Yekke2 –shkoyach! I was going to write something similar but hadn’t yet gotten around to it.
The way I would put it is like this: While there are many negative aspects to boxes and they should be used sparingly and carefully, they do have their purpose and they can’t be altogether ignored.
When children are learning to understand the world around them, they often appear extremely narrow-minded (for example, I find it amusing how often kids assume that I am a goy or OTD because my hair is uncovered : )).
However, this actually is the way that cognitive development works. A child can only internalize information through the use of schemas (aka boxes). For example: All adult females are mommies. It is the only way that they can process information.
The way I always put it is that one has to know what the boxes contain before one can learn how to think outside of the box.
Likewise, when a person is at a stage of life in which he is trying to figure out who he is and what his goals are and what type of marriage-partner he is looking for, he needs to use boxes to help him sort things out. We live in a complex society and often we need to use boxes in order to process the different hashkafas/values/religious levels around us.
Of course, the ideal is to eventually come to a place in which while still using boxes to help navigate one’s way, one is also able to “think outside the box” as well.