People Are People

The most fundamental thing to remember when interacting with other human beings is that they are people, just like you. This shouldn’t be a heterodox statement, yet much of what’s published in the “how to flirt,” “how to network,” “how to be confident in social settings” thinkpiece space seems to center the experience of one person at the expense of the other. So here we are. If you’re engaging with another person, whatever your intentions with that person, remember that they are just as conscious, complicated, and three-dimensional as you are. Other people are not a game to be played, they’re not a lever to be pulled, they’re not an exotic puzzle to figure out, they’re not a monster to be fought or NPC to be exploited. We might, at times and in some contexts, necessarily abstract away the full complexity of human-to-human interpersonal dynamics (in highly formalized work environments where it’s prudent to operate as a node in a larger system and to treat others the same, for…