Quote Originally Posted by TheCurmudgeon View Post
One other point on us-and-them: categorizing people based on obvious characteristics seems to be something we (as humans) like. Think about the uniform. What purpose does it serve? It lets me know who is on my side and who is the enemy (an who is not in the fight). Take that away and we feel uncomfortable.
Emphasis added.

I'm not so sure that categorizing is something humans like. It may well be, especially if you agree with folks like Immanuel Kant, that we must categorize. Categorizing allows us to bring order to all the stuff that bombards our senses--if nothing else, a filing system for sorting/storing the sensory inputs. If this is true, then saying we like to do it seems rather silly to me. If we have choices about how we categorize, then maybe we could say that we have chosen one method over another because we liked it better.