Note: This is part three of a three-part series. The first and second parts can be found here and here, respectively.

In the first two parts of this series, I focused almost entirely on the classic applications of affordances: how they affect our relationships with things. In this final installment, I’ll focus on perhaps the more important application of affordances: our relationships with people.

Social affordances, as I’ll call them, work much like other affordances: when we see a person, we make judgements about what we can or cannot do with them. Nearly every interaction we have is to some degree based in the affordances we give the people around us.

The Bad

Most of the time, social affordances are rather mundane: we view the delivery person as a delivery person, or the driver in the car next to us as a driver in the car next to us, and then move on with our day. We tend to see people as we’ve always seen them, just as we tend to see objects with the affordances we’ve always given them. This is generally just fine, and is how most of us go through life most of the time. It’s the neutral condition.

Unfortunately, it can be a slippery slope from neutral to negative. It’s just a driver, so we can flip them off and keep them out of our lane. They’re just service staff, so our needs come before theirs. We get caught up in what we want, and when people don’t accommodate us, we think we can treat them however we want. If we are too focused on power, prestige, and position we start to afford people only the status of a tool to get to the top. If a person can’t help us get there, we afford them nothing more than the status of an obstacle to be overcome.

More significantly, affordances are the basis of prejudice and discrimination. We see someone in a wheelchair and automatically afford them less capability and competence. We encounter someone with a speech disorder, or who simply struggles with our language, and automatically afford them less intellectual capacity. A homeless person may never be viewed as more than poor and homeless, and a prisoner may never be viewed as more than the crime they may have committed.

Racism, sexism, antisemitism, and all other forms of bigotry are rooted in affordances. Black people were barely viewed as human during times of slavery and segregation in the U.S., and even now there are those who afford them lesser status, lesser intelligence, and lesser abilities because of the color of their skin. Women have faced and still face similar issues, often afforded no more than subordinate domestic abilities or sexual status. Everything from large-scale acts of genocide to the most personal acts of rape and murder are affected by affordances, driven by dehumanization and objectification.

Fortunately, most of us do not commit genocide or rape or murder. Unfortunately, we all have biases that negatively affect our social interactions. Just like other affordances, social affordances are automatic and subconscious, at least initially. The societies we live in and the ways we are raised contribute to these biases, no matter what we may tell ourselves. Just like other affordances, though, we can evaluate and change them.

The Good

As mentioned before, most of the time, our social affordances are mundane and we live in the neutral condition. Sometimes, though, we are struck with what some have called sonder: the profound awareness that each person is more than a background character of our life story, and is instead a complete person with their own fears, hopes, struggles, and triumphs. It’s easy to have moments like this with people we know, because our lives constantly intersect and we know their fears and hopes and struggles. As a result, we tend to treat them better: we see the complexity of their circumstances and are a little more forgiving and understanding.

The lives of strangers, on the other hand, intersect ours only briefly, and what we tend to notice about them is how they affect our life. This leads us to be a little harsher, a little quicker to anger. We can’t see the full narrative, so we judge them only by the immediate circumstances. Those moments of awareness, however, give us perspective and remind us of their humanity. We afford them all the things we take for granted in ourselves.

But then the moment passes. We settle back into our habitual affordances. That person on the street is just a person on the street again. It takes effort to view everyone as fully human, because then we are obligated to treat them that way.

It is from this effort that goodness springs. We have felt pain and suffering, so we try to ease that of others. We see the struggles and, knowing the struggle ourselves, do what little thing we can to help. We take small moments to comfort, encourage, and console those we suspect need it, and they return it in kind. Affording others their humanity leads to the greatest acts of goodness.

I believe that the first test of a great man is his humility. I don’t mean by humility, doubt of his power. But really great men have a curious feeling that the greatness is not of them, but through them. And they see something divine in every other man and are endlessly, foolishly, incredibly merciful.

John Ruskin, emphasis added

Becoming

While social affordances work much like other affordances, there is one crucial difference: in addition to what we can do with them, we also afford people what they can do for themselves. (This was touched upon briefly when talking of prejudice and bigotry, since a major aspect of those is that we don’t think people can do or be more than they are now.) We see people not only as they are, but as we think they can become.

This is easy with children: “You can be anything you want!” But when we see people whose decisions have led them down less savory paths, we limit them. Leopards can’t change their spots. People don’t change. A convict is a convict and an addict is an addict. This is an important part of Les Misérables: Javert couldn’t see Valjean as anything but a criminal, but Bishop Myriel saw that, although he had acted criminally, Valjean could be more. Because of Myriel’s belief and love, Valjean became a great man.

So it is with us: when we see people not as the mistakes they’ve made but as the people they can become, we treat them better and we can help them fulfill that potential. It is as C.S. Lewis said:

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are helping each other to one or other of these destinations. … There are no ordinary people.

The Weight of Glory

Ourselves

Finally, others aren’t the only ones to whom we give affordances; all these things are true of ourselves as well. We are sometimes prone to treat others better than we treat ourselves. We are so painfully aware of our own shortcomings, vices, and indiscretions that we view ourselves solely in that light. We don’t forgive ourselves because we can only see ourselves as failures and phonies. We allow no room for growth, so we stagnate. We believe we can’t change, so we don’t.

We ask ourselves
Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God

– Marianne Williamson, Our Greatest Fear

C.S. Lewis’s words apply to us as much as they apply to others. The way we treat ourselves is as important as how we treat people around us. When we afford ourselves the potential for growth and greatness, we grow and become great.

Finally

Seeing past the standard, “normal” affordances of an object is the basis of creativity. The same is true of people, but instead of creativity we call it charity, or love, or compassion. Overcoming bias and seeing people, including ourselves, how they really are and how they really can be is what makes greatness.

So it is with God: He sees in us affordances we can scarcely dream of. He sees our potential, and knows that we are more than our careers, our mistakes, our weaknesses, our skills. He sees in us the limitless potential of deities. And we become more godlike, more divine, when we develop the ability to see beyond worldly labels and to see these same affordances in those around us. There are no ordinary people.