Human Nature?

I just wanted to comment briefly on the debate yesterday...

Now, as the members of the opposing team were trying to build their argument, the guy (sorry, I forget his name) asked a question along the vein of, and correct me if this is not what he said, "So, you say that it is human nature to classify and judge...but, how do you know this? Are you experts on classification or human nature?"

My simple response to this is: are we not all part of the human race? Do we not live in society, amongst other humans, where human nature is simply the structure upon which we all stand? How could we not know, or be fairly fluent in the concepts behind human nature? I'm not suggesting that everyone is a modern day Freud, but let's be serious for a moment here: unless one was born and raised far from civilization, far from other humans (the little boy raised by wolves), then they must know at least something about human nature, as trivial as it may be, and the knowledge that it is human nature to organize things and classify things through words, expressions and symbols because we desire to know what it is we see, feel, hear, touch, smell, etc. Even a grunt can be a kind of signal to others. What I'm trying to say is: everything is a classification! Language, especially, and I found it almost laughable when a member of the team in favor of the statement also said that language was a classification system and the opposing team member tried to dispute it. Because, in my opinion, that's all that language is! In its most simplistic form, language is a way of understanding, classifying, organizing and making sense of the things we see. Most nouns are used as classifications. Think about the example Robin gave: he was holding a marker. That, in and of itself, is a classification. But not only is it a marker, it was a dry erase marker, making it even more specific. Because, as we know, there are several different kinds of markers: smelly markers, permanent markers, washable markers, etc. etc.

Now, it is anyone's own prerogative to decide whether it is "best" to call Apotemnophilia a disorder, but one thing that, in my opinion, can hardly be disputed is the fact that we, as beings in a larger culture, society, civilization--whatever you want to call it--have the tendency towards naming, classifying, judging and organizing the things in our world in order to have a better understanding of them (no matter how far from the ultimate "truth" our systems are, no matter how arbitrary it may be in the scheme of things).