The Mythic Symbology of Safety One of the strange contradictions in the world of safety is between the positivist materialist paradigm that dominates the WHS curriculum/texts and the mythic symbology that dominates safety discourse about the activity of enacting safe-work. How strange that one … [Read more...] about The Mythic Symbology of Safety
Robert Long
Dark Waters, The True Story of DuPont and Zero
If you want to learn about the meaninglessness of zero harm and the Bradley Curve watch Dark Waters (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-06/dark-waters-review-mark-ruffalo-todd-haynes-dupont/12028034). The movie gives a dramatic account of how DuPont knowingly over 50 years intentionally harmed … [Read more...] about Dark Waters, The True Story of DuPont and Zero
400,000 Free Downloads
There’s no doubt that people are interested in SPoR and that SPoR provides a new method for understanding and tackling risk that people find helpful. Many people across the globe use SPoR methods to supplement and substitute for, traditional paper-based approaches to safety. Just recently we … [Read more...] about 400,000 Free Downloads
Don’t Look Now Safety, Your Metaphor is Showing
Don’t Look Now Safety, Your Metaphor is Showing As much as STEM thinking knows anything about language, what it doesn’t know is that language is mostly NOT descriptive. Most of the time when humans seek to communicate they use language that is NOT descriptive but figurative. We most often seek to … [Read more...] about Don’t Look Now Safety, Your Metaphor is Showing
Ratio Delusions and Heinrich’s Hoax
Ratio Delusions and Heinrich’s Hoax There’s no doubt that founding interests in safety emerged from insurance and engineering. The concocted rubbish of Heinrich in 1931 was founded in mechanistic assumptions of apportioning blame and responsibility for compensation. It is from this foundation that … [Read more...] about Ratio Delusions and Heinrich’s Hoax
To Err is Human, You Better Believe It
I was sent this classic today (https://www.shponline.co.uk/culture-and-behaviours/dominic-cooper-to-err-is-human-or-is-it/ ). I get so much safety nonsense sent to me it is hard to keep up. When you have no linguistic sense nor understanding of an ethic of personhood, it’s so easy to write … [Read more...] about To Err is Human, You Better Believe It
Culture as a Wicked Problem, for Safety
The issue of culture is a ‘wicked problem’ for Safety (https://safetyrisk.net/risk-and-safety-as-a-wicked-problem/ ), that makes it a wicked wicked problem. Understanding both safety and culture as wicked problems is critical for ‘tackling’ risk. I use the word tackling because there is no sense in … [Read more...] about Culture as a Wicked Problem, for Safety
Safety Leadership Training
Safety Leadership Training Frustrated by the lack of quality training/studies currently available in the field of Safety Leadership and Risk Psychology, Dr Rob Long decided to set up his own Post Graduate Program. Having seen Rob in action, this promises to be a very enjoyable, enlightening and … [Read more...] about Safety Leadership Training
The Stanford Experiment and The Social Psychology of Risk
The Stanford Experiment and The Social Psychology of Risk The Discipline of Social psychology is quite new, emerging strongly from the atrocities of World War Two in seeking to explain the actions and culture of the Nazis. You can read about the history of Social Psychology here: … [Read more...] about The Stanford Experiment and The Social Psychology of Risk
Cultural Orientation in Risk
One of the challenges for the safety industry is the myth of objectivity and the seduction of order and control. When one holds a thirst for power (through engineering and behaviourism) the last thing one wants to be told is that some things are ‘wicked’ … [Read more...] about Cultural Orientation in Risk
