Humans have a natural tendency to categorize.
It’s useful whenever a quick assessment is necessary, and it always feels necessary. For most of us, it may not be necessary anymore to assess a situation as dangerous or not, but its close friend is to check if the situation is comfortable or not.
It helps to give meaning to differences.
A table and a stool serve different purposes, even if both can be used for the same purpose. French and German are both European, and yet, seeing them, we’ll often guess who is who to connect the person with different cultures, history, languages, etc. It’s how we decide on many of the interactions we’ll have with that person.
It allows us to situate ourselves and choose our next action.
On a golf course, we’ll distinguish between fairway, bunker, rough, water, and green as a basic orientation for our next shot. Joining a group, we’ll figure out how other people fit into the situation. In a shop, we’ll quickly distinguish between customers and staff, and are usually helped by the way staff are dressed.
It’s a list that never ends. Even more so today, as the world has become a kind of global village, and yet more fragmented into new types of groups.
We do so as otherwise things could not be distinguished from one another, and one would have to learn everything anew from moment to moment. We’d find ourselves overwhelmed by the sheer mass of information and experience it as chaos.
It led to the assumption that the world can be made an orderly place and that things can become predictable.
Our routine to categorize creates order. Our habit of using them establishes predictability.
Surprises occur when our known categories can’t be matched with the situation.
How we react to surprises describes how much we rely on the order and predictability we’ve established based on our known categories.
Do we feel out of control? Do we feel curious? Do we blame the other or the situation for being different? Are we willing to acknowledge the chaos that suddenly appeared? How do we set out to reestablish order and predictability?
The desire for order and predictability is useful to us. The way we are attached to it may not be as useful.
