Rant on Presumption

I noticed that human analysis gives way to presumption often. I often make statements that appear to be plain English to me, yet do not appear to be plain English to someone else. I find this to be very frustrating.

On the one hand, it is natural for human beings to want to make sense of the world around us. Even from childhood we have a tendency to categorize things and give the categories certain attributes. For instance, we learned that certain large vehicles with wheels are called "cars". We discovered that cars tend to be larger than adult humans. They all tend to have things in common, such as the tendency to have four wheels, a pair of headlights, hood, trunk, etc. However we know that if a car loses a wheel it is still a car. It is the norm for a car to have four wheels, but this is not the only thing that defines a car.

Human beings tend to be more complex than cars. People tend to try to make sense out of human beings by categorizing people. This is natural. However, using categorization to come to a full and complete understanding of a human being rarely works. It tends to lead to people linking together information that are not relevant to each other. Even though human beings can be categorized by such distinctions as male and female it is not possible to jump to a conclusion based on categorical information alone. This is what is called "stereotyping".

Every day I get annoyed when someone tries to stereotype me, then uses the stereotype to look down on me. I do try to remember that people are simply trying to understand me. I just don't have a need for people to come to an understanding at my expense. I would love to be able to communicate with the world around me without people placing me in categories I do not belong. For instance, I am not mentally retarded. I am not a child. I am not stupid. I am not as impulsive as people believe I am. These assumptions come from my behaviors. My behaviors do not fit the norm. Therefore, in order to make sense of my behaviors people find it necessary to stereotype and marginalize me in their minds.

However... no matter how much people say the sky is green this does not make it true. It is the same with people's assumptions. Sometimes they may be true. Most of the time they aren't.