Humans and Classification

"You can't add apples and oranges."

Every algebra teacher's mantra, the dreaded apples and oranges speech. I get the whole x and y thing, and how they're separate variables, but who says you can't add apples and oranges? Why can't you just have five fruits, instead of two apples and three oranges? Or five sweet food items, or five round objects? What is with the constant human obsession of separating and classifying?

When we describe someone new to a friend, we classify them by hair color, height, eye color, nationality. When we meet someone new, we classify them into our brains under certain categories, some as simple as 'potential friend' and 'avoidable' and some more complex like 'hipster', 'ghetto', 'preppy', ect. But we don't only classify people' we classify countries, we classify objects, we even rip things apart further and further until we can classify their tiny little pieces no more. Humans are a diligent group of classifiers and categorize-rs, not satisfied until every shade and shape of ant crawling across the globe has been named and filed under endless categories of insects. There's nothing wrong with this habit, but it is in fact very interesting and makes me wonder how different the world would be without classifications. 


In Imagine, a well known John Lennon song, the artist tries to convey a picture of a world without classifications. "Imagine there's no countries/It isn't hard to do/Nothing to kill or die for/And no religion too." What would the world be like if we eliminated borders, and meshed together as a people with a drastically reduced number of separations? Would society even be able to function, or would we be a potpourri of disaster waiting to happen? 


Leave it to me to have these kinds of thoughts in math class at eight in the morning. 

Alone in a bustling coffee shop

Right now, I'm sitting in Starbucks, trying to get some homework done before I have to head back to school to check in with my independent study teacher. I hate to sound cliche, but it's funny how alone you can feel in a coffee shop, or a restaurant by yourself. There's all this hustle and bustle, as people go about their jobs, or coffee consumption, and the world goes on as normal around you, completely unaware of what you're doing. But at the same time, no one's really aware of what the other people are doing. Two young men converse next to a window, looking like they're catching up after college. But maybe they're making plans for a drug deal. Or maybe they're both lonely and searching desperately for companionship, willing to risk the awkwardness of breaking the ice in order to find someone to share their secrets with. And the worker taking in the trash may be just about to get off of their shift, eager to come home to their families and to get away from the attitudes of impatient and coffee-deprived customers. Maybe the girl in the corner typing up homework is really writing a bunch of unimportant questions on a website that no one will read, while contemplating her future and herself and trying to make sense of it all at the age of seventeen. But it's much safer to assume she's working on an essay.