Wednesday, May 30, 2012

People are People

I try to make an effort to keep in contact with people. Apparently this is a weird thing, because most of my friends don't do it.  I also make an effort to get in contact with people I don't really talk to. This is also a weird thing. Most people I know are more interested in letting friendships happen to them. They don't go out of their way to find more friends.

I don't need to do this. I already have many friends that I enjoy spending with, and more than a few very close ones. I have several reasons for keeping at it, though. Of course there's the joy of having new friends. And part of it is an addiction thing: I get a huge rush from meeting new people. It gives me energy.

Less obviously, it lets me expand my areas of experience. The more people you know the wider a social network you have, meaning the more likely you are to find people that differ radically from you. When you just let friendship happen, eventually your group homogenizes. If not in terms of race, socioeconomic class, etc, it's mentally. I have a couple of friendship groups that I'm tangent to. Over time they hivemind a little. Modes of thought unify. Good for closeness, perhaps, but not for empowerment. If you keep introducing new friends into the mix, you always have highly novel relationships. You also have access to modes and worldviews that are normally blocked by your upbringing. I have friends who could buy my family. I find it very difficult to try thinking things from that kind of perspective, but I would have found it absolutely impossible two years ago.

What I find most interesting, though, is how it affects my perception of people. One of the most important rules I've learned for social interactions is "people are people". It's so obviously simple to think of, but hideously difficult to think. Imagine walking down on the street, and a car stops to let you pass. Do you realize that in that car is a person? One who has had just as many, if not more experiences than you have? Or do you think of that person solely as the driver of the car? I'd bet the latter.

You can't recognize everybody around you as being a full-fledged person, because then your brain would overload and you would die. There's a difference, though, between 'not recognizing everybody' and 'not recognizing anybody'. First is necessary. Second is a problem. People are not Chinese Boxes. They aren't automata responding precisely to your input. We only see them that way (unconsciously or not) because we don't interact with them on a deep enough level.

This is why I'm so obsessed with talking to people. It's the only way I know of learning how to see them as people.

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