Our biases in labeling things...

Muse #475 - good and bad, right and wrong, classify-categorize

Yesterday I talked about the blooming trees in our garden. I was talking to my wife later and she told me that they were pear trees - more specifically the non-fruit bearing Chanticleer variety of pear and that these were an invasive species in Canada.

But, how much diversity is too much? This kind of comment always gets me thinking. Questions like “Am I not an invasive species in Canada too, to some extent?” Maybe even to a great extent.

I am not much for the tree, plant, and animal names. If I participate in trivia I usually come last as I really don’t care about retaining or learning names. I am not looking to learn them, except for the absolute minimum required to get away with in life.

My focus and interests are narrow and in other things - and I am totally unashamed of it. I prefer and try not to label things and enjoy right-brain abstraction rather than left-brain meaning-making. Why does something need to have a meaning at all?

In yesterday’s morning walk the dandelions were in bloom carpeting the grass. We label them weeds. Why are they weeds? What is so good about the grass we see everywhere? And why should the lawns be filled with grass? To what end?

The concept of lawns was introduced in France by the aristocracy in the 1700s and we are still trying to catch up with them with billions of dollars in spending to keep manicured lawns. For that matter, the grasses are invasive species too. Engineered and hardened to survive in the Canadian weather. And to what end do they exist then?

So, up with the dandelions. Let us let the weeds take over the world.