Taking Human Out

This post from Skyler Frink at Military & Aerospace Electronics has been sitting with me for a couple of days. It describes the way we discuss (market) the weapons that ultimately kill people by removing the human element of our targets. Rather than stating the weapon is used to kill people, Skyler makes the point that we reduce the living, breathing, person to an enemy target that may as well be a rock, tree or germ.

It's interesting to me because we as a society are very good at disassociating the human element from any corporation, strategy, or tool. How many times have you blamed a corporation for poor customer service when in fact the poor customer service came from a person and that the corporation responsible for the bad experience is made up of people.

This post from Skyler makes me realize that we have become very good at absolving ourselves from the decisions we make by removing the human factor out of the equation. By doing so corporations become entities larger than ourselves - corporations provide bad customer service, drugs make people sick, and weapons are responsible for killing.

It may just be language, but ultimately we have a role to play in this and its something that I believe should be carefully considered as it impacts how we view the world and make decisions.