People as Objects, People as People

So today I started this book called The Anatomy Of Peace. Man, I am only on chapter five of this book and I have already learned a lot.
Imagine looking at people and not seeing dreams, goals, insecurities, etc. Rather you see something that has been put on this earth to serve your every whim. Only they don't. No, these frustrating autonomous . . . things, don't do what you want them to. Closer examination finds that these. . . entities have feelings and thoughts. And worse yet, they have had a childhood which means that they have. . . IDEAS. And not just a few, mind you, these drones have ideas about everything. And to top it off they want to push these ideas onto you. Who do they think they are? Trying to make you think the way that they do! BAH!
"FALL IN!" your mind screams at them. Anger and frustration seeps out of you. Frustrated you beat these belligerent people with an emotional wet noodle. Eyes closed you start swinging for the fence. One connection, Two! Suddenly you feel a nice breeze coming off of your emotional weapon. What happened? You look around and are utterly alone, save that cricket looking at you in the corner whimsically. He blinks, you blink, he blinks, you blink, he shrugs his shoulders and hops away unscathed by beast in the center of the room.

So come to find out that this is no way to view people. And while this is a vilification of my perceived self, this realization of who I was was like hitting myself with that same wet noodle. Do you ever feel like that? I have learned so much in this last year and even now i feel like the high-rise building of my leadership journey keeps having its workers accidentally nose dive off of the skeleton frame of the building.

Back to what I was talking about. I want to just quote the most powerful part of this book. It is on page 29. Here goes:

"In the way we regard our children, our spouses, neighbors, colleagues, and strangers, we choose to see others either as people like ourselves or as objects. They either count like we do or they don't. In the former case, since we regard them as we regard ourselves, we say our hearts are at peace toward them. In the later case, since we systematically view them as inferior, we say our hearts are at war."

This hit me like a ton of bricks. I have been at war with others like you would not believe. I thought before that it just meant that I was trying to hurt others. This is not the case. A deep inspection of who I am really made me understand that I see people as objects. I am not going to go into why this is right now. Partly because of time, partly because I don't want to create excuses. So for those of you reading that may have been a victim of my wild-swinging-closed-eyed-rampage please forgive me. You are important and I love you all.