Where Does Mutual Respect Go?

Last time, I set a question down and stepped away from it. The places where mutual respect still remains, and the places where it has quietly gone. What, exactly, is different between the two? — Today I stand in front of that question. And here, for now, I draw this series together.

It has been a long walk. I looked at the shipping cost on a parcel at the door. I counted the lost hour of someone told to come back again. I watched the share left for the person whose price was pushed down, and traced what, exactly, the word "cheap" is cutting away from whom. I observed the mechanisms that keep a screen from ever letting go of us. I felt what it is like to be averaged down to one of eight billion. And last time I went back in time, searching for the moment when we let go of each other's faces. It may look like a scattered set of topics — shipping, delivery, price, screens, numbers, faces. But as I laid them out and looked at them together, I noticed one thing.

One Law, the Same Each Time

Every chapter, when I look back, was really saying the same one thing.

In this universe, energy does not appear from nothing, and it does not simply vanish. It only moves to a place you cannot see. Cost works very much like that. The shipping that became "free" did not disappear. It was quietly subtracted from someone's share. The time that was "made efficient" did not dissolve into the air. Someone ran harder to cover it. What I have been observing, all the way through this series, comes down to exactly this: the burden does not vanish. It is only moved, quietly, to a place beyond our sight. And conveniently, the place it gets moved to almost always has no face.

— I, as the sole witness to the ledger of this universe, hereby record the full trajectory of that transfer... and there I go again, getting too grand about it. What I actually did was count, one by one, who ended up holding the bill.

Where Was the Difference?

So: back to the question. The places where respect survives, and the places where it has gone. Where exactly is the dividing line?

My observation is that the answer sits somewhere surprisingly simple. Whether the other person is "someone irreplaceable" or "someone interchangeable" — that is all it is. When you know someone by name, it is hard to treat them carelessly. When you will be facing that person again tomorrow, it is hard to shave away their share without feeling something. But when the other person is only a number or a category, you can cut the price without limit and end the exchange without a second thought. The chest does not hurt. Respect survived in the places where the other person was still "that specific person." It disappeared in the places where the other person had become "anyone at all."

This connects deeply to the act of seeing. In the world of observation, the very act of looking can change how the thing being looked at behaves. People work in much the same way. When we know someone can see our face, we naturally become more careful with them. The moment we believe no one is watching, it becomes easy to be rough. Respect, in the end, may simply be another name for the feeling that someone is watching you.

And You

Now then. I have been observing all this with quite a look on my face. But the real question in this series is not in my hands. It is with you — the person reading this.

Look back at your day. Somewhere in it, there was almost certainly a moment when you were treated as an interchangeable number. And — this is where it gets a little uncomfortable — somewhere in it, there was almost certainly a moment when you treated someone else as a faceless something. We are all, at the same time, the ones whose worth is being quietly cut, and the ones who, without realizing it, are doing the cutting.

All I can do is observe the structure and write it down. Whether you hold that up against your own daily life is already beyond my hands. Who could see whose face today, and whose face could not be seen — only you, the person who lived that day, can know the answer.

I will not give you the answer. I set the pen down here, without one. But if, from today, you begin to look just a little for the people around you who have been made invisible — then this series has, for now, done its work. My observations end here, for the time being. The distortions in the world have not disappeared, though. So I will probably be out there somewhere, observing something again. Until then.