Chapter 6: The Ghost in the Machine

If we do not actively work to break the illusion of our own central importance, we don’t just lose empathy for others; we eventually lose our own sense of reality.

The Feedback Loop of One

When you treat the world as a background for your own life, you begin to live in a vacuum. A mind that refuses to acknowledge the “aliveness” of others eventually stops receiving new or challenging data. You become trapped in a feedback loop where the only voice that matters is yours. This leads to a specific kind of modern rot: a person who is surrounded by people but is effectively alone, shouting into a void of their own making.

The Erosion of Accountability

The social contract relies on the belief that the person across from you is “real” enough to be harmed. If you lose that belief, accountability disappears. This is where we see the rise of “main character” behavior in public spaces—the person playing loud music on a train or being verbally abusive to a clerk. They aren’t being “mean” in their own head; they are simply interacting with objects that they don’t believe have feelings.

The Cost of Convenience

We have traded the richness of human connection for the convenience of indifference. It is easier to live in a world of ghosts because ghosts don’t ask for anything. They don’t require your time, your money, or your emotional labor. But a world of ghosts is a cold place. By refusing to see others as “actually alive,” we inadvertently turn ourselves into ghosts as well—drifting through a reality that we no longer feel a part of.