If you put it that way, maybe I'm a psychopath that kills mosquitoes without guilt and preferring my steak medium-rare and bloody. A full-time idiot too. And sure, maybe there's a touch of narcissism in me, too. But I draw the line there; I certainly have no desire to compare myself to that man.
Hehe - a comparison isn't the same as association :)
And I tend to agree, it is not a flattering comparison. However, some people may look at others, including me and him, and make such a comparison. And I was trying to think through what people may see when they look at me. As a thought experiment, you could say.
Yes, we would definitely need to wonder what made that happen. But people look at the world in different ways, so why not this?
I also know that some people consider that man to be somewhat normal, so to them it wouldn't be weird to look at him like they look at everybody else. On the other hand, if they don't see anything strange in his behavior, there would probably be no reason for them to compare others with him.
But just the same, if we can find other known examples of that claimed character type, then we can compare with them instead :)
I genuinely enjoy reading your posts. There is an honesty in the way you circle around yourself, not trying to land too quickly on a conclusion, that already puts you ahead of most people who rush to define.
What struck me, though, is that while you - rightfully - question the labels, you still seem to grant them a surprising amount of authority.
You say, in a sense, that we become what others see us as, because the social field is where labels exist at all. There is something undeniably true in that. Social identity is, after all, negotiated externally. But it also carries a subtle risk: That the mirror begins to dictate the face.
I have found myself moving in a different direction lately. Not toward refining the understanding of who I am, but toward loosening the entire need to arrive at an answer. Because every label, even the most nuanced one, seems to crystallise something that is, in reality, far more fluid.
You touch on this yourself when you say “maybe I just am”. To me, that line is not a conclusion, it is the doorway. Because the moment we try to define even that “I am”, something has already been reduced.
There is also another layer I find difficult to ignore:
We do not experience the world as it is, but as we are.
So when others describe us, are they describing us, or are they revealing themselves? Consider how much are projections. And when we internalise those descriptions, are we becoming more accurate, or simply more entangled?
If I were in a slightly mischievous mood, I might suggest you take your line of thought all the way and convert to solipsism. At least then you would have the elegance of placing the entire theatre inside your own field of perception. But even that leaves something untouched, the one who claims the stage. Sorry for my sick sense of humour :-)
And that is where it becomes interesting for me.
Not “who am I?”, and not even “how do others see me?”, but:
What remains if the one asking those questions is no longer taken as a fixed reference point?
Not as an idea, but as something actually explored.
It seems to me that as long as there is someone trying to understand who he is, there is still a centre quietly holding everything together. And that centre might be the last identification to dissolve.
I think that the labels gain authority by being the only thing we talk about, when talking about each other.
We got rid of that old idea, at least in some parts of the world, where people should be referenced by trade or education, and women and children by which man they belonged to. And a lot more of that stuff.
But we have replaced it with such predicates as being "newly educated" or "having worked at least 2 of the last 5 years with xx technology" – in a job context – and similarly in the general social sphere, which, honestly, hardly exists anymore, where people are now carrying fluctuous titles like "influencer" or "tik-tok'er".
We do use labels, all the time. And we often want to use just one label, because people of today can't handle complexity. They want short descriptions, or no descriptions at all, and just one word that fits a person.
I find that problematic, but also powerful. It is not my power, though, it is a power being used against me, and everybody else. I used "me" in the text to make it come alive, like in a conversation, but in fact, I believe that we are all victims of this trend.
Hence, the authority – it is real! It is not me who gives it authority. The recruiters say no to me because they see me as an idiot. Hiring managers say no because they see me as a somehow guilty-myself victim of a psychopath.
People are being sorted. Because they wrote something on social media, or because they live in a certain neighborhood, or because they have certain people in their social circles.
I am being asked, and I suppose you are too, by the banks I use, at least once every year, if I am in a politically sensitive position, or something like that, or if anyone in my family is or ever has been. That might then categorize me as a potential criminal or crime victim, which is the same for the banks, that they don't want to deal with.
All the categories and simplifications, all the conclusions we draw about others on a very thin basis, do have consequences. They do have authority, even if they are idiotic.
Solipsism is probably the only valid idea, but I can't help thinking that if all the other people do exist in my mind, then, in my mind, also their minds exist, and then mine cannot be the only one. And as I also exist in the minds of those people, their way of characterizing me will make them deal with me accordingly, so their evaluation of me is, automatically, relevant for me – whether it is only a conception I have of the world, or this is indeed a real outer world that I just perceive.
But it really is a good question where my mind exists, if it is the container of it all. Even a container needs a container to be in. I appreciate your philosophical humor :)
And yes, sitting in the center of the investigation is problematic, since the more you take in, the more you learn, the more of what you learn also has to be investigated in its new shape. It is that kaleidoscopic, self-referencing kind of investigation, the recursive one, that never ends.
But I think that leaving yourself out of the investigation completely will reduce the problem to a hypothetical one – that looks at sociological aspects in general, but do not describe or, indeed, fix, the specific problem.
The optimal way must be one where you do examine the ever-changing situation of a real case, without being in it. But then, how well can you understand it? You will have to get to a definition like I did in the article, that everybody can adapt, so that there are no real limitations to what they can do, or how they think.
Dear Jørgen. Nice read for my morning coffee on a laid back Sunday. I really appreciate the way you’re articulating this. There’s a clarity in how you describe the mechanics of labelling that feels very grounded in reality, not just abstract philosophy. And I agree with you on something important:
The authority of labels is not just imagined. It has very real consequences.
People ARE sorted, filtered, accepted, or rejected based on simplified representations. That part is hard to argue with.
Where I find myself pausing, though, is here:
You describe this as a power being used against you, and in a practical sense, that’s true. But at the same time, that framing quietly places the centre of gravity outside yourself.
Because if their labels define your opportunities, then their perception becomes your reality and eventually ... your prison. And that may be functionally correct… but is it fundamentally true?
There seems to be a subtle distinction between being affected by labels and being defined by them. Most people never separate the two, I guess.
Your example with banks, recruiters, social categorisation… all valid. But I wonder if what you’re really pointing at is not just a social problem, but a deeper one:
That we have collectively agreed to treat abstractions as reality?
And then we suffer under them.
Your reflection on solipsism is interesting too.
You almost dismantle it yourself when you say that if others exist in your mind, then their minds must exist as well. That’s a beautiful paradox. But notice what happens:
You still grant those “others” a kind of structural authority inside your model. Even when everything is internalised, the hierarchy remains.
And then there is the part I find most interesting:
“The optimal way must be one where you do examine the ever-changing situation of a real case, without being in it.”
I understand the intention behind that, but I’m not convinced it’s actually possible.
Because the moment there is observation, there is a position. And the moment there is a position, there is already participation. Think quantum physics.
So perhaps the problem is not how to step out of the system, but to see clearly that there is no external vantage point to step into.
You also mention that leaving yourself out turns it into a hypothetical problem. I would turn that slightly:
Leaving yourself in, as something to be defined, might be what keeps the loop going.
Because then the investigation always circles back to:
“What am I in all of this?”
And that question may be structurally unresolvable.
So instead of trying to reach a definition that everyone can adapt, I wonder if the more radical move is this:
To see that any definition, no matter how flexible, still belongs to the same system of reduction. And that what you are trying to describe might not actually be something that can be stabilised in language at all.
You describe the process as recursive, kaleidoscopic, never-ending.
I think that’s exactly right. The question is just whether the goal is to finally “get it right”… or to see that the movement itself is the thing.
You are among the very few people I know who can think this abstractly and reflect on the deeper aspects of life. We seem to share a desire to go deep, something that feels quite rare these days. I appreciate that!
Yes, the desire to go deep is there – and a dream of seeing others go just as deep. Perhaps that's the reason for me to be so much against those one-word descriptions of other people. They do not represent any kind of deep thinking – no matter how much the HR departments claim that their personality tests are scientifically based.
Your use of the word "reduction" is a good way of describing that real, underlying problem. When cutting away everything else, we may get to the core of things, but the core isn't the thing, which seems to be a missing element of the reductionist's understanding: the core is just a structural element that holds things together, or upright, and all the true value is to be foind in the rest – all that is being stripped away.
Given that the cuts are not always made very considerate, the surviving part may not even be anything that could be called "the" core – just something, an arbitrary piece, that is then promoted to be it.
About the observation: yes, observing influences the observed in the theoretical universe of quantum physics, but what happens when you observe history? Or any kind of evidence of what has already happened?
What I'm pointing at here is that the reductionist labels are given after the fact – someone already decided on them, and then you get to know about it. You can't change the past process, and most often, you can't change people's minds, because they exactly sought the simplicity of deciding on just one word and don't want to use or try to understand more words to discuss it.
It would be great if your act of observing and investigating could change anything, but in social life, it can't.
Deciding to be outside of the social sphere is an option – I know many people who are living according to that idea, partially or fully. They are being dragged in again, occasionally, because they need to interact with others, meaning that they have to accept that others exist, in the first place, and then also have their conceptions of the world. To meet each other, most often the outsider needs to adapt to the situation, as the insider generally can't see anything else than the outsider being just that, and therefore they will refuse to step out of the usual habitual thinking.
The alternative: to remain in a social structure, but choosing one that offers a somewhat deeper interest and understanding between the members, is then what people often try to do instead. This means joining a sports club, or meeting with friends over a football game on TV, or whatever. That's a tiny fraction of freedom, carefully encapsulated in a simple frame that won't allow a broader view on each other, but will, as the positive side-effect, render the one-word labels from the outer society invalid for that context.
So, people will have a general life inside the not so optimal frame, and then glimpses of free but limited life situations now and then.
We can't escape the idea of accepting other people's simplified views and lack of holistic thinking, if we want to have any contact with others at all.
I have to say… this is beautifully written. Seriously.
But it also reads a bit like you’ve built yourself an elegant philosophical prison, and then furnished it so nicely that it almost feels like freedom 😉
I recognise a lot of what you’re pointing at, especially the flattening effect of labels and reduction. That part resonates. But I’m not quite convinced by where you end up with it.
For example, the idea that observation doesn’t really change anything in social life… that feels like a step too far. If that were true, then therapy wouldn’t work, leadership wouldn’t work, and conversations like this wouldn’t matter much either. And yet, they clearly do, not by forcing change, but by shifting perspectives.
So maybe the issue isn’t that observation has no effect, but that most observation is too shallow to have one.
Same with reduction: Yes, one-word labels are crude. But without some form of structuring, how do we even engage with complexity at all? Otherwise everything dissolves into “the whole is everything,” which sounds deep, but leaves us with nothing to actually work with.
What I find most interesting, though, is your conclusion, that we more or less have to accept simplified thinking if we want to stay connected.
That’s the part I’m not buying.
Because it assumes that depth and social interaction are incompatible. And I’m not sure that’s true. It might just be that operating with depth inside a simplified social structure is harder, but not impossible. Are the two of us in fact not socially engaging with each other right now - in a deeper sense?
So I’m curious:
Do you really think the choice is between withdrawal and adaptation?
Or is there a third option, where you stay in the system, but subtly shift it from within?
Thanks. i wrote the article with the purpose of raising the question: what if they are right?
It is easy to get into a mood of defending one's stance, to stay in the safe frame of the initial opinion and find ways to reject all opposition against it. I guess this is more or less what life teaches us to do, to keep up what we feel is our integrity.
I don't want to do that. I want the question to remain. What if other people – or one self – indeed are right in their judgment of you?
There is a certain logic that talks about how everybody is right in any assumption of the world, given that they make it on the basis of their understanding of that world. If that understanding isn't the same as that of another person, then they can both be right, even with opposite opinions, but not in a common world – instead, each in their own.
Dialog is one way of getting closer to an understanding of the other person's understanding, and, hence, to adjust opinions rather than defending them.
When I say that there's no escape from the simplified views and their power, I talk about the lack of dialog that these simplifications imply.
Social engagement is indeed a developing activity. It can be difficult to change the world this way, evenv though it does happen – we see that regularly when something new is introduced, like cloud computing or AI, which suddenly is in the mind and on the lips of everybody as a fact of life. It doesn't happen just because the thing starts existing; it is a result of lots of communication between people.
For an individual who sees the world reducing them to a one-dimensional object of no interest, or a kind of annoyance, a ridiculous person, or outright an enemy, without attempting that dialog, it can be harder to enter that development. I guess that most people never even try. And some, like me, now, with an article on social media, seen briefly by a couple of hundred people at most, more in depth by a handful or two, then forgotten completely after a few days – it is not easy to see any chance of really developing or evolving anything. It is most often just a moment of entertainment.
I don't want to sound negative, just realistic. The positive is what you say, that we can change things in a direct dialog, usually with one person at a time. If both parties want to, that is.
Therapy, leadership (perhaps, sometimes), education – there are several ways, several situations that can lead to that.
The world will still call you an idiot, a narcissist, or whatever people or machines in it decides upon, and most activities after that will still be based on that kind of simplification, that usually dominates our lives. When engaging with those people or machines, you'll have to speak their language, accept their simplifications, or be rejected.
Tons of such exist: your nationality, for instance, will sometimes be a deciding factor for other people's actions toward you, and so will your job status, your age, your physical appearance, and your post number. Mostly, there is absolutely no chance of being treated as an advanced being, with more details to offer than just that one parameter being looked at – because, nobody cares. A typical life will consist of mostly such things, and their consequences. It will not honor the real you, only one or another label.
A dream about subtly changing the system from within, well, that is what made me set up this substack in the first place, so I do believe in it, somewhat. I just don't feel that the chances are really there, other than hypothetically. Because most people don't want it. They want to fit in as good as possible in the dehumanizing system, because that might position them better, give them more money, status, whatever – they don't believe in the value of feeling special, so they'll ignore any attempt of getting there, or fight it, as the see the need.
I think the increased need to label, categorise, and compartmentalise everyone and everything we encounter is intertwined with a need for certainty in a world where nothing seems clear or evident anymore. It's another symptom of our collective overwhelm - trying to bring "order" into (our) existences that seem to have descended into complete and utter chaos.
That may be it – actually, I think you are very right. But I also feel that so much is being lost from it.
Like those little plastic figures on the picture. Six different of them, all from the same kind of plastic but with some slightly different shapes, and different colors. They were made like they are, and people will never consider that they may be changed – instead, they are used for as long as this shape is needed, or until it is worn out, and then disposed of.
People do not fit that pattern, and yet, we treat each other that same way.
There is an old idea of spiritualism, seen all over the world, that attributes everything, including trees, stones, or even the moonlight, a soul or spirit. I feel that we are going the opposite way now, depriving a lot of people from their soul or spirit, and now we treat them like things instead.
That may look more orderly, but I'm not a big fan of it.
I agree. It's not possible to define people and/or their personalities/habits/inclinations in definite terms and doing so makes the human experience much smaller than what it is (or should be).
Thanks – that's the essential part, isn't it? That we should be able to expect a good experience with being human, and with interacting with other humans. When they reduce us to a simple word, they don't contribute to that good experience at all.
"There is an old idea of spiritualism, seen all over the world, that attributes everything, including trees, stones, or even the moonlight, a soul or spirit. I feel that we are going the opposite way now, depriving a lot of people from their soul or spirit, and now we treat them like things instead."
I think you are pointing to something very real.
There does seem to be a movement where we strip the world, and each other, of soul. People become reduced to functions, roles, or even obstacles. In that sense, we are indeed moving in the opposite direction of the old animistic view, where everything was alive and infused with spirit.
But I’m not entirely convinced this is simply a loss. It may also be a phase.
Almost like a pendulum that had to swing all the way into reductionism, into seeing everything as matter, mechanism, and utility, in order for us to become conscious of what is being lost.
Because when everything is “spiritual” by default, it is rarely seen. It is just assumed. Only when it disappears does it become visible.
So perhaps this movement, however crude it may look, is forcing us into a position where we can no longer rely on inherited meaning, but must rediscover it consciously.
Not by projecting spirit onto everything again, but by recognising what it is in us that either perceives life… or reduces it to objects.
In that sense, the question shifts slightly:
Not whether the world has a soul, but whether we are relating to it as if it does.
And that, interestingly, seems to be a responsibility that cannot be outsourced to tradition anymore.
I agree 100% – when something goes very far in one direction, there will be a reaction that takes it back into another. Like the world pendulum, never coming back to exactly where it was, and, in my experience, also not just moving around in two dimension (like Foucault's pendulum), but actually spiraling away.
i was asked recently if I thought that things would ever become like they were until recently, and I had to say no. Things never do that. They move back, as a general direction, but they do not reinstate themselves exactly as they were. It will be a new world tomorrow, not the old one coming back.
But the other half of that story is exactly what you suggest: that things mostly go too far in one direction, and then gravity will drag them back again. I believe it is a matter of slow feedback-loops, if speaking some systems thinking into it. Even when we all know that things have already gone too far, it takes time for us to find the mechanisms to make them go in the other direction again.
And – "us" – is a somewhat dysfunctional term to use, as all we people on Earth never really work as one unit. We have so many things going on that are moving in different directions, that the tendency of an overall direction mostly looks somewhat weak, also this calling for people to stay calm as they don't, at that time, believe that any movement is strong enough to go too far.
Hence, all the right wing parties with their overstated hatred toward everybody, where some of them sometimes decide when seeing the consequences that this was not the extent they were aiming at – it has gone too far.
Extremism seems to work as a directional dream, not as an actual goal.
In the light of the above, you are right: the past cannot describe the present. Tradition cannot be responsible for the future.
I still need to think a bit about your suggestion that what we do matters more than what we believe. That how the world is being treated matters more than what we think of it (and I do believe that the world only has a soul if we believe it has one...).
Objectively, you are right. Here and now, preserving the rainforests will be a lot more valuable than thinking they contain irreplaceable value and then cutting them down anyway. But what about our future narrative that should explain to ourselves and the next generations what we were actually doing? Doesn't that demand a clear-cut value appreciation of the things we preserve? A set of beliefs, so to speak.
But recognizing the essential elements of things, and if they are having a soul or not, is of course a solid element to bring into such a narrative.
I like the way you describe the pendulum not just swinging, but spiralling. That feels closer to how things actually unfold, not repetition, but transformation with memory.
And I think you’re right that what we are seeing is not a coordinated movement, but a multitude of local directions that only afterwards appear as some kind of overall trend. “Us” is indeed a convenient fiction.
Your question at the end is where it gets really interesting: You ask whether the future narrative requires a clear set of beliefs, a value framework that explains why we preserved something like the rainforests.
Intuitively, that feels right. We want coherence. We want to be able to say: this mattered, and here is why.
But I wonder if there is a subtle inversion hidden in that.
What if the narrative is not what enables the action…but something we construct afterwards to make sense of it?
Because if the action depends on belief first, we run into the exact problem you describe: People can believe in the value of something, and still destroy it. So perhaps what actually transforms behaviour is not belief as such, but perception. If I truly perceive something as alive, interconnected, not separate from myself, then the question of whether it has a “soul” becomes almost secondary. The relationship changes before the concept is even formed. In that sense, the narrative might still emerge, but more as a reflection of a shift that has already taken place, rather than as the driver of it.
And that leaves us with a slightly uncomfortable possibility:
That we don’t need better beliefs first, but a different way of seeing.
And that the beliefs we later formulate are just the traces of that shift, not the cause. So when you say the world only has a soul if we believe it has one, I’m not sure. It might be closer to: The world appears soulless when we relate to it that way, and alive when we don’t. The belief then follows, rather than leads.
That rationalization after the fact is probably a lot more common than people are aware of :) How often haven't we, all of us, said that "I did what I did, because it would have been problematic if I had done otherwise" – feeling, but refusing to know, that we probably should have done things differently. We then paint the history in the color we prefer, and before long, we forget that there ever was a dilemma.
Indeed, things can have a soul even if we don't recognize it. We need to decide on it being there to see it, so to speak, whether it really is there or not. And, as you say, we can easily choose to destroy things that we know well are too valuable to destroy. There is this eternal conflict in people of different interests.
I just read today about a sea cow, a large version of them, that was living in the Bering Sea until the 1700s but went extinct, because of more or less the same reasons as the Dodo and the Nordic penguins, and many other creatures – they were easy to catch and nobody cared about what would happen if we caught them all. So, we did. Now we have stuffed specimens, or perhaps just the skeletons left, in some cases an early photo or a drawing made by a sailor who happened to be there when they were caught.
99% of people who hear about this will claim that we are wiser today, but "we" aren't – now, just like then, there are some people who do not care, and they are the ones who kill the creatures. All the rest of us do not, but we still count as the generation who did.
That's probably one of the major lacks in human understanding – that we aren't all doing everything together. There are people who want to save the rainforests, and other people who don't. People who can see that immense potential in preserving them, and others who can see the profit from cutting them down.
I think that sociology and philosophy alike suffer a bit from trying to find the one human nature, while all evidence points at there being several different natures in play simultaneously.
It may be that we all have the same kind of brain, the same potential, and the same fundamental way of functioning, but we do not share the same knowledge, wishes, dreams, or beliefs.
And that, possibly, is why we often choose to put a one-word categorization of others: we don't see them as the same as ourselves. Hence, the sorting makes sense.
We actually already live in each our constructed world of us and them, and being one of "them" makes it impossible to penetrate the defenses of the "us", as they will not listen. That's why I can't argue with companies about their personality tests, because the very fact that I want to do that makes me one of "them", not belonging to the same universe as the company's HR department. They actually have a special personality category of "those who don't like personality tests", and, needless to say, that category is not seen as fit for any of their vacancies.
And that is probably because the outer world is now too big and complex to let everyone and everything from it into our local definition of the world – like Stephanie indicated in her comment: people then seek to make order in their own world by sorting others and by that having a simpler worldview as a result.
That leads to after-rationalization too: the HR people will forever claim that it was necessary to filter people hard, to find the "right" candidates – thereby avoiding the uncomfortable truth that most of those they filtered out could probably have done the job quite well.
They apply a belief system after the fact, that fits they actions.
There’s a lot in what you’re describing that I recognise, especially the after-rationalisation and the way systems protect their own logic. I’ve seen that too, and I don’t think you’re wrong about how those mechanisms work. But I notice something in where you land with it.
It’s almost as if the conclusion becomes that because the system filters, categorises, and defends itself… then meaningful influence from the outside is nearly impossible.
And that’s the part I’m not sure I agree with.
Not because the barriers aren’t real, they clearly are, but because that conclusion quietly removes something from the equation: Our own position in relation to it.
Because even if HR systems are reductionist, and even if people rationalise their decisions after the fact… the question is still:
What happens to us when we meet that?
Do we become defined by the system’s limitations… or do we remain something that isn’t fully captured by it?
I think that’s where it gets a bit more… existential, maybe even spiritual.
Because if we fully accept that “you can’t penetrate the system”, then the only remaining options are adaptation or withdrawal, and both of those are, in a way, reactions to it. But I’m not sure that’s the only possibility.
There’s also a third position, where you engage with the system, but don’t let it define the frame you operate from.
Not in a naive “you can change everything” way, but in the sense that your clarity, your way of seeing, and your presence still have an effect, even if it’s not immediately visible or measurable.
But I don’t think it gets to decide the full extent of what we are.
PS. Over the past two years or so, I’ve been working on adjusting my own mindset through the lens of Kabbalah, especially its more mystical aspects. If you’re anything like me, with an interest in philosophy, geometry, mathematics and cosmology, you might actually find parts of it quite inspiring, although it is heavy stuff.
Among other things, it offers a framework for working with one’s own consciousness, but it also addresses the broader structure of reality. In Kabbalistic terms, this physical world is sometimes referred to as the “1% domain,” while the deeper causes, where things are initiated and formed, belong to what is called the “99% domain.”
Seen from that perspective, much of what we try to do here in the physical world becomes a kind of surface-level manipulation, which is often far less effective than we imagine.
I’m aware that this way of looking at things influences how I respond in conversations like this, so I hope you’ll bear with me as I bring that angle into it.
If you put it that way, maybe I'm a psychopath that kills mosquitoes without guilt and preferring my steak medium-rare and bloody. A full-time idiot too. And sure, maybe there's a touch of narcissism in me, too. But I draw the line there; I certainly have no desire to compare myself to that man.
Hehe - a comparison isn't the same as association :)
And I tend to agree, it is not a flattering comparison. However, some people may look at others, including me and him, and make such a comparison. And I was trying to think through what people may see when they look at me. As a thought experiment, you could say.
I would drop the things I'm doing and be wondering what horrible thing that I had unknowingly done for them to make that comparison. 😣
Yes, we would definitely need to wonder what made that happen. But people look at the world in different ways, so why not this?
I also know that some people consider that man to be somewhat normal, so to them it wouldn't be weird to look at him like they look at everybody else. On the other hand, if they don't see anything strange in his behavior, there would probably be no reason for them to compare others with him.
But just the same, if we can find other known examples of that claimed character type, then we can compare with them instead :)
The debate between being a vegetarian or a non-vegetarian is, to my mind, simply this: life eats life for survival...
Food thus only becomes a matter of preference and choice...
I genuinely enjoy reading your posts. There is an honesty in the way you circle around yourself, not trying to land too quickly on a conclusion, that already puts you ahead of most people who rush to define.
What struck me, though, is that while you - rightfully - question the labels, you still seem to grant them a surprising amount of authority.
You say, in a sense, that we become what others see us as, because the social field is where labels exist at all. There is something undeniably true in that. Social identity is, after all, negotiated externally. But it also carries a subtle risk: That the mirror begins to dictate the face.
I have found myself moving in a different direction lately. Not toward refining the understanding of who I am, but toward loosening the entire need to arrive at an answer. Because every label, even the most nuanced one, seems to crystallise something that is, in reality, far more fluid.
You touch on this yourself when you say “maybe I just am”. To me, that line is not a conclusion, it is the doorway. Because the moment we try to define even that “I am”, something has already been reduced.
There is also another layer I find difficult to ignore:
We do not experience the world as it is, but as we are.
So when others describe us, are they describing us, or are they revealing themselves? Consider how much are projections. And when we internalise those descriptions, are we becoming more accurate, or simply more entangled?
If I were in a slightly mischievous mood, I might suggest you take your line of thought all the way and convert to solipsism. At least then you would have the elegance of placing the entire theatre inside your own field of perception. But even that leaves something untouched, the one who claims the stage. Sorry for my sick sense of humour :-)
And that is where it becomes interesting for me.
Not “who am I?”, and not even “how do others see me?”, but:
What remains if the one asking those questions is no longer taken as a fixed reference point?
Not as an idea, but as something actually explored.
It seems to me that as long as there is someone trying to understand who he is, there is still a centre quietly holding everything together. And that centre might be the last identification to dissolve.
I am curious how you would approach that.
I think that the labels gain authority by being the only thing we talk about, when talking about each other.
We got rid of that old idea, at least in some parts of the world, where people should be referenced by trade or education, and women and children by which man they belonged to. And a lot more of that stuff.
But we have replaced it with such predicates as being "newly educated" or "having worked at least 2 of the last 5 years with xx technology" – in a job context – and similarly in the general social sphere, which, honestly, hardly exists anymore, where people are now carrying fluctuous titles like "influencer" or "tik-tok'er".
We do use labels, all the time. And we often want to use just one label, because people of today can't handle complexity. They want short descriptions, or no descriptions at all, and just one word that fits a person.
I find that problematic, but also powerful. It is not my power, though, it is a power being used against me, and everybody else. I used "me" in the text to make it come alive, like in a conversation, but in fact, I believe that we are all victims of this trend.
Hence, the authority – it is real! It is not me who gives it authority. The recruiters say no to me because they see me as an idiot. Hiring managers say no because they see me as a somehow guilty-myself victim of a psychopath.
People are being sorted. Because they wrote something on social media, or because they live in a certain neighborhood, or because they have certain people in their social circles.
I am being asked, and I suppose you are too, by the banks I use, at least once every year, if I am in a politically sensitive position, or something like that, or if anyone in my family is or ever has been. That might then categorize me as a potential criminal or crime victim, which is the same for the banks, that they don't want to deal with.
All the categories and simplifications, all the conclusions we draw about others on a very thin basis, do have consequences. They do have authority, even if they are idiotic.
Solipsism is probably the only valid idea, but I can't help thinking that if all the other people do exist in my mind, then, in my mind, also their minds exist, and then mine cannot be the only one. And as I also exist in the minds of those people, their way of characterizing me will make them deal with me accordingly, so their evaluation of me is, automatically, relevant for me – whether it is only a conception I have of the world, or this is indeed a real outer world that I just perceive.
But it really is a good question where my mind exists, if it is the container of it all. Even a container needs a container to be in. I appreciate your philosophical humor :)
And yes, sitting in the center of the investigation is problematic, since the more you take in, the more you learn, the more of what you learn also has to be investigated in its new shape. It is that kaleidoscopic, self-referencing kind of investigation, the recursive one, that never ends.
But I think that leaving yourself out of the investigation completely will reduce the problem to a hypothetical one – that looks at sociological aspects in general, but do not describe or, indeed, fix, the specific problem.
The optimal way must be one where you do examine the ever-changing situation of a real case, without being in it. But then, how well can you understand it? You will have to get to a definition like I did in the article, that everybody can adapt, so that there are no real limitations to what they can do, or how they think.
Dear Jørgen. Nice read for my morning coffee on a laid back Sunday. I really appreciate the way you’re articulating this. There’s a clarity in how you describe the mechanics of labelling that feels very grounded in reality, not just abstract philosophy. And I agree with you on something important:
The authority of labels is not just imagined. It has very real consequences.
People ARE sorted, filtered, accepted, or rejected based on simplified representations. That part is hard to argue with.
Where I find myself pausing, though, is here:
You describe this as a power being used against you, and in a practical sense, that’s true. But at the same time, that framing quietly places the centre of gravity outside yourself.
Because if their labels define your opportunities, then their perception becomes your reality and eventually ... your prison. And that may be functionally correct… but is it fundamentally true?
There seems to be a subtle distinction between being affected by labels and being defined by them. Most people never separate the two, I guess.
Your example with banks, recruiters, social categorisation… all valid. But I wonder if what you’re really pointing at is not just a social problem, but a deeper one:
That we have collectively agreed to treat abstractions as reality?
And then we suffer under them.
Your reflection on solipsism is interesting too.
You almost dismantle it yourself when you say that if others exist in your mind, then their minds must exist as well. That’s a beautiful paradox. But notice what happens:
You still grant those “others” a kind of structural authority inside your model. Even when everything is internalised, the hierarchy remains.
And then there is the part I find most interesting:
“The optimal way must be one where you do examine the ever-changing situation of a real case, without being in it.”
I understand the intention behind that, but I’m not convinced it’s actually possible.
Because the moment there is observation, there is a position. And the moment there is a position, there is already participation. Think quantum physics.
So perhaps the problem is not how to step out of the system, but to see clearly that there is no external vantage point to step into.
You also mention that leaving yourself out turns it into a hypothetical problem. I would turn that slightly:
Leaving yourself in, as something to be defined, might be what keeps the loop going.
Because then the investigation always circles back to:
“What am I in all of this?”
And that question may be structurally unresolvable.
So instead of trying to reach a definition that everyone can adapt, I wonder if the more radical move is this:
To see that any definition, no matter how flexible, still belongs to the same system of reduction. And that what you are trying to describe might not actually be something that can be stabilised in language at all.
You describe the process as recursive, kaleidoscopic, never-ending.
I think that’s exactly right. The question is just whether the goal is to finally “get it right”… or to see that the movement itself is the thing.
You are among the very few people I know who can think this abstractly and reflect on the deeper aspects of life. We seem to share a desire to go deep, something that feels quite rare these days. I appreciate that!
Yes, the desire to go deep is there – and a dream of seeing others go just as deep. Perhaps that's the reason for me to be so much against those one-word descriptions of other people. They do not represent any kind of deep thinking – no matter how much the HR departments claim that their personality tests are scientifically based.
Your use of the word "reduction" is a good way of describing that real, underlying problem. When cutting away everything else, we may get to the core of things, but the core isn't the thing, which seems to be a missing element of the reductionist's understanding: the core is just a structural element that holds things together, or upright, and all the true value is to be foind in the rest – all that is being stripped away.
Given that the cuts are not always made very considerate, the surviving part may not even be anything that could be called "the" core – just something, an arbitrary piece, that is then promoted to be it.
About the observation: yes, observing influences the observed in the theoretical universe of quantum physics, but what happens when you observe history? Or any kind of evidence of what has already happened?
What I'm pointing at here is that the reductionist labels are given after the fact – someone already decided on them, and then you get to know about it. You can't change the past process, and most often, you can't change people's minds, because they exactly sought the simplicity of deciding on just one word and don't want to use or try to understand more words to discuss it.
It would be great if your act of observing and investigating could change anything, but in social life, it can't.
Deciding to be outside of the social sphere is an option – I know many people who are living according to that idea, partially or fully. They are being dragged in again, occasionally, because they need to interact with others, meaning that they have to accept that others exist, in the first place, and then also have their conceptions of the world. To meet each other, most often the outsider needs to adapt to the situation, as the insider generally can't see anything else than the outsider being just that, and therefore they will refuse to step out of the usual habitual thinking.
The alternative: to remain in a social structure, but choosing one that offers a somewhat deeper interest and understanding between the members, is then what people often try to do instead. This means joining a sports club, or meeting with friends over a football game on TV, or whatever. That's a tiny fraction of freedom, carefully encapsulated in a simple frame that won't allow a broader view on each other, but will, as the positive side-effect, render the one-word labels from the outer society invalid for that context.
So, people will have a general life inside the not so optimal frame, and then glimpses of free but limited life situations now and then.
We can't escape the idea of accepting other people's simplified views and lack of holistic thinking, if we want to have any contact with others at all.
I have to say… this is beautifully written. Seriously.
But it also reads a bit like you’ve built yourself an elegant philosophical prison, and then furnished it so nicely that it almost feels like freedom 😉
I recognise a lot of what you’re pointing at, especially the flattening effect of labels and reduction. That part resonates. But I’m not quite convinced by where you end up with it.
For example, the idea that observation doesn’t really change anything in social life… that feels like a step too far. If that were true, then therapy wouldn’t work, leadership wouldn’t work, and conversations like this wouldn’t matter much either. And yet, they clearly do, not by forcing change, but by shifting perspectives.
So maybe the issue isn’t that observation has no effect, but that most observation is too shallow to have one.
Same with reduction: Yes, one-word labels are crude. But without some form of structuring, how do we even engage with complexity at all? Otherwise everything dissolves into “the whole is everything,” which sounds deep, but leaves us with nothing to actually work with.
What I find most interesting, though, is your conclusion, that we more or less have to accept simplified thinking if we want to stay connected.
That’s the part I’m not buying.
Because it assumes that depth and social interaction are incompatible. And I’m not sure that’s true. It might just be that operating with depth inside a simplified social structure is harder, but not impossible. Are the two of us in fact not socially engaging with each other right now - in a deeper sense?
So I’m curious:
Do you really think the choice is between withdrawal and adaptation?
Or is there a third option, where you stay in the system, but subtly shift it from within?
Thanks. i wrote the article with the purpose of raising the question: what if they are right?
It is easy to get into a mood of defending one's stance, to stay in the safe frame of the initial opinion and find ways to reject all opposition against it. I guess this is more or less what life teaches us to do, to keep up what we feel is our integrity.
I don't want to do that. I want the question to remain. What if other people – or one self – indeed are right in their judgment of you?
There is a certain logic that talks about how everybody is right in any assumption of the world, given that they make it on the basis of their understanding of that world. If that understanding isn't the same as that of another person, then they can both be right, even with opposite opinions, but not in a common world – instead, each in their own.
Dialog is one way of getting closer to an understanding of the other person's understanding, and, hence, to adjust opinions rather than defending them.
When I say that there's no escape from the simplified views and their power, I talk about the lack of dialog that these simplifications imply.
Social engagement is indeed a developing activity. It can be difficult to change the world this way, evenv though it does happen – we see that regularly when something new is introduced, like cloud computing or AI, which suddenly is in the mind and on the lips of everybody as a fact of life. It doesn't happen just because the thing starts existing; it is a result of lots of communication between people.
For an individual who sees the world reducing them to a one-dimensional object of no interest, or a kind of annoyance, a ridiculous person, or outright an enemy, without attempting that dialog, it can be harder to enter that development. I guess that most people never even try. And some, like me, now, with an article on social media, seen briefly by a couple of hundred people at most, more in depth by a handful or two, then forgotten completely after a few days – it is not easy to see any chance of really developing or evolving anything. It is most often just a moment of entertainment.
I don't want to sound negative, just realistic. The positive is what you say, that we can change things in a direct dialog, usually with one person at a time. If both parties want to, that is.
Therapy, leadership (perhaps, sometimes), education – there are several ways, several situations that can lead to that.
The world will still call you an idiot, a narcissist, or whatever people or machines in it decides upon, and most activities after that will still be based on that kind of simplification, that usually dominates our lives. When engaging with those people or machines, you'll have to speak their language, accept their simplifications, or be rejected.
Tons of such exist: your nationality, for instance, will sometimes be a deciding factor for other people's actions toward you, and so will your job status, your age, your physical appearance, and your post number. Mostly, there is absolutely no chance of being treated as an advanced being, with more details to offer than just that one parameter being looked at – because, nobody cares. A typical life will consist of mostly such things, and their consequences. It will not honor the real you, only one or another label.
A dream about subtly changing the system from within, well, that is what made me set up this substack in the first place, so I do believe in it, somewhat. I just don't feel that the chances are really there, other than hypothetically. Because most people don't want it. They want to fit in as good as possible in the dehumanizing system, because that might position them better, give them more money, status, whatever – they don't believe in the value of feeling special, so they'll ignore any attempt of getting there, or fight it, as the see the need.
I think the increased need to label, categorise, and compartmentalise everyone and everything we encounter is intertwined with a need for certainty in a world where nothing seems clear or evident anymore. It's another symptom of our collective overwhelm - trying to bring "order" into (our) existences that seem to have descended into complete and utter chaos.
That may be it – actually, I think you are very right. But I also feel that so much is being lost from it.
Like those little plastic figures on the picture. Six different of them, all from the same kind of plastic but with some slightly different shapes, and different colors. They were made like they are, and people will never consider that they may be changed – instead, they are used for as long as this shape is needed, or until it is worn out, and then disposed of.
People do not fit that pattern, and yet, we treat each other that same way.
There is an old idea of spiritualism, seen all over the world, that attributes everything, including trees, stones, or even the moonlight, a soul or spirit. I feel that we are going the opposite way now, depriving a lot of people from their soul or spirit, and now we treat them like things instead.
That may look more orderly, but I'm not a big fan of it.
I agree. It's not possible to define people and/or their personalities/habits/inclinations in definite terms and doing so makes the human experience much smaller than what it is (or should be).
Thanks – that's the essential part, isn't it? That we should be able to expect a good experience with being human, and with interacting with other humans. When they reduce us to a simple word, they don't contribute to that good experience at all.
Absolutely!
"There is an old idea of spiritualism, seen all over the world, that attributes everything, including trees, stones, or even the moonlight, a soul or spirit. I feel that we are going the opposite way now, depriving a lot of people from their soul or spirit, and now we treat them like things instead."
I think you are pointing to something very real.
There does seem to be a movement where we strip the world, and each other, of soul. People become reduced to functions, roles, or even obstacles. In that sense, we are indeed moving in the opposite direction of the old animistic view, where everything was alive and infused with spirit.
But I’m not entirely convinced this is simply a loss. It may also be a phase.
Almost like a pendulum that had to swing all the way into reductionism, into seeing everything as matter, mechanism, and utility, in order for us to become conscious of what is being lost.
Because when everything is “spiritual” by default, it is rarely seen. It is just assumed. Only when it disappears does it become visible.
So perhaps this movement, however crude it may look, is forcing us into a position where we can no longer rely on inherited meaning, but must rediscover it consciously.
Not by projecting spirit onto everything again, but by recognising what it is in us that either perceives life… or reduces it to objects.
In that sense, the question shifts slightly:
Not whether the world has a soul, but whether we are relating to it as if it does.
And that, interestingly, seems to be a responsibility that cannot be outsourced to tradition anymore.
I agree 100% – when something goes very far in one direction, there will be a reaction that takes it back into another. Like the world pendulum, never coming back to exactly where it was, and, in my experience, also not just moving around in two dimension (like Foucault's pendulum), but actually spiraling away.
i was asked recently if I thought that things would ever become like they were until recently, and I had to say no. Things never do that. They move back, as a general direction, but they do not reinstate themselves exactly as they were. It will be a new world tomorrow, not the old one coming back.
But the other half of that story is exactly what you suggest: that things mostly go too far in one direction, and then gravity will drag them back again. I believe it is a matter of slow feedback-loops, if speaking some systems thinking into it. Even when we all know that things have already gone too far, it takes time for us to find the mechanisms to make them go in the other direction again.
And – "us" – is a somewhat dysfunctional term to use, as all we people on Earth never really work as one unit. We have so many things going on that are moving in different directions, that the tendency of an overall direction mostly looks somewhat weak, also this calling for people to stay calm as they don't, at that time, believe that any movement is strong enough to go too far.
Hence, all the right wing parties with their overstated hatred toward everybody, where some of them sometimes decide when seeing the consequences that this was not the extent they were aiming at – it has gone too far.
Extremism seems to work as a directional dream, not as an actual goal.
In the light of the above, you are right: the past cannot describe the present. Tradition cannot be responsible for the future.
I still need to think a bit about your suggestion that what we do matters more than what we believe. That how the world is being treated matters more than what we think of it (and I do believe that the world only has a soul if we believe it has one...).
Objectively, you are right. Here and now, preserving the rainforests will be a lot more valuable than thinking they contain irreplaceable value and then cutting them down anyway. But what about our future narrative that should explain to ourselves and the next generations what we were actually doing? Doesn't that demand a clear-cut value appreciation of the things we preserve? A set of beliefs, so to speak.
But recognizing the essential elements of things, and if they are having a soul or not, is of course a solid element to bring into such a narrative.
I like the way you describe the pendulum not just swinging, but spiralling. That feels closer to how things actually unfold, not repetition, but transformation with memory.
And I think you’re right that what we are seeing is not a coordinated movement, but a multitude of local directions that only afterwards appear as some kind of overall trend. “Us” is indeed a convenient fiction.
Your question at the end is where it gets really interesting: You ask whether the future narrative requires a clear set of beliefs, a value framework that explains why we preserved something like the rainforests.
Intuitively, that feels right. We want coherence. We want to be able to say: this mattered, and here is why.
But I wonder if there is a subtle inversion hidden in that.
What if the narrative is not what enables the action…but something we construct afterwards to make sense of it?
Because if the action depends on belief first, we run into the exact problem you describe: People can believe in the value of something, and still destroy it. So perhaps what actually transforms behaviour is not belief as such, but perception. If I truly perceive something as alive, interconnected, not separate from myself, then the question of whether it has a “soul” becomes almost secondary. The relationship changes before the concept is even formed. In that sense, the narrative might still emerge, but more as a reflection of a shift that has already taken place, rather than as the driver of it.
And that leaves us with a slightly uncomfortable possibility:
That we don’t need better beliefs first, but a different way of seeing.
And that the beliefs we later formulate are just the traces of that shift, not the cause. So when you say the world only has a soul if we believe it has one, I’m not sure. It might be closer to: The world appears soulless when we relate to it that way, and alive when we don’t. The belief then follows, rather than leads.
Curious how that sits with you.
That rationalization after the fact is probably a lot more common than people are aware of :) How often haven't we, all of us, said that "I did what I did, because it would have been problematic if I had done otherwise" – feeling, but refusing to know, that we probably should have done things differently. We then paint the history in the color we prefer, and before long, we forget that there ever was a dilemma.
Indeed, things can have a soul even if we don't recognize it. We need to decide on it being there to see it, so to speak, whether it really is there or not. And, as you say, we can easily choose to destroy things that we know well are too valuable to destroy. There is this eternal conflict in people of different interests.
I just read today about a sea cow, a large version of them, that was living in the Bering Sea until the 1700s but went extinct, because of more or less the same reasons as the Dodo and the Nordic penguins, and many other creatures – they were easy to catch and nobody cared about what would happen if we caught them all. So, we did. Now we have stuffed specimens, or perhaps just the skeletons left, in some cases an early photo or a drawing made by a sailor who happened to be there when they were caught.
99% of people who hear about this will claim that we are wiser today, but "we" aren't – now, just like then, there are some people who do not care, and they are the ones who kill the creatures. All the rest of us do not, but we still count as the generation who did.
That's probably one of the major lacks in human understanding – that we aren't all doing everything together. There are people who want to save the rainforests, and other people who don't. People who can see that immense potential in preserving them, and others who can see the profit from cutting them down.
I think that sociology and philosophy alike suffer a bit from trying to find the one human nature, while all evidence points at there being several different natures in play simultaneously.
It may be that we all have the same kind of brain, the same potential, and the same fundamental way of functioning, but we do not share the same knowledge, wishes, dreams, or beliefs.
And that, possibly, is why we often choose to put a one-word categorization of others: we don't see them as the same as ourselves. Hence, the sorting makes sense.
We actually already live in each our constructed world of us and them, and being one of "them" makes it impossible to penetrate the defenses of the "us", as they will not listen. That's why I can't argue with companies about their personality tests, because the very fact that I want to do that makes me one of "them", not belonging to the same universe as the company's HR department. They actually have a special personality category of "those who don't like personality tests", and, needless to say, that category is not seen as fit for any of their vacancies.
And that is probably because the outer world is now too big and complex to let everyone and everything from it into our local definition of the world – like Stephanie indicated in her comment: people then seek to make order in their own world by sorting others and by that having a simpler worldview as a result.
That leads to after-rationalization too: the HR people will forever claim that it was necessary to filter people hard, to find the "right" candidates – thereby avoiding the uncomfortable truth that most of those they filtered out could probably have done the job quite well.
They apply a belief system after the fact, that fits they actions.
There’s a lot in what you’re describing that I recognise, especially the after-rationalisation and the way systems protect their own logic. I’ve seen that too, and I don’t think you’re wrong about how those mechanisms work. But I notice something in where you land with it.
It’s almost as if the conclusion becomes that because the system filters, categorises, and defends itself… then meaningful influence from the outside is nearly impossible.
And that’s the part I’m not sure I agree with.
Not because the barriers aren’t real, they clearly are, but because that conclusion quietly removes something from the equation: Our own position in relation to it.
Because even if HR systems are reductionist, and even if people rationalise their decisions after the fact… the question is still:
What happens to us when we meet that?
Do we become defined by the system’s limitations… or do we remain something that isn’t fully captured by it?
I think that’s where it gets a bit more… existential, maybe even spiritual.
Because if we fully accept that “you can’t penetrate the system”, then the only remaining options are adaptation or withdrawal, and both of those are, in a way, reactions to it. But I’m not sure that’s the only possibility.
There’s also a third position, where you engage with the system, but don’t let it define the frame you operate from.
Not in a naive “you can change everything” way, but in the sense that your clarity, your way of seeing, and your presence still have an effect, even if it’s not immediately visible or measurable.
Otherwise, everything we’re talking about here, reflection, awareness, understanding, becomes somewhat… powerless.
And I don’t think it is.
I think the system is real.
But I don’t think it gets to decide the full extent of what we are.
PS. Over the past two years or so, I’ve been working on adjusting my own mindset through the lens of Kabbalah, especially its more mystical aspects. If you’re anything like me, with an interest in philosophy, geometry, mathematics and cosmology, you might actually find parts of it quite inspiring, although it is heavy stuff.
Among other things, it offers a framework for working with one’s own consciousness, but it also addresses the broader structure of reality. In Kabbalistic terms, this physical world is sometimes referred to as the “1% domain,” while the deeper causes, where things are initiated and formed, belong to what is called the “99% domain.”
Seen from that perspective, much of what we try to do here in the physical world becomes a kind of surface-level manipulation, which is often far less effective than we imagine.
I’m aware that this way of looking at things influences how I respond in conversations like this, so I hope you’ll bear with me as I bring that angle into it.