Fettered Lives

Abstract

Whenever we try to create categories for anything we lose something. We lose the subtle shading, the variety that exists in almost every aspect of life. How often do we become angered or frustrated when faced with a check-box questionnaire offering us no choice that really fits the description we want to apply to the subject? Well, this box, we decide, is the closest, so we compromise or settle for checking the standard questionnaire miscellany box marked “other.”

Slavery they can have anywhere. It is a weed that grows in every soil.

(Edmund Burke, 1729–97)