The Triangle of Other People

It is a common piece of advice in these parts to "treat people like ends, not an object." (Especially dating advice.) Even if you haven't heard of it that way, you've probably heard some dichotomy about treating people like an object (bad) versus... not doing that (good!)

This is a good starting place for authentic relationships, but integrity insists that it's not really truthful. It's missing quite a lot.

For starters, what does it mean to treat people as "an ends?" The dichotomy proposed here is that when you treat people like objects that's selfish, whereas doing things for the good of others is the "right way."

But in reality, generosity and objectifying are two different things, on two different axes. The father who literally whips his boy into shape is doing it "for his son's own good" (or at least believes this), but we would object strongly to this. And we all know someone who has obsessed over and intruded on a crush, believing with all their heart the target of their affection would be so happy and better off if they agreed to date.

I think the spirit this advice is trying to convey is not just about "for the sake of others" but that we should think of them more like we think of ourselves, than as objects without free will or self-knowledge. They have the right to make decisions with full knowledge, and when they have spoken for their preferences we should not question them as if we know better.

I would call this treatment Agentic. We treat them like fellow agents in the game of life.

Now, agentic treatment is not always the same as good or selfless. When someone absolutely chews you out in a bitter tirade, the agentic response is to believe "they must hate me" and a more objectifying response might be "they're low on blood sugar, feeling stress from other life events, and possibly only two years old. They don't really mean it." If we are honest, there are many cases in life when it is more generous to see someone as an object under various pressures, than to take every word they say seriously.

It's a very tricky balance, and when uncertain you should probably lean towards agentic treatment. But also sometimes our friends really need a coffee before we continue this tense discussion. (And sometimes you are an object too and you should treat yourself as such.)

If someone says they want sushi for lunch, even though you know they've always been disappointed in sushi when they got it, you have the choice of treating them like an object (refusing sushi) or like an agent (getting sushi.)

But there's another entire angle of how to treat people: as Ideals. An object is a something less than us, that we want to get something practical from (money, a vote, sex, etc) and we would then discard. But sometimes we see people as more than that - people represent ideals in our head. Our crush may not be on the actual person, and it may not be about wanting them for kisses, but about seeing them as an ideal of beauty or innocence or acceptance or stability. We don't want them to DO something for us, we want them to BE something for us, perfect and pure.

In common parlance, it's "putting someone on a pedestal."

Unfortunately, ideals are simple and people are complex, and this is a horrible format of how to treat them. Often they don't know that they represent this thing, or don't want to if they knew. Representing someone's "only hope of romantic acceptance" is a very heavy burden to bear, and most wise people shy away from that.

And even if you were okay with it... ideals are simple and durable, while humans are complex and fragile. You will fail to live up to this ideal, and then the giver of this affection will become disappointed and bitter. And if they are not able to deal with that, then they will lash out at you. When you have used up an Object, you just ignore it - but when an Ideal is broken, you want to destroy it. Sometimes that is a whole lot worse.

Ideal isn't always bad - your parent or your boss or a superstar probably wants to be an ideal. But when it gets bad, it gets really bad.

Now, in a simple world I would just say there is a spectrum from Object to Ideal and Agentic lies in the happy middle. But I don't see any reason that's actually true, so we get something more like this ugly chart.

I even made a small dot for what I consider "the best position to be in, on average." Though circumstances will vary widely in the best response.

An example of the explanatory power of this triangle. In the Nice Guy Discourse Wars of a decade ago, there was always confusing dissonance at "players treat girls like objects to be used up, whereas I want to worship her. Why is all the online anger at me?" And I think part of that is because many women knew that if they weren't going to be treated like agents, they'd rather be objects than ideals.