About Seeing People as Objects & Things.
There’s another funny little ‘Thing’.
When you’re a kid you’re not always very bright in the sense that you tend to understand things very literally.
I was told many times that: “You treat People like Things, Zhawq! But People are NOT Things!”
It made me wonder about the difference between people and things. I soon discovered a fundamental difference:
“Zhawq! People are NOT Things!…”
People tend to seek you up voluntarily, whereas you have to seek up Objects yourself.
Then there’s the Lingual part. People talk and will tell you things voluntarily, whereas you have to take the initiative to derive meaning from Objects.
These two things were obvious to me. And as soon as I had figured this out I would inwardly shake my head every time people told me that I couldn’t tell the difference between People and Things because I treated them the same.
In my view I obviously treated them differently. I never attempted to manipulate my baseball bat into going over and beat the neighbor’s son. The whole idea that I should be so stupid as to think people and things are the same only confirmed what I already thought: That others had no idea about how smart I was, and I would show them some day their error in talking down to me like I was a baby who didn’t understand even the simplest facts. Mostly though I simply found them ridiculous and thought THEY were the ones who didn’t understand.
And being a kid myself, finding that adults kept underestimating my intellect, it made me think I was perhaps smarter than I really was.
As an adult I can see it was me who misunderstood – or shall we say, it was me who didn’t understand because they didn’t explain things sensibly.
I’ve never thought I couldn’t see the difference between People and Things, nor have I ever thought I treated Things and People the same. But that is because I have been looking at the wrong aspects of the meaning of ‘Differences’ and ‘Treating’.
In a sense I do in fact see People and Things as basically a variation over a fundamentally single theme. And I do treat them the same in that I have the same approach but use different methods.
Just like we don’t handle carefully kept garden flowers and the grass we walk upon the same, I do also not handle People and Things the same way because they have different qualities, and require different techniques of handling in order to arrive at the desired result.
So People and Objects are different. People speak, Objects do not.
But to me the Differences are Superficial. Everything ‘talks’ to you, but in different kinds of Languages.
Everything can be manipulated, but you have to understand the nature of what you’re dealing with i order to contrive the Reaction you’re looking for.
It is obviously easier to light a cigarette than it is to convince someone to go and buy cigarettes for you, because the lighter and the cigarette doesn’t argue.
But it this actually true? In a certain sense there is always a conflict or battle going on between fundamental ideas of phenomena. Fire will cause water to evaporate, or water will extinguish fire. It all depends on circumstantial construct. A good Intellect will provide the means to deduce, predict, set up and control a line of events.
This is true for everything, People, Things, Thoughts and Ideas.
That, which I have described here, is not a new concept. I was delighted when I realized philosophers of all times had written about these very ideas which I myself had arrived at. I thought it confirmed once again that I was right, and everybody else would therefore have to be in error.
And yet, eventually, as time went by and I had my Victories – one after the other, even as I was made to pay (prison, heh) – another kind of curiosity began to form within me.
Why did people persist with this idea about Good and Bad, morals and the underlying human connection called Empathy, if it was Merely Self Delusion?
I took memberships in several High IQ Societies, wondering if perhaps others with a ‘Gifted’ intellectual status would perhaps see things more like me.
What I found was that indeed, it does seem that more highly intellectually gifted individuals tend to see things like I do. But EVEN here did I find people who adhered to notions such as Christian Morals, and the majority knew of Remorse and Empathy.
When after this finding – less than two years ago as I began to research the definition of my diagnosis – I read a few of the many books there are about Psychopathy (a few, because I am heavily dyslexic) and found AGAIN those words I had heard so often as a child and a teenager: “Psychopaths treat People like Things”, that became the connecting factor which finally led me to understand why this notion is so prevalent and why we keep hearing it.
It is because that this is in fact what we do. It is what I have always done, and I have no idea about how else to do or understand things.
So let there be no doubt about it: We Psychopaths do See and Treat People and Objectss as fundamentally the same thing.
