Labels Fill Gaps Where Understanding Is Lacking

‘Learn to exchange judging for exploring, being right for being real, anxiety for excitement and limitations for possibilities.”

- Virginia Satir

Ms. James: Psychobabble, psychobabble, psychobabble. Ken

Dear Ken: We label and attack what we don’t understand. The more limited our perception is, the more labels fill the gap. There are so many examples. Add your own: “four eyes” for people with glasses, or any derogatory term for anyone who is different from the ideal. You can list all the horrible terms that were once common. People used them to sum up their fears.

When you called someone a “savage,” you could believe they were less than human and you could kill them and take their goods. When you refer to them as Native American, it confers respect and you must act toward them with respect. “Girls” could be ignored or harassed; women cannot. “Boys” could be controlled and humiliated, even as adults; men cannot.

Most of the new ideas of science were greeted with derision or even charges of heresy by professionals and peasants alike. Education is not always protection against a narrow mind. The Earth looked flat but it wasn’t. It was easy to laugh and make fun of those who looked deeper into the nature of the planet until you were found to be a “flatlander,” another one of those labels for “not too bright.”

The more we learn about who we are, the more some people become afraid. So much of what is now accepted psychology was once heard as babble. Watch how often in a day you or those who write and talk about the world use a label to cover confusion. We all do it and we all need to try to think more and label less.

Jennifer

Dear Jennifer: I have been watching your column. It is clear that you are a person of good intentions. I am writing because you are falling short. Your anti-science views can only cause harm.

Yes, science is fallible. … Yet knowledge gained through scientific method is far more reliable than knowledge gained by other means. The purpose of scientific method is to eliminate (as far as possible) personal biases, agendas and errors.

In defense of alternative healing, you say that much of what was once experimental is now mainstream. Yes, some alternatives have proven to work. However, just because something has become “mainstream” does not necessarily mean it’s good. Pre-frontal lobotomies were once mainstream.

Science has a habit of exposing truth … which can be very inconvenient for people with agendas. Such people like to keep “truth” malleable, so as to be more easily manipulated to suit their own ends. Do you have an agenda, Jennifer?

Sincerely, Frank

Dear Frank: My agenda is understanding. I was an academic for 20 years, trained in the scientific method. I believe science, at its best, has led the world out of the dark ages of superstition and ignorance. I would much rather, in most instances, rely on the scientific method than not. The problem is that science is an ever evolving discipline, and not all scientists use the methods well, maintain open minds or recognize that, at least at the moment, there are some limits to the “truth” they can reveal.

During the 12 years I spent teaching at the University of Washington Medical School, I was confronted by fine science but also by absurdity and agendas. Nutrition was not taught then as having much of a relationship to the body or mind, nor was tobacco or alcohol or domestic violence or rape or incest or many of the other things that enter or happen to the body in life. Non-Western medical techniques were rarely examined; the interest was inside the body not outside. Vast amounts of obvious data were ignored while other data were recorded. Lobotomies were based on scientific research, just not enough of it.

I also saw basic humanity ignored for the sake of a journal article. It was all too easy, back then, to ignore the actual patient in the pursuit of a goal separate from that patient. The manipulation of pain and information was anything but scientific.

I believe that animals do sometimes serve as an important source of scientific testing, but I saw environments and treatment that were without question torture.

I saw and heard prejudice that stimulated the direction of research and articles that were rejected because they did not confirm existing bias or honor the work of a previous genius.

You could easily answer these comments with the statement that “over time science does sort out the truth from the lie,” and I would agree with you. But in our lifetime we must also be able to keep our minds open to the obvious, the humane, and our obligation to try to understand as much as we can with all the tools that are available to the human senses and the human mind.

Jennifer

xxxx

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Jennifer James The Spokesman-Review