When a Label Frees Instead of Imprisoning

People with wide-ranging interests don’t often have good names for themselves… jack-of-all-trades, dilettante, scattered, unfocused, restless, undisciplined, generalist.

A popular list but with no truly positive option.

When I came across #polymath (or my preferred version #polymathic), I felt relieved. That was really the sensation; finally, a word to describe something those other labels never could: a way of life that aspires to conjugate #breadth, #depth, and #integration in the pursuit, development, and application of #knowledge.

No word I knew until then came close to this richness of meaning.

Fast-forward 15 years, and some now even call polymathy a buzzword! But what surprises and saddens me are some comments from social media users like this:

“Why do we need one more label?” “How about not labelling at all?” “Why put yourself in another box?” “Don’t bother about words” “Labels only feed the ego.”

I understand the concern. Labels can be misused. People can overidentify with them, truning a useful description into a fixed identity.

But this argument completely misses the mark when it comes to polymathy or polymathic identity!

For many polymathic people, the absence of a good label has not been freedom. It has been part of a really bad confinement.

The bad labels were already there. They were socially available, casually used, and often internalized — to the psychosocial detriment of polymathic people!

That makes the objection to using polymathy, and particularly the self-description #polymathic, absurd.

“Polymathic” is not self-aggrandizing. It gives a concise, positive, and historically grounded descriptor for a real pattern that is hard to carry and even harder to communicate.

It does not have to become an “ego category” or another cage.

We use heuristics. We label. Every one of us does, even polymaths. It is futile to resist this.

A good label can help people recognize a pattern in themselves, communicate it to others, and stop interpreting their own range as a defect.

Finding a better name may be a key step to a more fulfilling existence to polymathic people.