Shards of Consciousness

I was entering the building where I work today and I saw a woman I recognized from a local agency waiting at the door. I asked if I could help her and she said she was trying to contact one of her agency's consumers who lives in the building.

In my earlier post on the word consumer I said

We are taught that our purpose in life is to be a spore in the economic ecology of the planet, with no real purpose than to consume, to ingest goods, services, art, and knowledge, and to excrete money and labor.

I really, really, really dislike the word consumer, and most especially when it is used in the social services fields.

Somewhere along the line, providers in social services decided that the people they provide services to should be called consumers. Why? I don't know. But I do find it totally obnoxious. Recalling that the natural concomitant to consumption is excretion, now we are not only money machines for corporate interests, we are feedback machines for social services agencies.

The consumers of social services agencies are individuals and groups who are not able to function independently within the larger society. These 'consumers' have mental health problems. They are homeless. They have diseases preventing them from performing the normal tasks of daily living on their own. They are unable to keep a job. They are those who are not able to meet the norms of the culture's desired behavior, either through no conscious fault of their own or due to their own conscious choices. They are the disenfranchised, and in many cases the weak. They know this.

Now we come along and tell them they are consumers. Consumers. We have taken someone who is already outside the cultural norms, and pushed them further out. We have taken a relationship that already labors under an imbalance of power, and increased that imbalance. Purposely.

Come on. Let's think of a better word. If we insist on labelling those with whom we work, let's choose a label that is at worst neutral, and at best emphasizes the fact that we are working together to enable the individual to re-integrate into the greater society to the best of their ability. If we must use language to frame a relationship, let's use language that is not actively dehumanizing. Client. Individual for whom we provide services. Customer. All would be better.