Set Theory

Remember that line from My Big Fat Greek Wedding? The father tells his daughter that there are two kinds of people in this world -- "Those that are Greek, and those that want to be Greek". I have been thinking about everybody's sorting rules. We are by nature, programmed to compartmentalise events, places, numbers, objects, etc. to help us process and comprehend the vast amounts of stimuli to which we are subjected. It seems obvious that we have extrapolated our chunking rules over into the people domain.

Think about it ... often people tend to oversimplify and divide the world up into several categories. Here are a few that I've noticed amongst some of the people in my life:

My husband -- athletically coordinated people and spastics
My parents -- professionals and bums
My brother -- people that agree with him and people who are just plain stupid
My mother-in-law -- either one of two ways: Polish and everyone else or, God fearing creatures and heathens (come to think of it, in her book I think they're one and the same thing)
My youngest son -- those who think he is cute and those who don't and are therefore crazy
My neighbours -- Jewish and anti-Semites
A male friend of mine who shall remain nameless -- those that give head and those that don't
Another male friend who is single and desperately dating -- hot, good-looking and doable vs. frumps
Me -- I tend to perform a couple of different rules simultaneously -- those with a joie de vivre and those who are uptight, bookworms and illiterates, secure and insecure

Wow, and I thought I was more complex a person than that ...