As humans beings we seek to make sense of our environment. The shear amount of knowledge that we process daily from our physical senses is overwhelming. As Rodney Needman says

When a person who has been blind since birth is operated upon and given sight, he does not directly see the phenomenal world which we accept as normal.

Our visual field takes in such a large area that an attempt by our brain to consciously process and recognise everything we see would mean that we would spend all day recognising and sorting and would never get anything done. Therefore we have trained our brains over our lifetime to automatically classify and process the things around us. As John .R. Searle says "The child is brought up in a social reality where he or she simply takes social reality for granted." We look at "masses of metal in linear trajectories" and automatically know that what we are looking at is a car, because our whole life we have been brought up to categorise such masses of metal as cars. As Peter Berger says "orientation and conduct in everyday life depend upon such typifications." Knowing what a car is, also brings

There are as many different systems of classification as there are people in the world, and more beside. There are personal systems that deal with our own views on the reality that surrounds us. There are physical systems, which educate us about the physical properties of our world. Social Systems to deal with the people around us. We walk down the street and as we do we classify and categorise the world around us. We 'pigeon-hole' the people around us by their clothing, see students, workers, mothers, upper and lower classes without even a second though. Bowker says, "a classification is a spatial, temporal or spatio-temporal segmentation of the world." We need to divide the information that our senses throw at us, like dividing an orange into segments because we can't fit the whole one into our mouths. They are a way of finding what we want in the world. Libraries classify and sort books in such a way that we understand the system and find what we need. Whether right or wrong we classify people so that we can justify our dislike of them. We pick a characteristic of their characterise it as bad, or wrong, and therefore have justified our dislike of them. Despite the fact that classification is biased, this does mean it is either wrong or right. It all depends on the accent of positively or negativity that the individual attaches to their, and others, classifications. The fact is that the greatest challenge in such discussions, is classifying and categorising classification itself.

'What he is' is ongoingly available to me. This availability is continuous and prereflective. On the other hand 'What I am' is not so available. To make it available requires that I stop,…, and deliberately turn my attention back upon myself.

Each individual has their own unique system of classifying the world that surrounds them. As Lakoff states it is untrue that "…there is a correct, god's eye view of the world- a single correct way of understanding what is and is not true." and that such ideas are no only inaccurate but inhumane. Berger supports this with his comparison of Haitian and New York methods of classification. He gives the example of an individual who converses with the dead, and how they would be classified differently depending on where and who was classifying. In rural Haiti, he would be classified as possessed while in New York he would be classified as neurotic. Same behaviour but a different classification, depending on whom is doing the classifying. Neither classification is wrong, although a New York psychiatrist with no belief in the super natural would say that the diagnosis of the Haitian witch doctor was wrong, while the Haitian witch doctor, if he has knowledge of modern psychiatric diagnoses would berate the psychiatrist for his close mindedness. Also Berger says "The identification of 'Jew' may be equally reifying for the anti-Semite and the Jew himself, except that the latter will accent the identification positively and the former negatively." and it all depends on accent that you give such classifications. For example in our current society, there is nothing wrong with saying that a person is Jewish or black. The problem comes when you use these classifications to discriminate against people. If by classifying a person as black you assume that they are i

Some topics in this essay:
Haitian York, George Lakoff, RA Crowson, Social Systems, Likewise BBFC, Rodney Needman, Ad-hoc Classifications, Peter Berger, John Searle, William Blake, name jamie, gay straight, system classification, classification wrong, social reality, classification systems, person black assume, person black, raised society, classification people, black assume, haitian witch doctor, gay straight bi-sexual,