Keeping human resources human (1)

By Ignas Kleden

This is the first of two articles probing the link between human resources and development.

JAKARTA (JP): Human resources is already a household term in this country but it gains a new political importance for the second 25-year development plan starting in 1994.

First, there is a shift in political emphasis from natural resources to human resources. Second, the population as such is seen no more as merely a national burden but rather as national assets, on which a country can economically capitalize.

Human resources gained importance when natural resources- strapped developed countries turned out to be very successful economically. Pride does not come from the fact that a country has rich natural resources any more but, rather, that the people of the country are able to make intelligent use of resources.

We have also learned that, unlike natural resources, which cannot be produced and reproduced, human resources can be produced through effective and efficient educational programs.

Why are human resources so important? One answer from the economic point of view is that, through the intervention of qualified human resources, a country can provide goods and services with added value, which can be transposed into commodity for sale.

This is, quite evidently, the line of industrial logic, whereby human resources are treated more or less as a link in the chain of production process.

Education is expected to match the requirements of industrial production and to link the academic qualities with those needed in the labor market. In this context it is only logical if one raises the question as to whether or not those who are involved in the educational process can be made "ready for use" as far as it pertains to the industrial needs, or "ready for sale" as far as the labor market is concerned.

Two terms seem to need more serious scrutiny if we want to deal with the question of human resources adequately, namely training and education. Training is basically a closed term, which implies a fairly limited meaning. It points to the effort to isolate certain human capacities and to concentrate on them, while sorting out provisionally, or temporarily, other capacities which are not relevant for the purpose of the training. Football players in a training center, for example, have to put aside their other occupations and concentrate for a certain period of time merely on football.

On another level, students of sociology or technology, who are trained at universities, have to give most of their time and energy to those subject matters, leaving aside other sorts of occupation which might equally interest them. This concentrated effort is needed because they have to obtain certain skills and know-how in a limited period of time, so they can provide the labor market goods and services with added value.

In short, training has to do with the isolation of certain human capacities to be developed. It has to be consummated in a certain period of time, and it serves to give added value to goods and services.

In contrast to that, education is an open concept which points to the development of as many human capacities as possible. It rests on the assumption that all talents given by nature are there to be promoted and actualized for the simple reason that human beings are not given but are made.

What a man or a woman is to produce is not goods and services in the first place, but rather his-or herself.

If training tends to treat the individual development as a closed process, which can be contained within certain confines consisting of certain needs and requirements, education keeps the process open, in order to liberate the individual development from any containment.

Whereas training can be completed within a certain period of time, education is a life-long project and even a never-completed project. Nobody seems able to say on their deathbed that all his or her potential capacities have been developed to the full during his or her life time. Training provides goods and services with added value, while education gives added value to human beings. If training renders human beings ready for use, education aims to give them the learning capacity.

Why education and not just training? Is it realistic to entertain the ideas pertaining to the philosophy of education, while we are seriously faced with new urgency in economic and technological development?

Why not just a sociology of education, or even an economy of education, oriented towards the production of human resources?

Contradictory as it may be, the answer to this question is to be found in the term "human resources" itself. It seems that human beings are resourceful as long as they are human, and conversely, they are human as long as they can still be resourceful.

In other words, there is a reflective nature of human beings: they have to be resourceful in order to be human in order to be resourceful in order to be human etc. There is nothing so puzzling in the long protracted phrase.

From the anthropology point of view, the human being is the least linked and the least matched animal as far as the relation to their natural environment is concerned. The morphological constitution of a bird is linked to air, just as the constitution of a fish is linked to water.

The relationship between a fish and its natural environment is secure and closed. If its habitat is damaged or even destroyed it necessarily dies and even vanishes, because there is no possibility to create another alternative natural environment.

Human beings are basically the only single animal which are not attached to a particular natural environment. Their relationship with their natural environment is by no means secure and unequivocal. They are never determined for a particular natural environment, both because their morphological constitution and their instinctual equipments are indeterminate and much weaker that those of other animals.

Man can swim and dive but never as perfectly as a shark; can run but never as fast as a deer. He can fight, but never as robustly as a lion or a bull.

That is the reason why the relationship of human beings with nature is not a direct one, but one which is mediated by what we call culture. From an environmentalist point of view, culture is the whole effort to render a natural environment compatible with human needs, so much so that it becomes a human environment in which human beings can build a secure relationship. There are, of course, many different levels of such an adjustment.

In that process, the weakness of morphological constitution and the indeterminateness of instinctual equipments are counterbalanced by the creation and production of instruments.

In that sense technological goods assume the function of, and can be treated as, the extension of human organs. A hammer is the extension of a beating hand, just as a type-writer is the extension of a writing hand and a knife is the extension of a cutting hand. In other words, technology is the extension of man as far as his physical relationship with nature and his material needs in the face of natural resources are concerned.

However, such a definition holds true for technology before the invention of the computer, which has broken new ground both for technology and for the conception of technology from a socio- anthropological perspective. The novelty of the computer is that it does not primarily relate the physical needs of human beings to nature but rather that it becomes an extension of the thinking and calculating brains of human beings.

The evident significance of technology notwithstanding, it is clear from the above description that technology represents only one aspect of the relationship of human beings with their natural environment, let alone with their social and cultural environment.

This aspect is instrumental in character, since it renders nature and natural resources linked and matched to human needs and requirements, and thereby makes a natural environment compatible with a human environment, as far as human pragmatic purposes and practical goals are concerned.

This compatibility can be seen from two related perspectives. First, nature and its operations are brought into a functional relationship with human beings by means of making it serve the needs of men.

One principal way to achieve this goal is to establish the so- called natural laws, according to which nature operates. The establishment of natural laws will, in turn, enable human beings to manipulate these laws, in order that they operate not only to serve the reproduction and the function of nature, but rather that they can serve the needs of human beings, particularly the economic goals which, in industrial countries, are to be equated with industrial goals.

Human beings and nature are involved in the so-called system integration, in which the harmony between both is obtained as long as there is an organic relationship between different functions of nature and of human beings. This system integration is characterized by a causal-functional integration, whereby the management of causal relationship of natural phenomena enables human beings to manipulate them in order that they can serve the economic and industrial needs of human beings.

Second, whereas the causal-functional relationship aims to provide human beings with the power of domination over nature, the second pattern of relation is characterized by logic and meaningful integration.

This sort of integration does not provide nature with certain functions to serve the needs of human beings, but rather, instills into nature various meanings, thereby turning senseless chaos into a meaningful cosmos. Mythology, folklore or rituals are some vehicles through which this sort of relationship with nature is traditionally established. In modern sciences this role of mythology or ritual is taken over by cosmology, and in modern life by art or world religions.

The role of cosmology, to relate humans with the meaning of nature, is equal to the role of ideology, to establish the meaning of society. On another level, the role of natural sciences, to look into the laws and functions of nature and their workings, is comparable to the role of social sciences to establish the functions and tendencies of social institutions and their workings.

In the same vein, if technology aims to make use of natural laws to produce the expected results, which can meet human needs, social technology or social engineering aims to manipulate the tendencies of social institutions to serve certain economic or political goals.

In other words, if technology makes nature linked and matched to human nature in terms of function, cosmology does it in terms of meaning. The same can be said of ideology and social engineering. The latter makes social institutions linked and matched to political and economic goals in terms of function, while the former makes it in terms of meaning.

The meaningful relationship of human beings with their society is traditionally established by and within their cultural system. In modern societies this function is taken over by ideology, which is to reconcile different cultural system in terms of a common goal, which the society is to achieve.