Clockwise Cat Issue 40

objectify fellow citizens and project our own flaws and faults onto.
The real progressives in our march towards enlightenment were those who abandoned
thinking in categories - viewing individual people and objects as the only reality. This has
formed the basis of scientific thinking. In this respect it was Roscellinus and Francis Bacon
who lead the way.
Concepts such as race, religion and class do not have any REAL existence. Our minds
developed these categories as a way of simplifying and ordering experience due to our habit
of comparing and contrasting. Thinking in categories may be useful but only as intellectual
exercises. It should never be accepted as a proper way of analyzing or understanding life or
the people in our world.
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Because we are naturally predisposed towards placing events, objects and people into
manageable boxes (categories) this practice inevitably leads to bi-polar opposition and
the construction of an "us versus them" pseudo -reality that overlooks individual traits and
characteristics that do not belong to the category people have been assigned to.
This type of philosophically incorrect thinking is far more dangerous than politically incorrect
thinking. Throughout history thinking in categories has lead to the imprisonment or even
mass extermination of large groups of people unfairly lumped together as indistinguishable
members of a certain class, race or religion. Unfortunately, we are repeating this egregious
mistake of the past and heading towards a new dark age where fellow human beings are
treated not as complex and unique individuals, but as abstract concepts robbed of their
essential humanity.
If America does not make a dramatic u-turn away from this trend it is condemned to
making the same philosophical mistakes that unenlightened cultures have made leading to the
usual tragic consequences.
Author bio: The author has been a professor of Humanities for 25 years. He has had published
10 short stories, 7 poems, a collection of aphorisms and a memoir. He also has written 30 articles
on Philosophy, Culture and Politics for a variety of on-line publications.