Happy Sunday, all!

Today I think we’ll go for philosophy, and why not start inflammatorily:

[Holy smokes, apparently inflammatorily a word. Who would have thought?]

Here we go: I don’t think The Golden Rule is relevant anymore. Treating others as you would like to be treated is bad advice.

The spirit isn’t bad, of course. It lines up pretty well with my personal views on the universe’s grand mysteries. I think we’re all various manifestations of one initial “source.” Quite literally, I believe you and I are the same being, similar to how cells in both my left and right hands are part of the same “me.”

But that’s philosophy. The golden rule is meant to apply to morality—decisions made every day. And while I’d like for my philosophies to carry through to my daily life (and maybe even into yours), it’s a lot to ask. The philosophy is a little too abstract, and, to be honest: I don’t believe it strongly enough for it to influence many of my decisions.

A good morality rule can be asked and answered in everyday situations.

Putting yourself in the shoes of every single person you interact with—really imagining that they’re you living another life—is too much. It’s a fairly in-depth mental exercise to practice that much empathy, and acting on it requires an insane amount of faith in the idea.

Imagine seeing yourself in every person who asks for a handout on the street; every driver who cuts you off; every client who demands too much; every boss, bartender, and ex-boyfriend who tick you off. Imagine empathizing with every troll on the internet.

And then giving them the time and energy you yourself would appreciate.

If you did that, you literally wouldn’t have time for anything else. We’re exposed to thousands upon thousands of people every day (thanks, Internet). If you were to really picture and treat every single person as yourself, your whole life would be spent abiding by the one rule.

That’s monk shit. While admirable, we can’t all do it. Life would grind to a halt as we make sure each other have what they need.

So here’s my rule: treat everyone as if they were human.

It sounds like a nothing rule, but here’s the thing: I don’t think we actually believe the people we see on the streets (and especially online) are human. Not really. Not in the same way that you and I, and our friends and family, are human. Others are like second-class citizens in the stories of our lives.

I call them NPC’s.

An NPC, in video games, is a Non-Playable Character. They’re the figures who stand off to the side of the main paths you travel down, repeating rote dialogue and pre-programmed movements. They’re filler. They give quests or items or provide background information that may or may not be useful later—maybe some directions or a boring history of the environment. Sometimes they say something as benign as, “I used to be an adventurer too, until I took an arrow to the knee.” (If you don’t get that reference, good for you—just know that it’s somehow one of the most-famous video game lines ever.)

Every video game world is littered with NPC’s. The first time you play a game, you might (like a child) be tempted to talk to everyone. You can’t differentiate who’s important and who’s not. You think every character was designed and deliberately placed in the world with a story to tell.

Give it twenty years though, and you realize most of them are just a distraction. A nice-to-have—adding some depth and flavour to the experience—but ultimately unimportant.

Let me bring this analogy to the real world in steps:

First let’s go with a big game like World of Warcraft. Based on a quick (and possibly inaccurate) search, it looks like there are 150,000 NPC’s in the world. Then, in any one area you might be in, there might be 200 human players, and 10 who are in your personal “guild.”

Here, there’s a sliding scale to how real someone is.

An NPC may as well be a pile of rocks—not even close to real.

Those 200 people, mostly chat-spamming things like “buy my materials,” are just barely more than mindless NPC’s.

Only your guild-mates are seen as real people (if you’re a good teammate, at least). They’re the only ones you treat with respect. You know them. You know there’s a real person behind the dark-elf avatar. You know they have full lives with jobs and families. You know they have their own unique thoughts and opinions.

Everyone else? They just round out the world you’re in.

We can use that same scale IRL (in real life—figured I’d just keep rolling with the internet terms).

People beyond arms reach: bus drivers, food service workers, fellow commuters, internet commenters, the people walking too slow on the sidewalk—they’re all NPC’s. They’re real in that they serve a purpose; they further our story or present an obstacle. But they’re not real real—not like we are. As far as we’re concerned: they only exist since they happen to be within our own personal bubble. As soon as we walk another 100m, they might just de-spawn.

Then we have people within our outer circles like un-loved colleagues, friends-of-friends, or that family member you see once a year. We do know they exist in some capacity—they seem to do things when we’re not around, at the very least—but they barely make the cut of what we consider to be a real person. We aren’t fully convinced they’re fully fleshed out, sentient beings with thoughts, feelings, and lives of their own.

Only our closest friends and family are ever counted as our equals. We see something different in them. We know there’s something special going on behind their eyes. We see a spark of life—something special and familiar to us. We know that they, just like us, are real. Whatever makes us us—they’ve got that too.

If I were Catholic (or lazy) I’d call it a soul.

Instead, I’m a gamer, so I just call it being human vs being a bot.

And so that’s my golden rule: treat everyone as if they were a real human—as real and conscious as I am—instead of just filler. Behind all the characters we see walking around are conscious beings. There’s another layer of awareness—like the real person behind that elf.

I get that comparing people to poorly-designed computer characters is pretty callous. I assume many people out there (yourself included) are “better than me” at empathizing with strangers around them.

I don’t believe my experience is that alien though—I just have new language to describe the phenomenon based on my 10,000+ hours online.

I see the contrast between inner-circles, outer-circles, and fringe characters more clearly because I have lived in worlds where those lines are very clearly drawn. And by adding a touch of hyperbole, I can expose some added depth to our lack of compassion and provide a new lens to hopefully do better:

See and treat people as humans. I don’t think that’s too much to ask of ourselves.