Our social taxonomies are useful, but if we think of them as something more than that, if we employ them to enforce strict separation between one person and another, if we treat them as solid and impermeable barriers that make mutual understanding impossible, they serve us poorly. Our age is so dedicated to its various lumpings that it has, I think, lost sight of these dangers, and of the possibilities that may be found in judicious contemplation of Terence’s wise statement.
