So.... you don't believe in god? You do believe in god? You believe in nothing, life is pointless? You don't eat meat? You don't know wether or not god exists? You believe in some other god? You believe alien ghosts invade our souls? You believe we should distribute wealth? You don't believe we should distribute wealth? There is a name for every one of these positions, and if you think about it these names are either overused, or abused anymore. So, lets say I believe in the flying spagetti monster and im out to force everyone else to believe in the spagetti monster to save their souls. Ill call myself a pastafarian. I want everyone to be a pastafarian. Oooook... So then 20 years later I convert every single person on the planet into a pastafarian. What good is the name pastafarian? Everyone is already one, the name doesn't have it's same effect anymore. Which was to distinguish myself from others. If your not trying to distinguish yourself, or categorize yourself so that you can feel special in some way why create the name in the first place? If your goal is to eliminate everyone else who is different(ideally by conversion not killing right?) then you dont need the name in the first place to distinguish yourself from everyone else because in the end, you really do not want to be able to distinguish yourself from everyone else.
People do want to distinguish themselves and assert their autonomy. At the same time, being social animals, humans tend to seek like minded people and like to have a sense of belonging, to be part of an in group. Nature and nurture provides humans with quite varied experiences and due to these varied experiences, there is likely to be different ways of thinking and acting on circumstances, which will create outgroups and thus different label names. I think some labeling can be superfluous and overused but I do think labels can be useful in that they can give a person a general idea of where a certain person's thoughts and actions reside on a particular topic. Having to constantly explain a person's view on a particular topic would be quite tedious, so labels suffice. I think that's all perinent info for real life label names but to address the hypothetical situation... Aren't you distinguishing yourself by being the one who forces people to become pastafarians?
a name you can be named like a birth or by character as a teen or you can be called by your name but maybe not your real name you can change your name you can forget your name your name can be used in vain your name labels your brain your name is your profile/psychological/physical/ your name is of a clan your name summons those you love to their hearts your name is the reflection/essence:santa1: of your soul
Yes I am distinguishing myself by labeling myself a pastafarian. In this hypothetical situation im on a conquest to spread the word of the flying spagetti monster and save the souls of everyone in the world because if I dont bring to them the word of the flying spagetti monster they are going to be tortured for eternity by the evil chef and his pasta fork when they die.... So what ill need is to get some wood, build some ships with sails and place some cannons on these ships and go on a conquest, conquer all the world's primitive people who haven't discovered gunpowder yet and spread the word of FSM. Ill even create a symbol and put it on all the flags and sails of a bowl of spagetti maybe... After a few hundred years we are in modern times and... well we conquered the world spread the word of FSM, but now that we got a map of the whole world and now know the world is a sphere not flat and that our planet is not the center of the universe, we are beginning to realize that some people just aren't going to be converted to pastafarianism through the old fashioned way, which was conquest. Now our new strategy is just to "spread the word" and reason with this non believers or people of other religions but we certainly arent going to kill them. Either way, our goal is the same. But... what happens once that goal is accomplished and everyone believes in FSM and follows the word of FSM perfectly and everyone who dies from now on gets to go to pastafarian heaven. The label is no good anymore right? The point im trying to make here, is that once we have converted everyone to our way of thinking that we are very adament about spreading. And once we are done saving everyone's souls and preventing them from getting tortured by the evil chef when they die, then the thrill and excitement of conquest is over! The thrill and excitement of arguing with the non believers is done because the non believers are all gone! Its getting pretty boring now right? The chef now has a finite number of souls to torture with his pasta fork, im sure thats going to be boring. But pastafarian heaven continues to be packed with new souls because everyone is being shown the correct way to go. Basically once your ideas have spread round the world enough to "save all the souls" its going to get pretty boring for you. No more drama, no more arguments on whose right or wrong. People arent murdering or stealing anymore because the spagetti monster says its bad and everyone agrees. Guess another point im trying to get across here is... life just isnt any fun without some kind of drama, or some way to be different than someone else. Kinda silly isnt it?
a name is a way to designate one thing from another thing. there is no other point to the concept of names that i know of.
