Objectifying in the Name of Productivity
Coaching is big right now. There’s coaching for just about everything.
For instance, I have a good friend who’s a Porn coach.
I should clarify. He’s not an “intimacy consultant” on seedy sets in Hollywood. He actually coaches people leaving – or impacted by – porn addiction.
What’s a major critique of pornography?
Objectification.
And we all do it.
- We objectify cyclists on the road, reducing them to cockroaches interfering with our beautiful drive. Yes. Cockroaches.
- We objectify broader human suffering when we get lost in the numbers.
- We objectify the idiot who posted an un-informed meme and thereby revealed their political affiliation…that differed from our perfect views.
And that’s just my short list.
It’s all over our culture. Pornography happens to be an extreme example.
What about at work, where we actually do it more?
I know I can easily slip into a task or mission-focus, and quickly see the people involved as objects. A friend recently pointed out that I – and many others – are particularly good at it because of such “flipping of the switch” in combat.
What about clients or customers? The funny story gets demeaning. The medical staff laughs about the unconscious patient.
And our bosses? A boss once told me I was a hard person to lead. He was right. I held my leaders to impossibly high standards attainable only by gods or robots.
Of course, there are legitimate, dispassionate realities at work. We have key objectives, after all. And those have very real, very human implications.
The issue is when we morph the humans into objects as well.
The Army has an expression – “Mission first. People always.”
People Always. It’s part of our leader model at Outsider.
