The Code Causes Violence and Hatred?

I found the lecture on Baudrillard's Code really interesting. i would be inclined to agree with what he found. Everything in society today is labelled or branded. In this consumership society everything has a value, peoples success in life is measured by what they've gained and their status. This i think has been inherited by society and is deeply imbedded now in human nature. People need to be able to label others in comparison to themselves, identity seems to overide all else. At the same time we have to market ourselves, to the kind of audience or social groups we wish to attract. Our identities are what others base their judgements of us on.

I think it was Hume who believed all that we perceive is built on ideas and impressions. That things we imagine, for example fictional characters are mixes of ideas that we already have. This in a way i think helps to reinforce the sense that we base so much on identity, characteristics that define each person, we seem reliant on it today. It has become something we all do automatically, is it that we fear what we do not know? Everything needs an identity for us to value it and position it hierarchially.

The argument about giving and receiving (perhaps sentimental) gifts being able to break the code i was a bit sceptical about. Although valueless to anyone outside the relationship it has passed through is the gift no more than a reinforcement of a relationship which does hold value in society? Like a social group, a family has there place in the code don't they? I can see how gift giving maybe seen as breaking the code but i'm not overly convinced.