If you try too aggressively to sort everything into categories, the details of things don’t really matter. As a result, nothing feels unique. Everyone you meet fits into a handful of predictable types; every relationship becomes a kind of game; every work of art becomes a commentary on genre; every discussion of values devolves into squabbles over semantics. It makes everyday life feel faintly hypothetical, infused with irony, like you’re living inside a political cartoon.
