Treat People as Objects!!

Oh My God!

I think we should treat people as objects. No, no, no, I don't seriously think we should treat them as objects. We should not 100% compartmentalise them into the ‘object’ category and not in the ‘human' category. But on the other hand if we treat them as objects, we can get better results from our relationships in many ways.

What I mean is

What I mean is when we treat people like objects then we are not offended by their flaws and problems. For instance if a person is impatient with us, we tend to become impatient back. We take it personally. We feel offended and perhaps angry.

On the Other Hand

On the other hand imagine if we look at that person as an object, say as we would a chair. That person as an object has a flaw which is impatience. The chair has a flaw which is a wobbly foot. Every time we sit on the chair with the wobbly foot, we don't get angry at it. We know that it's wobbly. So before we sit on the chair we mentally prepare to sit on a wobbly chair and we accept it.

In that sense, if we accept people as objects, then we will accept their flaws as part of the object and it becomes less personal to us. The chair is not trying to hurt us by being wobbly. The chair is not trying to make us angry by delivering us a lesser experience.

In the Same Way

In the same fashion if we look at people as objects, then their imperfections, such as impatience or obtuseness tend not to bother us so much. After all it's just a thing out there in the universe, like a rock.

A Silly Example

Wouldn't that be silly if I walked down the street, accidentally kicked a rock, and got angry at the rock? Of course some people do get angry. These people have problems. I don't want to have problems and I can avoid having problems. That would take a lot of the stress out of our interpersonal relationships. That would probably create much healthier interpersonal relationships.

The Ball is in Your Court

Plus choosing to deal with people as objects is exactly that: a choice. Being the choice that it is, we can when it's convenient and proper, choose to deal with them as humans again. And we should be able to switch gears like that. When we can switch gears like that we can deal with people flexibly and have a lot less friction and upsetness.