Naming

13.12.99 Who am I? I am not any of the identities I gain through intercourse with society, primarily because man cannot gain knowledge except by labelling or naming differences. If there were no differences in what man perceives, he wouldn’t need the use of his mind. His mind comes into play only when he notices differences in what he perceives. The first thing he does about those differences is to name each difference differently. Thus as he keeps on naming the various differences he perceives in nature around him, his vocabulary burgeons. But we must realise that naming a thing is not necessarily knowing that thing, except that he knows it the way he understands it. It is this understanding that become the naming of words given in dictionaries. But often, the understanding could turn out to be a misunderstanding.