I am Not a Resource!

The other day, in passing, I heard the following remark, "We're trying to get a few more resources for the project." A perfectly innocuous thing to say. What the speaker really meant was, "We're trying to get a few more people for the project." In today's corporate-speak, the term for people, human beings, is "resources", short, I surmise, for human resources. What strikes me first is that the word human has been eliminated from the phrase as somehow redundant. To give the coiners-of-terms some benefit of the doubt, I would conject that this dropping of the word human was simply a matter of convenience, of eliminating the implicitly understood word. However, I see this term as much more than simply an innocent case of drift in the English language.

The case I am making is that we need to preserve the differentiation between people and things that are not people. When we speak of a person, it is important to use terms that clearly alert the hearer that we are not talking about a load of gravel or a screwdriver. If we are to give respect and dignity to individuals, we must begin by recognizing in our communications the personhood of each human we discuss.

A resource is something we use, a thing without feelings, opinions or goals. A resource is a tool, a raw material or a finished product. A human resource, if we must use the term, is a sentient being, capable of love and hate, of doing good or evil, of being a friend or an enemy. At the core of all worthy value systems lies the belief in the intrinsic value of every human being. We, the humans who constitute the human resources of this world are fundamentally different from every other thing that exists. I do not believe it is unreasonable to add that an essential step in every slippery slope towards "man's inhumanity to man" is the de-humanization of the chosen victim group. This is not a diatribe against corporate America, but more of a wake up call. Remember your humanity. Begin by using terms that recognize the person as more than an inanimate object. Stop using terms that de-emphasize human worth and individuality.

I am not a resource. I am not a robot or a bag of nails or a cruise missile. I am a son, a father, a husband, an uncle, a cousin and a grandson. I am a programmer, a musician, a technician, a lover, an engineer, a student, a poet, a writer, a soldier, and a homebuilder. I am a dreamer. I am a human being.

Author: Bruce Neufeld
originally composed September 20, 2002