people treating them as- human beings. If we are sick of labels, then, there is one simple thing, at least, that we can do — stop using them. A man, whether black, white, working class, upper class, Christian, Muslim, atheist, Jew, American, Rus sian, intelligent, . unintelli gent, criminal, or virtuous — is a man, for a’ that, and it is about time we acted as though we really believed it. — R. Fletcher, The Listener. THE NEED IS GOVERNMENT Government is the thing. Law is the thing. Not brotherhood, not international cooperation, not security councils, that can stop war only by waging it. Where do human rights arise, anyway — security against the thief, the murderer, the foot pad? In brotherly love? Not at all. It lies in gov ernment. Where does control lie — control of smok ing in the theater, of nuclear energy in the planet? Control lies in government, because government is people Where there are no laws, there is no law enforcement. Where there are no courts, there is no justice. — E. B. White. 48 Panorama

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