In our desire to find order in the world, we humans love to put things in categories. Every living (and practically every non-living) thing, from algae to trees, from bacteria to mammals, is classified in a category or "taxonic group" (the scientific term).

This obsession with order doesn't stop here. Even when it comes to human society and governments, we have an entire human classification system. We label people according to their race, colour, religion, clothing, the music they listen to, the people they hang-out with, the car they drive... Society accepts a system which labels certain people as "poor", and others as "middle-class" or "rich".

In the United Nations' struggle to maintain a new word order (not to be confused with the new world order), acronyms (abreviated terms for long, vague names that no-one really understands anyways) and terms are thrown back and forth.

Let me give you an example. To describe the situations of different countries around the world, many use the terms "developing" and "industrialized" countries, or "first" and "third" world nations. It has generally been considered that developing or third world countries are less well-off financially than industrialized or first world nations. First or industrialized nations are reasonably wealthy. Because many developing nations like Ethiopia or Ecuador tend to be south of the equator, they are called "southern nations". Similarily, many first or industrialized nations like Canada or Germany are located north of the equator and apparently called "northern nations".

Trying to define these issues, any issues, causes problems.

Take Argentina for example. Here is a country that is considered a southern nation but is doing as well financially as many northern nations. Its capitol city, Buenos Aires, could easily pass as a European centre. On the other hand, let's look at Canada or the United States. Here are two northern nations doing quite well, or are they? Toronto and New York, two major cities, are filled with homeless people. We have labelled them, to be comfortable, yet the labels are not accurate.

So why do we do it? Probably because we can't bear to have something go undefined at any level...it seems all humans are taxonomists at heart.

We tend to forget though, that in our obsessive desire to put things "in their place" we may be defining some things that can't necessarily be given a Webter's Dictionary definition (and even Webster, whoever he/she is, isn't very specific...just look-up the word "definition"). Whenever we label people by colour, religion, the clothes they wear, the band they listen to, the kind of pet they have, the food they eat...you get the point; we miss out on their other characteristics that make them the well-rounded individuals they really are. When this occurs between races, we call it "racism", when it occurs between nations, we call it "nationism".

When we label something, we need to be careful about why and if it makes sense. When we use vague and unnatural categories or definitions--what's the point of using them?