The tyranny of category

> Putting things in order has value and right angles have their place. Order can give clarity and simplicity. The city grid ensures neighboring streets are in parallel and not curved away from each other, which is a blessing when in a foreign place with a poor map. But organizing requires conformity, and conformity creates a tyranny over perception. While our universities divide the world into academic subjects, the world itself is not divided at all. The world has an infinite number of ways to be looked at. A bridge is not just engineering, it’s physics, commerce and aesthetics too. A person is not merely a name, they are biology, chemistry, physics, psychology, and metaphysics all at once. They can be a neighbor, a brother, a friend, a nemesis, simultaneously. We are multitudes and we, and everything in the universe, posses elements we may never define and that defy categorization. > In some cultures there is a tyranny of taxonomy. Nothing can be done without being categorized first. And that categorization limits the potential of the idea or the person since in a rigidly taxonomic environment, moving between categories is not allowed. The categories are primary, and the reality is secondary. It’s no surprise that these cultures produce square and lifeless things. Their obsession with order is contrary to the nature of ideas, and the world. Without constant reminders that categories are malleable inventions of convenience and not manifest in the world itself, the possibility of free thinking and progress is denied.