Achromatic Humanity and the Cult of Simplification

abels are used to quickly identify and communicate meaning efficiently. They help people sort, recognize, remember, and make decisions about what something is, how it should be used, or how it should be understood. Seems benign. So, what's the problem? Labeling is a means of shrinking a complex reality into an easily manageable symbol...that may or may not capture the essence of the labeled item, resulting in confusion. The label 'desert' can be used to describe the golden, shifting sands of the Sahara where vegetation is virtually non-existent, or the Sonoran Desert delineated by the range of the majestic Saguaro reaches toward the skies, or Antarctica, a frozen land that is the largest, driest desert on earth.