Often when we are having difficulty, when we are riled up and upset, and when we struggle in relationship, it’s because we are being treated or treating others as objects. Surprisingly, it happens frequently.
When you are getting on an airplane, are the other people just in the way? If so, you might be treating them as objects. When you are in traffic, and the car in front of you isn’t going as fast as you’d like, is the driver an idiot? If so, you might be treating them as an object.
Online
One of the most common places where we treat people as objects is online. We say and do things online that we would never say or do in person. You don’t have to go very far on the internet before you can find comments filled with judgement, dripping with sarcasm, and even projecting threats of personal, bodily harm. We feel OK with this type of behavior because the other people don’t seem like real people to us. They’re not our next door neighbor, our aunt, or our friend that we know. We just see some text with a name or alias attached to it. It’s just some text to address, rather than a real person to hold a conversation with.
Traffic
As I eluded to before, this happens when are driving in our car too. There’s a distance between us and the other driver. Instead of seeing people, we just see other vehicles. This is why we see people weaving in and out of traffic, cutting people off, but you’d rarely see this kind of behavior waiting in line at the grocery store. We don’t see people, we see objects.
Workplace
Sadly this happens a lot in the workplace. Companies see their employees as units of production. They even have a department called “human resources,” which really reveals how the employees are viewed. So, you get a hot new kid out of college. He jumps in wanting to do great and contribute a lot, and then over the years, the lights just go out of his eyes, all because he’s continually being treated like an object.
Charity
This can also happen when we are volunteering or contributing to a group of people. When we refer to the people we are helping as, for example, “the homeless,” “the Haitians,” or even just, “those people,” we are likely treating them as objects. It just feels different when you are, for example, helping Dave get off the street vs helping homeless people.
Relationships
It happens in personal relationships as well. Instead of seeing the other person as someone with hopes, fears and dreams like us, we see them as a problem, in the way, or just wrong. Instead of really hearing them and working to understand, we try to manipulate them into doing what we want, or we try to correct them. We use and manipulate other people so that we can feel validated and accepted. We aren’t so concerned about the other person as we are concerned with how they make us feel.
I believe the amount of abuses and conflicts in the world would decrease greatly if we would start to see people as people instead of as objects.
Next time you are having challenges, ask yourself, “Am I treating this person as another human like me, or am I treating them as an object?” This might help you hold different interactions and see different results.
