Labels

Most of us are not aware of a proven fact, through brain research, that our brain spends a great deal of time applying labels to everything we perceive with our senses. It does about the same with our perceptions as well. We, our brains, actually take in a variety of stimuli such as colors, shapes, textures, etc. and puts them together a number of ways until it can put together an abstract concept that later will be representative of the actual object. Look at it as undefined atomistic data arriving to the brain via our senses. Cool and somewhat "Martix-like."

Our brains love this so much that it has it pretty much mastered by the age of six years and because of this labeling need we tend to dislike objects we encounter when they are initially unidentifiable. All of this is further influenced by our perceptions, contexts, concepts, and words to shape both the brains perception of objects as well as the brains perception to our overall awareness of all things external.

So, it is no wonder we all tend to want to place labels on everything in our world. You begin to see why I have so much fun with such things as "labeling" my practice of Okinawan Ti, i.e. system-to-style-to-branch ;-)