“Human resources.”
“Natural resources.”
“Food stocks.”

We say these words casually, as if they were neutral, professional terms. Yet each one carries a quiet violence.

A person becomes headcount.
Water becomes an asset.
A forest becomes inventory. 

Life itself is translated into inputs for something else: the company, the economy, the plan.

And if you listen closely, you can feel the dissonance. Part of you knows a forest is not inventory, that a river is not an asset, that you are not reducible to a number on a spreadsheet. Yet the system insists otherwise.

This only makes sense through a story lens — a way of seeing that places us outside of life and casts the living world as raw material to be managed. Through that lens, reducing life to units feels “practical.” It promises clarity, incentives, and control.

The Cost of a Story that Ignores Life

But there’s a cost. The more we frame life as a resource, the more we permit ourselves to strip it down. Forests fall, and it’s called growth. People burn out, and it gets measured as productivity. Rivers dry up, and it’s reported as efficiency. 

The story doesn’t just distort what we see, it distorts what we allow ourselves to do. To be radical is to go to the root — and the root is life. Anything else is story layered on top.

Seen through a life lens, the same world looks different. Forests are communities of beings. Rivers are lifelines. People are participants in a larger whole. The reality doesn’t change — only the way we allow ourselves to see it.

And when the veil cracks, the change isn’t theoretical. It’s already happening. Where once workplaces ran on rigid control, people are experimenting with rhythms of trying, sensing, and adapting — companies testing co-management, farmers rebuilding local food webs, and teams choosing trust over rigid compliance. Where the world was flattened into categories and reports, some are beginning to see their work as part of an interdependent ecosystem, designing food webs rather than just supply chains. And where contracts once defined everything, teams are reclaiming trust and care as the foundation of their work.

These are not strategies or frameworks. They’re not new stories to believe in. They are signals of life rerouting itself whenever story drifts too far from reality.

The Defence of Story

Economists will argue: “But this system works. Treating life as resources has motivated people to work, created order, and built economies that lifted billions from poverty.” And yes, through the story lens, the logic holds. 

But look around. What looks like progress in story is often life depleted to keep the story alive. Soils thin. Waters recede. People drift between exhaustion and disengagement. Cultures unravel. Supply chains turn brittle. Workplaces require endless “engagement programs” because the work itself doesn’t feed anyone’s life. Property, contracts, and prices may coordinate complexity, but the bill is steep: a system running on depletion — of land, of water, of trust, of meaning.

Motivation isn’t missing. Meaning is. People don’t need to be wound up; they need to be plugged in — to real needs, real feedback, real belonging. When work finds meaning in life, the energy doesn’t drain — it renews.

Change the Ground

The dissonance you feel is not confusion — it is life rebelling against the fiction. And that rebellion is not abstract. It can be lived now. 

If this lands, don’t write another policy. Change the ground everyone is standing on. That is the radical move — to return to life as the foundation of work. Try this:

1. Rename the frame. Swap “HR/Headcount” for “People & Collaboration.” Replace “resources” with “capabilities” or “contributors.” (Language shapes what’s “obvious.”)
   
2. Surface the real need. For any project, write the living need at the top: What parts of life are served? How will we know? Keep it visible.
   
3. Make one flow healthier. Pick a living flow your org touches (soil, water, time, attention). Choose one move that strengthens it—and account for that alongside money.
   
4. Design one choiceless choice. Add a small, clear signal so the life-serving action is the easiest next step (default settings, one-click path, visible feedback).

This isn’t a new plan, framework, or model. Those are all tweaks on the same story. And the point is not that the old story is wrong and a new one would be right. The point is that any story that puts itself ahead of life is unsustainable.

Life doesn’t wait for strategies or bend to models. It regenerates — and when story forgets that — no matter how clever, efficient, or profitable — life collapses beneath it.

The piercing recognition is this: story is never reality. Life is. And any system that forgets this will burn itself out, leaving only the reality it tried to command.