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stella41b -> RE: Lifestyles Relationships Labels (3/25/2008 6:37:11 AM)
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Hmm. Let me try here.
I'm not that old - I just look it. But so far in my experience of people I see names, faces, people with different lives, people who all walk a different path in life, different pasts, different experiences, different opinions, feelings, thoughts, preferences, intentions, perspectives, prejudices (yes, I have them, everyone I guess has them), and so on.
You say, for example 'tree'. I understand you. Something living, bigger than a plant, rooted in the ground, has leaves, a trunk, and so on. You might be thinking of a palm tree, I might be thinking of a poplar, someone else is thinking of an oak tree.
Now let's assume you say 'submissive'. I also understand you. A person who submits to another person. You conjure up a mental image based on your experience or fantasies, I do the same, and so does someone else.
Or for that matter dogs. You might think of an Alsatian. I might think of a St Bernard, someone else might think of a Yorkshire Terrier.
Now it seems to me that the labels only go as far as they do in reality, e.g,.'tree', 'submissive' and 'dog' and this is true when we are talking both in abstract and concrete terms.
However problems start when we seek to go beyond those labels. This is more true when we are talking about abstract labels, e.g. submissive, rather than concrete labels, such as tree or dog. I mean you would have tremendous difficulties arguing that an oak tree isn't really a tree, or that a Dalmatian is a better dog than a Pekinese.
I'm not sure about people being competitive. I personally think it's more down to potty training, and how we were all trained to use a potty as infants. Some of us became orally fixated, others more preoccupied with their genitals, and some people became anally retentive.
This was the first time we were taken from diapers and put onto a potty. We discovered that we had genitalia for the first time, and this as the first time we also examined the relationship that we had between our genitals, our most private, intimate needs, ourselves and with those that we love. It is our first experience of intimacy, and of exploring the power that our bodies have on other people.
Is this not a similar relationship we explore much later in life, when we explore our own sexuality and start to explore our kinks and interests in BDSM? The difference would appear to be that it is much later in life, we are more mature, adults, but surely much of our behaviour as adults is influenced by our early childhood experiences, the relationships we had with our parents and families, and how we developed in childhood?
This to me explains why some people feel the need to say that the Alsatian is not a dog, but a wolf, or a hound, or that their palm tree is a better tree than someone else's oak or pine tree.
This is just my personal theory and not something I wish to put forward here as a scientific fact.
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