I was eating lunch with a few colleagues today. A new colleague joined us — she was visiting from a different office. I’m on very good terms with everyone, so my relationship status and the quest for a perfect partner often come up in conversation, usually turning into humorous escapades. So naturally, it came up again, and I took it in jest.
The new colleague asked me a bit about where I’m from and a few other details, perhaps so she could set me up if she found someone. And of course, these are things people would want to know if they’re trying to understand you better in any way.
But something dawned on me hours later — an unexpected feeling of discomfort, even rage. While matchmaking, people ask and consider details like where we are from, how we look, where we studied, how much we earn, and so on. After some levelheaded thinking, I realized what vexed me was how extremely reductive all of this is of who anyone truly is.
Our place of birth, the colleges we attend, the religions we follow — these are just facts that happen to be. In reality, these details are insignificant in defining what kind of a man or woman a person is. So why do we live in a society that values such material coordinates over the actual personality of a person?
It made me wonder — wouldn’t it matter more how a person acts under pressure, what values they would impart to their child, or how they respond to differences in opinion? Shouldn’t these define compatibility far more than any surface-level detail?
And then it became clearer why we rely on such standards instead of ideas that actually define human worth. I believe the reason is the same as many other imperfect societal processes — it is simply more convenient. We are conditioned to use these tangible details as primary criteria because that’s how we’ve always seen society function. People rely on such questions not necessarily out of insensitivity, but because they lack the tools to perceive depth quickly. It becomes a substitute for a more demanding, thoughtful way of understanding others.
Society trains us to navigate relationships through shortcuts. Matchmaking becomes logistics first, meaning later. It is crude, disheartening — but not always malicious.
These basic facts — origin, location, background — become proxies for human worth, compatibility, and desirability. Our limited faculties of communication and expression translate something far more complex but do so (very) poorly.
Still, it is disappointing to observe a fundamental mismatch between the depth at which we can experience humanity, and the shallow coordinates society uses to navigate it. Once you notice it, it becomes difficult to ignore. Society flattens and reduces individual worth through pre-determined standards — it feels like compressing a symphony into a spreadsheet.
And then we must live within that system, be seen through its language, and even participate in it to survive… all the while knowing, with clarity, that it is inadequate.
Such a system, I believe:
- Forces reduction
- Normalizes superficial proxies
- Quietly erodes the recognition of inner life
The flaw becomes apparent when we see how modern societies rely on reduction to function at scale. Resumes, introductions, profiles, and matchmaking all follow the same logic — reducing the potential of human interaction into datasets instead of beings. This inevitably creates problems everywhere: mismatches in job roles, the commercialization of art and cinema, and even strain in romantic relationships.
The quiet cost of such a system is this: we are teaching people to look past each other before they ever learn how to look into each other.
And yet, there is no clear boundary violation here. No single actor to correct. The problem lies in how reality itself is structured — leaving behind a subtle but suffocating feeling of existing within a civilization we did not design.
Still, this is not merely an expression of displeasure on my part. There are valid reasons why society operates the way it does. We must face a hard truth: society does not exist to recognize us. It exists to coordinate large numbers of people, reduce complexity, and function at scale. Reduction is its operating system. That does not necessarily make it right — but it does make it inexorable.
And once we see this, something shifts. Society may never be the place where we are truly understood — individuals will be. Very few. Very slowly. Very selectively. We must learn to live fully in this world without asking it to validate our depth. The world is built for navigation, not recognition.
To be clear — I do not resent people for asking the wrong questions. I resent a world that never taught them better ones.
The reason I write this is simple: in my own little way, I hope to offer the world- a moment of self-reflection. Perhaps a few among us might begin to see the limitations of the system we so naturally accept.
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