[labrador]

I used to be similarly lost in the drama of my own life, hanging on to things that I felt made me special. It's an ego trap in my opinion, as there are millions of people around us who have extrodinary lives that we never hear about. The word "sonder" applies:

Sonder is defined as the profound feeling of realizing that everyone, including strangers passing by on the street, has a life as complex and vivid as your own. They experience hopes, dreams, friendships, routines, worries and an inner life, all of which you'll likely never know about or fully understand.

The term was coined by John Koenig in The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, a compendium of newly invented words for powerful feelings that don't have a descriptive term in the English language.

I had a sponser do me a favor once and tell me "you're a special case of the same old thing." It helped me get over myself.

[dj_mc_merlin]

Counterpoint to that would be that no matter how interesting other people's lives may be, mine is still special because it's the only viewpoint I can actually have (before you hippies come at me I've done enough LSD and meditation and no I still only have my viewpoint). My dramas and problems are more important than everyone elses to me since I'm the one who has to deal with them. They're not more important in an objective sense, but I am not an objective creature living in the clouds.

[labrador]

My life is special to me too, but I don't feel like the main character anymore. My family appreciates my move out of self-absorption towards giving them the attention they deserve from me.

[anal_reactor]

I really don't know what to think. Sure, there's 8 billion people on Earth, the chances that I am the main character are tiny. But at the same time whenever I try treating people the same way I treat myself, I quickly get into misunderstandings and disappointments, and navigating the world with an assumption that most people are NPCs while just a handful are actual sentient beings has proven way more practical.

[hattmall]

There's no way to get around the feeling that many people are NPCs if you spend time in sterile urban or suburban environments. The amount of people whose existence consist of very little more than work to fuel consumption is really high.

On the contrary if you are in a place where no one really works a normal job and things you bought or paid money to do are rarely topics of conversation then the interactions feel much more living.

[beardedetim]

What if you try to treat people the way they want to be treated instead of how you want to be treated?

I think the "golden rule" has been often misinterpreted as " treat people how you want to be treated" which leads to this misunderstanding that you called out. If we change it to being empathetic towards them and treating them how they want to be treated, the NPCs seem to become fully fledged characters.

[anal_reactor]

> What if you try to treat people the way they want to be treated instead of how you want to be treated?

Then it's obvious that I'm not one of them because their needs and wants are different from mine.

[CPLX]

I bet they aren’t.

[labrador]

I know what you mean. Since I've been using ChatGPT4 and now Claude Opus to answer questions I think of while day dreaming, I find myself drifting further away from ordinary people. I don't know how to describe it yet. Maybe people who don't agument their thinking seem more like an NPC and say NPC like things?

I don't want to get to far out there, like in Kurt Vonnegut's "Breakfast of Champions." The protagonist wanted to kill himself because he thought everyone except him was a robot.

[animal_spirits]

Let's please reframe how bad it is to treat another person as an NPC. It is dehumanizing. It encourages losing focus on why people behave the way they do, rather than learning to hold empathy for the reality of life for the millions of people that surround us. Life isn't easy for many. Many don't have the opportunities to learn or are at least encouraged to do that.

[int_19h]

You can't truly empathize - on the emotional level - with lives of millions of people, even if they surround you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number

[labrador]

I think we're in agreement ITT that viewing others as NPCs is not good.

[FooBarBizBazz]

> Sonder is defined as the profound feeling of realizing that everyone, including strangers passing by on the street, has a life as complex and vivid as your own.

That's all? I always kind of assumed they had more going on. Hoped it, for their sakes.

[hattmall]

Do they though? I mean I certainly feel like the author's life has a lot more moving and disturbing parts than most people.

[_nalply]

"sonder" is a German word stem with the meaning of special, set apart, different.

One form is "besonders" which can be translated as particular, peculiar, unique.

In English maybe well known is "Sonderkommando" which can be translated as special troop.

[p3rls]

There's something gross about people trying to force this sonder neologism through but I can't put my finger on it I'm hardly a prescriptivist either

[labrador]

I think of The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows as an art project. I never got the impression that we were supposed to start using these words. It's interesting and entertaining, like when I learned the Czech word "litost" from "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting" by Milan Kundera. "Litost is a state of torment created by the sudden sight of one’s own misery."

Part five of this book is about Litost, a kind of misery-induced torment only known to the Czech people. You could see it is a Slavic thing.

https://fictionbeast.com/milan-kundera-the-unbearable-ligthn...

Something akin to how I felt trapped in my own drama

[p3rls]

Listen, if Robert Burton didn't see fit to include it in the Anatomy of Melancholy it doesn't exist. Same goes for all this DSM stuff. Doesn't exist.

[labrador]

Your knowledge cutoff is 1621. That's an interesting way to avoid modern misinformation.

[CPLX]

It’s a great word that evokes a very specific experience what’s not to like about it.

Is there some other way words are created besides people just sort of using them?

[weregiraffe]

I always think of Sonderkommandos when I see "sonder" in a page