Protect Our Self By Categorizing Others

In one way or another we tend to remove from our lives those we can't categorize. In everyday ways we simply do not associate with anyone we can't tag. On a societal scale, we put people away in institutions, jails, ghettos--whatever. If someone has a mental state (not defect) or physical difference that we can't accept, we remove them from our "field of vision" in order to keep our categories of humanity intact and unchallenged.

These things can include simple attributes or complex ones, it doesn't matter. To challenge our view of the world and the places and ways in which we divide it--which is an attack on our 'self'--is a challenge that is avoided because to take it on forthrightly would be a losing cause in maintaining our current 'self' and we can't often risk a loss so grand. It would be too devastating. It would be making one's life up until that point meaningless.

Everything we have learned and attached to our sensory input and the results of contemplating that input is who we are, largely. By attaching our 'selfs' to that 'result,' we therefore must protect it in order to protect our 'self.' Otherwise, it is very much like commuting suicide.