From an existentialist perspective, resolutions cannot work, because existentialism holds that human beings are free to choose in any given moment. In their radical freedom, they cannot be bound by resolutions made in the past. No matter what I resolve today, I am always free to have that extra piece of cake, to make another charge on my credit card, or to sit on the couch instead of going for a walk. In each situation, I am free to do or not to do. I am confronted with a choice and with the anxiety that comes with the freedom I have to make that choice.

In Being and Nothingness, Jean-Paul Sartre gives the example of a compulsive gambler who resolves to quit gambling. When he encounters the gaming table again, the gambler finds that his resolve vanishes. The resolution he made is of no help to him in making the choice to gamble or not to gamble. His choice is in no way bound by his resolution.

Resolutions are one form of what Sartre called bad faith. Bad faith is denying that I have a freedom to choose. It is saying that I could not have helped doing what I did or not doing what I did in a particular situation. We want to bind ourselves with our resolutions. We want to believe that by making resolutions, we will put ourselves on a predetermined path of progress toward our objective, but we cannot bind ourselves. Nothing can. We are always free. And for most people, that is not good news. Most of us would rather flee from our freedom and not be burdened with the anxiety that accompanies making our own choices.

The good news is that, though we are not bound by our resolutions, we are still always free to choose what is best for us.

Carl Norman
Idaho USA

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Two weeks ago, I asked to be returned to the area where I worked with my good friend. Instead of being returned to that area, I was assigned to another focus factory. I had not asked to be sent to that focus factory. Had I been given a choice, I would not have accepted the new assignment. As in the previous case, I was not consulted on whether I wanted to make that move. Basically, I have been treated like a child. I am very distraught over having been reassigned from a work station where I was working with a good friend.

I don’t care what job I do, what hours I work, or how many hours I work, if I’m working with someone I really like, as I was two work stations ago. I feel that my friend and I were robbed of an enjoyable work situation by our involuntary separation, and I am peeved that my efforts to be returned to the work station, where we were happy together, have been thwarted.

This regrettable situation can be traced back to the final day of my participation in a kaizen event facilitated by a lean six sigma person. At one point, there was a lull in the conference, when no one was saying anything. In an effort to get discussion going, I asked, “What’s going on?” The green belt lean sigma facilitator asked me if I wanted to go to my work station on the factory floor. This facilitator’s question had nothing to do with what I had asked. I was as much a participant in the event as anyone else in the conference and saw no reason why I should be dismissed to work on the factory floor on what was my regular day off just because I had asked a question to get the discussion moving again. I felt that the green belt lean sigma facilitator was being disrespectful toward me, and I objected to going back to the factory floor.

At that point, a team leader asked me to go with her to the work station on the factory floor. I left the conference area, and went out into the hall with her. Once in the hall, I told her that I hated doing that job on the factory floor. In fact, I had experienced frustration in that job, but at the time, I was mostly angry about the way the lean sigma facilitator wanted to dismiss me from the group by sending me out to the factory floor just because I had asked a simple question. The lean sigma facilitator had been extremely disrespectful toward me.

And now, because of that one incident, I have been deprived of working with a very good friend in what was a great working relationship. If I were still working with this friend, I wouldn’t care what job we were doing, how many hours we had to work, or what hours we worked as long as we were working together. Thanks to my employer, my friend and I have been robbed of the gratifying experience of working together. I hope the two of us will work together again, soon. If not, I may terminate my employment early next year. I don’t want to work for an employer that separates me from my friends. And if I do decide to leave my employer, I will be more specific about the events I have related here, and I will use my writing skills and considerable Internet presence to air my grievances to the world.

Carl Norman
Idaho USA

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What, then, does it mean to be a human resource in the context of a corporate environment? To be a human resource is to be a means to achieve the ends of the corporation one serves. And the end of corporations is to realize a profit for the shareholders. Therefore, to be a human resource is to be one of many resources used to realize corporate profits. In the corporate context, a human resource has utility like all the other resources used to generate profits. Insofar as a resource contributes to the bottom line, it is retained. When it ceases to do so, it is discarded. A human resource is reduced to mere utility. As a resource within the corporate structure, a human being has no more value than the raw materials and machines used in a production process. What it means to be human is reduced to being a mere means to the achievement of corporate ends. The human qua human disappears.

The corporation has no concern for the human as human. It cares nothing for the aspirations of the humans it regards as resources. By its very nature, the corporation is incapable of caring. The corporation will utilize human resources in the same way it utilizes all of its other resources to maximize revenue and minimize cost. If that requires working its human resources long hours, it will do so. The corporation does not care what toll working long hours has on family life or how it hinders pursuit of individual goals. The corporation cares only about maximizing profits. To the extent that persons internalize the corporate culture, become immersed in it, and accede to its demands for conformity, they become less and less like humans and more and more like machines.

A machine does not ponder the meaning of its existence or question whether its assigned tasks serve its own ends. A machine does not entertain the notion that the corporation it serves may not be worthy of its loyalty, nor does a machine reflect that its energy and talent might be better devoted to ends other than those embraced by its employer. For these reasons, corporations prefer machines to humans, and will replace human beings with machines, whenever possible. Machines don’t ask questions or look elsewhere for employment.

As our economy is currently structured, millions of people must work for corporations to secure their physical survival. This arrangement of being reduced to a corporate resource daily assaults the humanity of those who are employed in it. Retaining a semblance of humanity under these conditions requires vigilance and resourcefulness. The corporate assault on one’s humanity must be resisted, if one is to retain any semblance of dignity.

Carl Norman
Idaho USA

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I don’t know what the movie is going to be like. I haven’t seen it yet. I expect I will like it, because I’m a fan of Hunter S. Thompson. Roger Ebert gave the movie a bad review. It’s clear from his review that Ebert is no fan of Thompson. He writes that Thompson wrote some “memorable prose,” most of which was turned in late. Tardiness is a quality that would be detrimental in a journalism career. But I’m not an editor. I’m a reader. Hunter S. Thompson was a rebel and a very good writer. He drank a lot of booze, and was a heavy drug user. I think his substance abuse was his way of coping with a world that has basically gone insane. The world is not normal, and the best among us cannot be expected to adjust to the inhumanity and degeneracy that thrives beneath the veneer of normalcy and respectability. I look forward to the antics that I expect will be featured in this film and the bazaar behavior that Roger Ebert so obviously detests.

I’d better get going. The movie starts in half an hour.

Carl Norman
Idaho USA

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I do not fit well into those tidy boxes on the flow charts. I don’t move along straight and narrow paths. I prefer a path of deviation and adventure to following predetermined roads to carefully defined ends. I don’t work well with an end in view. I’d rather experiment, and see what happens next. I follow a perilous path where outcomes are uncertain. I do make use of the products produced according to carefully defined procedures. The iPad I use to compose my posts is only one such product. I’m a beneficiary of planners, engineers, and project managers. I am appreciative of what they make possible, but I am not one of their number. I don’t belong in the planning room, the boardroom, or on the production line. All of those places are alienating to me. They are stultifying and limiting. My heroes and role models are not of their number. I don’t believe that a person can realize their humanity by adapting to a management culture or an assembly line.

I identify more with the rebels like Jack Kerouac, Jim Morrison, Charles Bukowski, and Hunter S. Thompson. The managers and the planners be damned.

Carl Norman
Idaho USA

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The only thing that has kept me in this job is fear that I will not find another way to generate the income I need to live, but I believe this fear is unjustified. I have far more capabilities than could ever be utilized in this dead end assembly job. Surely, I can do better. There is no reason I cannot. The unemployment rate is high, but I can still do better. It doesn’t matter who is president or which party controls Congress. I can do better. It doesn’t matter that politics is corrupted by powerful corporations. I can do better. I am a strong, capable, intelligent, resourceful individual, and I can do much better than work on a production line as a cog in a stultifying position
that offers me no chance for being creative and innovative in ways important to me.

This is my life. It belongs to me. I’m not a human resource to be exploited by the corporate machine. There are better ways for me to make a living. There ways I can thrive. I can surpass the mere struggle for survival that is the guiding principle of those who blindly submit to being drones on a production line. In spite of everything, this is still America, and I can write my own Declaration of Independence.

Carl Norman
Idaho USA

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The previous Saturday, I worked mandatory overtime over my straightforward objections. On that day, another coworker who regularly volunteered for overtime said, “The one thing I’ve learned in five years of working here is that September is a busy month.” He said it with a certain amount of pride, as if his acquisition of this knowledge were an indication of wisdom, insight, and maturity. I wondered whether this one thing he had learned was the only thing or the most important thing he had learned in the last five years. Had he ever asked himself whether there were more important things worth knowing than the fact that September was a busy month at our place of employment? Had he ever asked himself whether working on a production line was worth the commitment of twelve hour days, seven days a week? Did he ever stop to consider that the time he spent building products for a company whose ends were not his own was time that he could use for more human endeavors? Did he ever consider that there might be projects outside of factory work that could add greater quality to his life than the additional dollars he got from working inordinate amounts of overtime?

Overtime narrows focus to bigger paychecks. Long hours on the job do not allow the time for reflection that gives the opportunity for seeing possibilities outside one’s work. The overtime drone is where the company wants an employee to be. The overtime drone has difficulty imagining himself or herself as being anything other than an employee of the company. To the extent that they work overtime, overtime drones become less human and more and more like the machines they operate to perform their tasks. Their imaginations, intelligence, and feelings become stifled. They truly fit the telling term “human resource.” They have submerged their humanity into the inhuman production process.

Carl Norman
Idaho USA

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A lot is going through my mind. I’m still wound up from my hours of work the previous five days. How do I best use this time off? How do I use it to my maximum advantage? Some of my coworkers volunteer for overtime. To me, working overtime is a terrible waste of time. I want time to be human, and my work does not nourish my humanity. I could chug down my coffee, put my laundry away, and get to my walk. I wanted to write something first. Writing, like walking, also helps my to clear my head. Writing helps me to clarify my thinking and organize my priorities, and it allows me to express myself in a manner that work would never allow. There is power and self-assertion in writing.

Walking exercises my body. It gets me out of my living quarters. It, too, is a form of self-assertion. I feel more alive, when I walk. I feel more in control of myself and my life. I like to breath in the air and get the blood flowing through by body. And I do a lot of thinking, when I walk. I think about what’s important to me and what is not. I think about the direction I want my life to go. Lately, I have been taking a very different route, while on my walks. I think this symbolizes my strong desire for me to take a different route in life. I need to get off the worn trail that is taking me to a place I don’t want to be. I want to pursue my own goals and not someone else’s. I want to devote my energy to what I value rather than devoting 12 hour work days plus overtime to what I detest. I am in a rebellious mood. I want to overthrow the tyrants in my life. I want to walk away, to turn my back on them and never see them again. I want to be my own person, finally.

Carl Norman
Idaho USA

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Dear President Obama,

When you ran for president in 2008, you pledged to protect Social Security. I urge you to honor that pledge and to not agree to cuts in Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid as a part of any budget negotiating process. These are successful programs, and millions of Americans depend on them.

There is no justification for including Social Security security in any budget negotiations, as it is self-funding and not a part of the federal budget. Any budget deal that includes cuts to Social Security would be egregious and unconscionable. The Republicans and their Wall Street allies want to eliminate Social Security as it currently exists and convert it to a private system that would enrich stock brokerage firms and put millions of Americans at risk. I do hope you will not agree to this nefarious scheme. I’m counting on you to honor your campaign pledge to protect Social Security.

Sincerely yours,

Carl Norman
Idaho USA

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No worker will be required to perform mandatory overtime as a condition of employment. Any time an employer requests that an employee work overtime, the employer shall make it expressly clear that the overtime is strictly voluntary and that a refusal to work overtime will have no adverse impact on the employee’s employment status. Coercion, intimidation, subterfuge, equivocation or any form of deceit used in an attempt to induce an employee to work overtime is forbidden. Overtime is defined as any hours worked in excess of eight hours per day or in excess of forty hours per week.

Employees shall not be required to work on legal holidays. If employees volunteer to work on a legal holiday, they shall be paid holiday pay at a rate equivalent to eight hours of regular pay plus two times their regular hourly pay rate for each hour worked.

Requiring workers to perform mandatory overtime is a felony punishable by a term of imprisonment of up to five years for each offense plus a minimum of $25,000 fine. One offense is defined as requiring one worker to work one hour of overtime or any portion thereof.

Requiring workers to work on legal holidays is a felony punishable by a term of imprisonment of up to five years for each offense plus a minimum of $25,000 fine. One offense is defined as requiring one worker to work one hour or any portion thereof on a legal holiday.

2. Workers have the right to organize unions and engage in collective bargaining. Workers have the right to conclude agreements with employers that require all employees to be members of their union as a condition of employment with that employer. Workers have the right to go on strike.

3. No employer shall have more than 15% of its work force be comprised of temporary workers at any one time. Temporary workers shall enjoy the same pay rate and benefits as regular employees. No employer shall employ a worker as a temporary employee for more than 90 days without converting that employee to regular full-time status. No employer shall dismiss a temporary worker to avoid converting that worker to regular full-time status. Temporary employees have the same right to join a union and engage in collective bargaining as all other employees. Temporary workers have the right to go on strike.

4. All employees will be receive at least thirty continuous days of paid vacation per year.

5. All employers are forbidden from exporting jobs outside the United States.

6. Employees are not bound by any arbitration agreement as a condition of employment. All employees have the right to sue their employers in a court of law.

Carl Norman
Nampa, Idaho USA

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