Fighting Selfishness

I remember, growing up, thinking at times "What if everyone else is a robot, and I'm the only real person?" Aside from showing my absolute nerdiness, I don't think questions like that are really very useful. It's impossible to disprove, like "What if this is all a dream?" or "What if I'm in the matrix?", but in the end, it's just silly. We know it's not true. But I think, more often than we realize, we feel that it's true, or something like it.

One of the greatest aspects of human intelligence, and a big field in AI research, is our ability to categorize. We take specifics in our surroundings, and apply them to a general category, matching patterns and making predictions. When you pick an apple off a tree and prepare to bite into it, you have a good idea what it will taste like. You've never tasted that specific apple, and know nothing about it, but you've categorized it. You have reason to believe it fits the "apple" category, and will have all the flavors that go with it. Sometimes that sort of reasoning leads you astray (there's a bad apple in every bunch, OH the puns burn), but we couldn't function without it.

We do the same thing with people. You can never be sure, whether you're just meeting someone or have known him your whole life, what his next action will be. But that doesn't mean everything has to be a complete surprise: people, like anything else, can fall into categories, and from them we can make educated guesses about their behavior. The more you know about someone, the deeper that category gets, but it's always going to be a little shallow.

So we have these categories: Republican, Democrat, Christian, Atheist, black, white, etc. We try to fit people into boxes of useable size, and in some sense feel like we've "figured them out." As an extreme, take political propaganda. Republicans as naive gun-toting hicks. Democrats as pansy snobbish idealists. Christians as willfully ignorant, out of touch with the world. Atheists as evil conspirators incapable of a selfless act.

Contrast that to what we see in ourselves. That inner light we have, consciousness, is an amazing thing. Within your memory is stored an innumerable amount of thoughts, perceptions, and emotions. You are constantly evaluating the world around you, weighing millions of hypotheticals, and making difficult decisions without batting an eye. You are (or at least, feel) completely free, to think and act however you wish. And you try (for the most part) to take the best actions possible. You see yourself as inconceivably complex, beyond any stereotype. Whether you'd admit it or not, there are times when you feel much more real than anyone else. It's only natural: you know yourself best, and can see your innermost thoughts, while in everyone else you just have rough actions to guide you.

But imagine a world where we saw everyone in the same light we see ourselves. If I could walk through a crowd of strangers, and really feel that all of them are experiencing thoughts, feelings, sensations, and memories, as deeply as I experience my own. That every action they take and belief they hold, has been thought through and carefully chosen. That they share the same light of consciousness that I do. It's an overwhelming thought, but a powerful one.

How could we begin to shrug off the enormity of suffering in the world? How could we see a person in need and, knowing that they feel pain as deeply as we do, not help? How could we buy the partisan crap from either side of any argument, telling us that all opponents are blind to obvious answers, are fueled by only selfish motives, or are simply "stupid"? Political parties, unified only in strawmen and cliched phrases, would crumble. Wars fought over abstract ideas like "country" or "race" or "religion" would be impossible: those convenient categories would be empty, and not worth the snuffing out of a single human life.

Of course, that will never happen. It's too easy to put a person's humanity in a shallow box, to manipulate or ignore as we see fit. And if we do manage to put everyone in simple categories, we can feel completely sovereign. The temptation is too strong. That it's even possible, in any degree, is a testament to the miracle of love.

I may never completely practice what I preach. But to the best of my ability, I'd like to try. And that means recognizing that everyone around me is of the same infinite worth, and warrants the same respect I'd give myself. It means forgetting the slogans and hateful bashing, and fighting to see the good in everyone, and the merit in their opinions. It's hard to do, especially in a world full of cynicism. But it's the truth.